Carcanet Press - The Landscapist

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Excerpt
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'After I began translating Pierre Martory, that is, after I began to realize that his marvelous poetry would likely remain unknown unless I translated it and brought it to the attention of readers, I started to find echoes of his work in mine. His dreams, his pessimistic résumés of childhood that are suddenly lanced by a joke, his surreal loves, his strangely lit landscapes with their inquisitive birds and disquieting flora, have been fertile influences for me, though I hope I haven’t stolen anything—well, better to steal than borrow, as Eliot more or less said. All of which may be a way of saying that there is no very easy way to describe Martory’s poetry. It is sui generis and it deserves to be read. And reread.'

John Ashbery

John Ashbery’s translations of Pierre Martory’s poems offer a unique insight into the work of the French poet, and into the creative dialogue between two poets. Ashbery describes Martory’s writing as ‘touched by the gaiety of René Clair’s films and the melancholy of Piaf, echoing the witty surrealism of Pierre Reverdy and Raymond Queneau’; in Ashbery’s translations, the distinctive flavour of Martory’s poetry, ‘located somewhere between Paris and New York’, finds its English voice. The Landscapist gathers Ashbery’s published translations, some with emendations, together with uncollected pieces and facing-page French text. With a definitive introductory biographical essay by Ashbery and bibliographies of both the translations and Martory’s publications, The Landscapist is an indispensable introduction to Martory’s poetry and an illuminating addition to Ashbery’s work.

Cover painting Pierrot and Peonies by Jane Freilicher (collection of Deborah S. Pease; courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York). Cover design by StephenRaw.com.

Table of Contents
Introduction by John Ashbery
Editors' Note

From Every Question but One

Image
Image
Dialogue
Dialogue
Retour des oiseaux
Return of the Birds
Il est grand temps
It's High Time
Lettre recommandée
Registered Letter

The Landscape Is behind the Door

Ma Chandelle est morte
Ma Chandelle est morte
Ce que je dis, peut-etre, n'est pas vrai
What I Say, Perhaps, Isn't True
Sur le pont Marie
On the Pont Marie
Dimanche et fetes
Sundays and Holidays
En bas des marches
At the Bottom of the Steps
Le Paysage est derrière la porte
The Landscape Is behind the Door
Sous l’orme
Under the Elm
Dune
Dune
Un Dimanche à Monfort l’Amaury
A Sunday in Monfort l’Amaury
La Cage
The Cage
Prose des Buttes-Chaumont
Prose des Buttes-Chaumont
Archives indéchiffrables
Undecipherable Archives
Urbs
Urbs
Dans le ventre de la baleine
In the Belly of the Whale 5
Blues
Blues
Quatorze Millions d’années-lumière
Fourteen Million Light-Years
Après l’orage
After the Storm
Diamant noir
Black Diamond
Capsule
Capsule
Lac rouge et noir
Red and Black Lake
Pêle-mêle
Pell-Mell
L’Heure qu’il est
What Time It Is
Une Veuve
A Widow
Rien à dire
Nothing to Say
Trois Petits Poèmes
Three Little Poems
Toten Insel
Toten Insel
Toutes les questions sauf une
Every Question but One
Passant la frontière
Passing the Frontier
Ganymède
Ganymede
Une Nuit sur la mer Morte
A Night on the Dead Sea
Le Paysagiste
The Landscapist
Des Nuits et des corps
Of Nights and Bodies
Collage
Collage
Poème
Poem
Entr’acte
Entr’acte
Nocturne américain
American Nocturne
Entre elle et moi
Between Her and Me
Récitatif et air des larmes
Recitative and Aria of the Tears

Oh, lac / Oh, Lake

Litanies
Litanies
Avant, pendant, après
Before, During, After
Gestes obscurs
Obscure Gestures
Élégie
Elegy
Le Rachat
The Buying Back
Carrefour
The Crossroads
Poème chocolat
Chocolate Poem
Soirée
Soirée 161
Solitude brisée
Broken Solitude
Mairie du Quinzième
Town Hall, Fifteenth Arrondissement
Bastille
Bastille
Allée-venue
Coming and Going
Sans rime ni raison
Without Rhyme or Reason
Dix Ans par exemple après
Ten Years for Example After
Oh, lac . . .
Oh, Lake . . .
Sérénité
Serenity
Vin
Wine
D’un domaine privé
From a Private Domain
Une Visite
A Visit
Ballade
Ballad

