French Poetry: From Medieval to Modern Times (Everyman's Library Pocket Poets Series) Hardcover – April 11, 2017

I would have liked it if there were the other language represented in the book. But I found it has poets in it that I needed to have, than in a larger anthology that I had bought. That is why I bought it.

Small but impressive sampling of a wide range of poems. Some translations are outstanding

Wonderful collection!

The latest offering in the redoubtable “Pocket Poets” series from the Everyman’s Library is “French Poetry,” skillfully collected by Patrick McGinnes.McGinnes has succeeded magnificently in a nearly impossible task, as he has surveyed a millennium of French verse (with some prose excerpts from Baudelaire and others) from “Medieval to Modern Times.”In my first reading of this beautiful little volume, I chose to view it as a lens through which to observe the long sweep of French culture and history, or rather the “Decline and Fall” of French civilization.McGinnes is that rare editor of translated literature who recognizes that the translator’s role is every bit as interesting as that of the poet her- or himself. “While the poets tell their own story, the translators too are representative of their art,” he says. “There are many kinds of translation: the faithful translation (but faithful to what? faithful to whom?), the free translation (free from what? according to what rules?), the version, the adaptation, and the translation so removed from its original that we think it may as well declare itself a poem and have done with it.” (From McGinnes’s Preface).In the earlier categories of “faithful” and “free” translations, we have excellent examples from G.K. Chesterton, Norman Shapiro and John Ashberry. In the last category of verse drastically “removed from its orginal” we have Jeremy Reed’s “You’d Sleep With Anything” (after Beaudelaire).All of the French titans are represented well: Hugo, Baudelaire, Verlaine, Rimbaud, Valery. I have also discovered several new poets in this collection, previously unfamiliar, that speak to me strongly: Du Bellay’s “Happy, who like Ulysses,” Chassignet’s “Seat yourself on the edge of a wavy river,” and Desbordes-Valmore’s “The Roses of Saadi.”Most enchanting to me are the half a dozen representatives of the work of Stephane Mallarme, including “To insert myself into your plot,” “The Tomb of Edgar Poe,” “The Tomb of Charles Baudelaire,” Sea-wind” and “A Sigh,” including this remarkable image:Calm sister, toward your quiet brow where dreamsRoan autumn, board the questing heaven ofYour eye, my soul mounts steadily; it seemsA jet of water sighing faithfullyToward heaven in some worn garden; and, above,October’s blue is tender, pale and pure,And looks into the fountain with its sureAnd infinite languor; in town agonyThe leaves go with the wind and mark a dunHard furrow near a long cold line of sun.The quality of the poems, to this reader anyway, seems to peak in the 19th century, and then experience a sort of self-absorbed decline leading into the 20th century. The vigorous verse arising out of the first and second world wars, however, is reinvigorated, and then followed by a long, steady and frankly rather sad decline into the late 20th and early 21st centuries.One of those war-inspired Renaissances is illustrated in Apollinaire’s “The Night of April 1915”:The sky is starred with the Boche shellsEnchanted forest I live in you’re having a ballThe machine gun tootles double quickBut did you get the wordOh! the word that’s fatal. . . .We love you, oh life, and we exasperate youThe shells caterwauled a love to die forA love that is dying is sweetest of all. . . .The war verse turns the French Poet’s eye once more outward, and thereby enriches, illuminates.Since I already own about thirty volumes from the “Pocket Poets” series by Everyman, let me comment on the typography and design. A key feature of the series is the high artistry the designers have brought to the fore in the covers, which feature a gold cartouche on the spine with the title of the work, underlaid with some distinctive design indicative of the work. In this volume, there is a rich tracery of vines and flowers in black on a background of white. The cover features a watercolor of a Paris street scene with easels containing paintings, and the back cover is a photograph of an iconic Parisian street showing two lovers kissing beneath a lamppost. This volume fits perfectly with the rest of the set.I highly recommend this volume—it is a remarkable record of the peaks and valleys of a thousand years of French history and culture, viewed through the eyes of its poets.

This is a lovely little book of poetry which is pleasing to the eye and touch. The poems are from the 1100's to the modern day. they seem to be grouped chronologically. Diverse poets from French-speaking countries are represented. Some poets have several poems published in this book. Different translators are represented including Ezra Pound.Some poems lose a bit in translation I suppose from French to English - especially if they are meant to rhyme. Some of the poems are a tad eccentric. Here's a sample of a poem I liked:RAIN & THE TYRANTSI stand and watch the rainFalling in pools which makeOur grave old planet shine;The clear rain falling, just the sameAs that which fell in Homer's timeAnd that which dropped in Villon's dayFalling on mother and on childAs on the passive backs of sheep;Rain saying all it has to sayAgain and yet again, and yetWithout the power to make less hardThe wooden heads of tyrants orTo soften their stone hearts,And powerless to make them feelAmazement as they ought;A drizzling rain which fallsAcross all Europe's map,Wrapping all men aliveIn the same moist envelope;Despite the soldiers loading arms,Despite the newspapers' alarms,Despite all this, all that,A shower of drizzling rainMaking the flags hang wet.

Knopf has done a spectacular job with the latest volume in the Everyman’s Library Poets series, French Poetry: From Medieval to Modern Times. The binding is bright red full-cloth, with a red ribbon bookmark sewn in. Special thanks to Emily Mahon and Barbara de Wilde for their exquisite, quintessentially French design for the dust jacket. And this little gem is priced like a paperback!Editor Patrick McGuiness provides a smart introduction that opens with this: “‘For the best part of a thousand years English poets have gone to school to the French,’ wrote Ezra Pound. ‘The history of English poetic glory is a history of successful steals from the French.’ “McGuiness immediately follows that, wittily, with this: “Pound spoke many languages, and exaggeration was one of them.”With so many folks maintaining that poetry can’t be translated, I’m glad there are so many others who keep trying. McGuiness includes a wide range of translators in this volume. And I have to take issue with those who are skeptical about all translation. Granted, if a poem is heavily dependent upon sonic values, translation may be difficult. But if we’re talking about words and phrases, their meanings and the relationships between them, all of that can, with skill, be translated. Absent heavy dependence on sonic values, saying that you can’t translate a poem is like saying that you can’t translate a recipe. Nonsense. If you get the ingredients and procedures right, you’ve successfully taken a recipe from Beirut to Tallahassee.Even for the difficult stuff, such as the rhymed couplets of Moliere (not represented in this book), along comes that master of translation, Richard Wilbur.This anthology offered the pleasure of finding new translations of familiar poems first encountered in other translations, as well as the pleasure of encountering new poets such as Gilles Ortlieb, here translated by Stephen Romer:“THROUGH THE WINDOW, A SMALL MANIN A TAN SCARF”Through the window, a small man in a tan scarfand grey felt hat, flanked by a quadrupedmore honey-color than russet, who escortshis every step. The astonishing thing is howthe two of them sometimes stop dead for longintervals, despite the cold, to listen closelyto the sky or stare at the scene around them,gazing after cars until they’ve turned the cornerthen swiveling around three-quarters to enjoyanother angle of vision, until — emerging froman even longer pause than usual (the admirablepatience of the dog as he feigns interestin the virtual non-events he is witness to)— they resign themselves to going back homethe hard frost shrinking their pace to careful steps.And when you think they have gone, there they areagain, in league, grey-hatted man, his diminutive foxwith a coat more blond than russet, treadingin the prints of his companion’s every half-stride.