Synopses & Reviews
Not since the publication of Paul Austers The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry (1984) has there been a significant and widely read anthology of modern French poetry in the English-speaking world. Here for the first time is a comprehensive bilingual representation of French poetic achievement in the twentieth century, from the turn-of-the-century poetry of Guillaume Apollinaire to the high modernist art of Samuel Beckett to the contemporary verse of scourge Michel Houellebecq. Many of the English translations (on facing pages) are justly celebrated, composed by eminent figures such as T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, and John Ashbery; many others are new and have been commissioned for this book.
Distinguished scholar and editor Mary Ann Caws has chosen work by more than 100 poets. Her deliberately extensive, international selection includes work by Francophone poets, by writers better known for accomplishments in other genres (novelists, songwriters, performance artists), and by many more female poets than have typically been represented in past anthologies of modern French poetry. The editor has opted for a chronological organization that highlights six crucial pressure points” in modern French poetry. Accompanying the selections are a general introduction, informative essays on each period, and short biographical notesall prepared by the editor.
Review
"Let's raise a glass to Mary Ann Caws and the new Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry. Her scholarship, editorial skills, and brilliant army of poet-translators have produced the first fully comprehensive, panoramic, one hundred-year vision of everything Francophone: from Paris to Martinique, from Apollinaire to the Workshop of Potential Literature. It's all here, a fathomless case of champagne, deserving, as in Mallarmé's Salut, ‘of the white care of our sail.”—Janet Hamill, author of Lost Ceilings
Review
This eagerly anticipated volume is the first comprehensive bilingual representation of French poetic achievement in the twentieth century. Mary Ann Caws has selected the work of more than 100 poets, an international roundup that includes numerous Francophone poets and many more female poets than have appeared in previous anthologies. English translations accompany each poem.-->
Review
"Let's raise a glass to Mary Ann Caws and the new Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry. Her scholarship, editorial skills, and brilliant army of poet-translators have produced the first fully comprehensive, panoramic, one hundred-year vision of everything Francophone: from Paris to Martinique, from Apollinaire to the Workshop of Potential Literature. It's all here, a fathomless case of champagne, deserving, as in Mallarmé's Salut, ‘of the white care of our sail.”Janet Hamill, author of Lost Ceilings
About the Author
Mary Ann Caws is Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature at the Graduate School, City University of New York.