Carcanet Press - Collected French Translations: Poetry

Description
Author
Awards
Reviews

The companion volume to Collected French Translations: Prose, this book reflects John Ashbery’s lifelong engagement with French poetry. From 1955 Ashbery spent almost a decade in France, working as an art critic, and formed a close relationship with the poet Pierre Martory. His versions of Martory’s poems (published by Carcanet as The Landscapist), featured here, were a 2008 Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation.

This bilingual volume presents translations from twenty-four poets, among them Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, Paul Éluard and France’s greatest living poet, Yves Bonnefoy. It also includes a selection from Ashbery’s masterly translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations, published to acclaim in 2011. The development of modern French poetry – through Romanticism, Symbolism, Dada and Surrealism – emerges chronologically through Ashbery’s choices; as does the lasting influence of French poetry on Ashbery’s own iconoclastic career.

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)

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 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 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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Collected French Translations: Poetry John Ashbery Categories: 20th Century, 21st Century, American, French, LGBTQ+, Translation Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (320 pages) (Pub. Apr 2014) 9781847772343 Out of Stock Digital access available through Exact Editions Description Author Awards Reviews The companion volume to Collected French Translations: Prose, this book reflects John Ashbery’s lifelong engagement with French poetry. From 1955 Ashbery spent almost a decade in France, working as an art critic, and formed a close relationship with the poet Pierre Martory. His versions of Martory’s poems (published by Carcanet as The Landscapist), featured here, were a 2008 Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation. This bilingual volume presents translations from twenty-four poets, among them Charles Baudelaire, Stéphane Mallarmé, Max Jacob, Pierre Reverdy, Paul Éluard and France’s greatest living poet, Yves Bonnefoy. It also includes a selection from Ashbery’s masterly translation of Arthur Rimbaud’s Illuminations, published to acclaim in 2011. The development of modern French poetry – through Romanticism, Symbolism, Dada and Surrealism – emerges chronologically through Ashbery’s choices; as does the lasting influence of French poetry on Ashbery’s own iconoclastic career. 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) 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 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 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: Prose John Ashbery The Landscapist Pierre Martory, Translated by John Ashbery Illuminations Arthur Rimbaud, Translated by John Ashbery	Share this... Quick Links Carcanet Poetry Carcanet Classics Carcanet Fiction Carcanet Film Lives and Letters PN Review Video Carcanet Celebrates 50 Years! The Carcanet Blog One Little Room: Peter McDonald read more Collected Poems: Mimi Khalvati read more Invisible Dog: Fabio Morbito, translated by Richard Gwyn read more Dante's Purgatorio: Philip Terry read more Billy 'Nibs' Buckshot: John Gallas read more Emotional Support Horse: Claudine Toutoungi read more
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