Uncollected Poems

Eau calme
Calm Water
Connivences
Collusion
Petit matin
Early Morning
Histoire non naturelle
Unnatural History
Musique
Music
Carrière
Career
L’Essentiel d’un visage se lit un jour de gel
The Main Thing in a Face Can Be Read on a Freezing Day
Ciel scintillant
Scintillating Sky
Les Soirées de Rochefort
Evenings in Rochefort
Arbre
Tree
Perspective
Perspective
Cause commune
Common Cause
Pygmalion
Pygmalion
Psyché
Psyche
Le Père-Lachaise
Père-Lachaise
Quel enfant?
What Child?
Complainte de l’amant
The Lover’s Complaint

Appendix I: Translation with Lost French Original
Bridge Passed

Appendix II: Poem Written in French and English
Tchat

Appendix III: Variant French and English Texts
L’Heure de musique
The Hour of Music
Calendrier
Calendar

Appendix IV: Bibliography
Periodical and Anthology Publications for Ashbery
Translations of Martory Poems
Previously Unpublished Translations
Poetry Books and Other Publications by Pierre Martory

Notes on the Editors

Pierre Martory

Pierre Martory was born in Bayonne in 1920 and spent much of his childhood in Morocco.� He entered the School of Political Science in Paris in 1939, and in June 1940 escaped from Paris on the last train to leave before the Germans arrived.� After a brief stay in prison in ... read more

John Ashbery

John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. His books of poetry include Breezeway ; Quick Question ; Planisphere ; Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems, which was awarded the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize; A Worldly Country ; Where Shall I Wander ; and Self-Portrait in ... read more

Awards won by John Ashbery Winner, 1997 Gold Medal for Poetry Winner, 2001 Wallace Stevens Award Winner, 1995 Robert Frost Medal Winner, 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror) Winner, 1976 National Book Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror) Winner, 1976 Pulitzer Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)

Praise for John Ashbery 'That Ashbery had these several extended works underway simultaneously testifies not only to his unflagging fealty to the form but also to his extravagantly various powers of invention and intelligence... Even as the references that undergird these projects range from the reassuringly familiar to the dauntingly obscure, as is typical with Ashbery, they characterize a rarefied mental atmosphere, one in which the poet's droll self-awareness deflates what otherwise might be pretension... Ashbery recognized the porous border between decision and delusion, between finality and its seeming appearance. This collection of unfinished works allows readers to tread that border as well.'

Albert Mobilio, Poetry

'This is an exciting missing piece of the jigsaw for Ashbery enthusiasts. Here language fizzes with a vital "off-kilter quality" and an Ashberian state of open-ended possibility.'

The Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin

'I'll keep returning to The Wave, knowing that each time I do, I'll connect with poems, and lines in poems, I haven't noticed before and recconect with those that have resonated already'
Pam Thompson, The North
'John Ashbery's final collection of poetry disguises itself well as a mid-career high. The energy and modernity of his strange little worlds tell nothing of his age.'
Stand Magazine

  'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.'
Harold Bloom
'A fine collection of poems rooted in 21st-century America.'
Robert McCrum, The Observer
  'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.'
Harold Bloom
'Quick Question, with the hushed intensity of its music and great lyric beauty, could only be Ashbery.'
Ian Thomson, Financial Times The book invites the reader to poetic gluttony. It serves as a corrective to the monoglot provincialism by which the Anglophone world is still bedevilled.
Sean O'Brien, Independent 'The lyrics in Breezeway, a new collection by the octogenarian poet John Ashbery are as good as his finest. I especially like the final poem, poignantly reprising the last line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale', "Do I wake or sleep?"'
Salley Vickers, The Observer - The New Review, 29.11.2015.
  'John Ashbery's Collected Poems 1956-1987, edited by Mark Ford (Carcanet), was a book I found inexhaustible. Possibly the greatest living English-speaking poet and one of the most prolific, Ashbery takes language to its limits, so that words serve as pointers to shifting experiences that elude description. Containing his masterpiece 'Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror', one of the most penetrating 20th-century meditations on what it means to be human, this collection succeeded in stirring my thoughts as well as delighting me.'
John Gray The Guardian Books Of The Year 2010
   'The careering, centrifugal side of Girls on the Run is one of its most effective tools in creating its special ainbience of good-humoured menace ... Ashbery has made the slush of signification, the realm where words slip, slide, perish and decay, uniquely his own.'
David Wheatley, Times Literary Supplement, 30 June, 2000
   'In his seventies John Ashbery offers a sprightly and energetic alternative. Instead of being sluggish he demands that the self must be even more alert, more vigilant, more attentive to the world around it, not indifferent to and weary of it. Alert, vigilant, attentive ... Wakefulness, the brilliantly evocative title of Ashbery's collection.'
Stephen Matterson, 'The Capacious Art of Poetry,' Poetry Ireland Review 62, 114
    'The Mooring of Starting Out is filled with illustrations glimpsed through luminous, funny, formidably intelligent and often heartbreaking poems.'
Andrew Zawacki, 'A wave of music,' Times Literary Supplement, 12 June, 1998

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The Landscapist Selected Poems Pierre Martory Translated by John Ashbery Categories: 20th Century, French, Translation Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (296 pages) (Pub. Sep 2008) 9781847770004 Out of Stock Description Excerpt Author Contents Awards Reviews 'After I began translating Pierre Martory, that is, after I began to realize that his marvelous poetry would likely remain unknown unless I translated it and brought it to the attention of readers, I started to find echoes of his work in mine. His dreams, his pessimistic résumés of childhood that are suddenly lanced by a joke, his surreal loves, his strangely lit landscapes with their inquisitive birds and disquieting flora, have been fertile influences for me, though I hope I haven’t stolen anything—well, better to steal than borrow, as Eliot more or less said. All of which may be a way of saying that there is no very easy way to describe Martory’s poetry. It is sui generis and it deserves to be read. And reread.' John Ashbery John Ashbery’s translations of Pierre Martory’s poems offer a unique insight into the work of the French poet, and into the creative dialogue between two poets. Ashbery describes Martory’s writing as ‘touched by the gaiety of René Clair’s films and the melancholy of Piaf, echoing the witty surrealism of Pierre Reverdy and Raymond Queneau’; in Ashbery’s translations, the distinctive flavour of Martory’s poetry, ‘located somewhere between Paris and New York’, finds its English voice. The Landscapist gathers Ashbery’s published translations, some with emendations, together with uncollected pieces and facing-page French text. With a definitive introductory biographical essay by Ashbery and bibliographies of both the translations and Martory’s publications, The Landscapist is an indispensable introduction to Martory’s poetry and an illuminating addition to Ashbery’s work. Cover painting Pierrot and Peonies by Jane Freilicher (collection of Deborah S. Pease; courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York). Cover design by StephenRaw.com. Table of Contents Introduction by John Ashbery Editors' Note From Every Question but One Image Image Dialogue Dialogue Retour des oiseaux Return of the Birds Il est grand temps It's High Time Lettre recommandée Registered Letter The Landscape Is behind the Door Ma Chandelle est morte Ma Chandelle est morte Ce que je dis, peut-etre, n'est pas vrai What I Say, Perhaps, Isn't True Sur le pont Marie On the Pont Marie Dimanche et fetes Sundays and Holidays En bas des marches At the Bottom of the Steps Le Paysage est derrière la porte The Landscape Is behind the Door Sous l’orme Under the Elm Dune Dune Un Dimanche à Monfort l’Amaury A Sunday in Monfort l’Amaury La Cage The Cage Prose des Buttes-Chaumont Prose des Buttes-Chaumont Archives indéchiffrables Undecipherable Archives Urbs Urbs Dans le ventre de la baleine In the Belly of the Whale 5 Blues Blues Quatorze Millions d’années-lumière Fourteen Million Light-Years Après l’orage After the Storm Diamant noir Black Diamond Capsule Capsule Lac rouge et noir Red and Black Lake Pêle-mêle Pell-Mell L’Heure qu’il est What Time It Is Une Veuve A Widow Rien à dire Nothing to Say Trois Petits Poèmes Three Little Poems Toten Insel Toten Insel Toutes les questions sauf une Every Question but One Passant la frontière Passing the Frontier Ganymède Ganymede Une Nuit sur la mer Morte A Night on the Dead Sea Le Paysagiste The Landscapist Des Nuits et des corps Of Nights and Bodies Collage Collage Poème Poem Entr’acte Entr’acte Nocturne américain American Nocturne Entre elle et moi Between Her and Me Récitatif et air des larmes Recitative and Aria of the Tears Oh, lac / Oh, Lake Litanies Litanies Avant, pendant, après Before, During, After Gestes obscurs Obscure Gestures Élégie Elegy Le Rachat The Buying Back Carrefour The Crossroads Poème chocolat Chocolate Poem Soirée Soirée 161 Solitude brisée Broken Solitude Mairie du Quinzième Town Hall, Fifteenth Arrondissement Bastille Bastille Allée-venue Coming and Going Sans rime ni raison Without Rhyme or Reason Dix Ans par exemple après Ten Years for Example After Oh, lac . . . Oh, Lake . . . Sérénité Serenity Vin Wine D’un domaine privé From a Private Domain Une Visite A Visit Ballade Ballad Uncollected Poems Eau calme Calm Water Connivences Collusion Petit matin Early Morning Histoire non naturelle Unnatural History Musique Music Carrière Career L’Essentiel d’un visage se lit un jour de gel The Main Thing in a Face Can Be Read on a Freezing Day Ciel scintillant Scintillating Sky Les Soirées de Rochefort Evenings in Rochefort Arbre Tree Perspective Perspective Cause commune Common Cause Pygmalion Pygmalion Psyché Psyche Le Père-Lachaise Père-Lachaise Quel enfant? What Child? Complainte de l’amant The Lover’s Complaint Appendix I: Translation with Lost French Original Bridge Passed Appendix II: Poem Written in French and English Tchat Appendix III: Variant French and English Texts L’Heure de musique The Hour of Music Calendrier Calendar Appendix IV: Bibliography Periodical and Anthology Publications for Ashbery Translations of Martory Poems Previously Unpublished Translations Poetry Books and Other Publications by Pierre Martory Notes on the Editors Pierre Martory Pierre Martory was born in Bayonne in 1920 and spent much of his childhood in Morocco.� He entered the School of Political Science in Paris in 1939, and in June 1940 escaped from Paris on the last train to leave before the Germans arrived.� After a brief stay in prison in ... read more John Ashbery John Ashbery was born in Rochester, New York, in 1927. His books of poetry include Breezeway ; Quick Question ; Planisphere ; Notes from the Air: Selected Later Poems, which was awarded the 2008 International Griffin Poetry Prize; A Worldly Country ; Where Shall I Wander ; and Self-Portrait in ... read more Awards won by John Ashbery Winner, 1997 Gold Medal for Poetry Winner, 2001 Wallace Stevens Award Winner, 1995 Robert Frost Medal Winner, 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror) Winner, 1976 National Book Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror) Winner, 1976 Pulitzer Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror) Praise for John Ashbery 'That Ashbery had these several extended works underway simultaneously testifies not only to his unflagging fealty to the form but also to his extravagantly various powers of invention and intelligence... Even as the references that undergird these projects range from the reassuringly familiar to the dauntingly obscure, as is typical with Ashbery, they characterize a rarefied mental atmosphere, one in which the poet's droll self-awareness deflates what otherwise might be pretension... Ashbery recognized the porous border between decision and delusion, between finality and its seeming appearance. This collection of unfinished works allows readers to tread that border as well.' Albert Mobilio, Poetry 'This is an exciting missing piece of the jigsaw for Ashbery enthusiasts. Here language fizzes with a vital "off-kilter quality" and an Ashberian state of open-ended possibility.' The Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin 'I'll keep returning to The Wave, knowing that each time I do, I'll connect with poems, and lines in poems, I haven't noticed before and recconect with those that have resonated already' Pam Thompson, The North 'John Ashbery's final collection of poetry disguises itself well as a mid-career high. The energy and modernity of his strange little worlds tell nothing of his age.' Stand Magazine 'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.' Harold Bloom 'A fine collection of poems rooted in 21st-century America.' Robert McCrum, The Observer 'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.' Harold Bloom 'Quick Question, with the hushed intensity of its music and great lyric beauty, could only be Ashbery.' Ian Thomson, Financial Times The book invites the reader to poetic gluttony. It serves as a corrective to the monoglot provincialism by which the Anglophone world is still bedevilled. Sean O'Brien, Independent 'The lyrics in Breezeway, a new collection by the octogenarian poet John Ashbery are as good as his finest. I especially like the final poem, poignantly reprising the last line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale', "Do I wake or sleep?"' Salley Vickers, The Observer - The New Review, 29.11.2015. 'John Ashbery's Collected Poems 1956-1987, edited by Mark Ford (Carcanet), was a book I found inexhaustible. Possibly the greatest living English-speaking poet and one of the most prolific, Ashbery takes language to its limits, so that words serve as pointers to shifting experiences that elude description. Containing his masterpiece 'Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror', one of the most penetrating 20th-century meditations on what it means to be human, this collection succeeded in stirring my thoughts as well as delighting me.' John Gray The Guardian Books Of The Year 2010 'The careering, centrifugal side of Girls on the Run is one of its most effective tools in creating its special ainbience of good-humoured menace ... Ashbery has made the slush of signification, the realm where words slip, slide, perish and decay, uniquely his own.' David Wheatley, Times Literary Supplement, 30 June, 2000 'In his seventies John Ashbery offers a sprightly and energetic alternative. Instead of being sluggish he demands that the self must be even more alert, more vigilant, more attentive to the world around it, not indifferent to and weary of it. Alert, vigilant, attentive ... Wakefulness, the brilliantly evocative title of Ashbery's collection.' Stephen Matterson, 'The Capacious Art of Poetry,' Poetry Ireland Review 62, 114 'The Mooring of Starting Out is filled with illustrations glimpsed through luminous, funny, formidably intelligent and often heartbreaking poems.' Andrew Zawacki, 'A wave of music,' Times Literary Supplement, 12 June, 1998 You might also be interested in: Collected French Translations: Poetry John Ashbery Selected Prose John Ashbery, Edited by Eugene Richie	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! 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The Landscapist

Selected Poems

Pierre Martory

Translated by John Ashbery