Prose, Paperback

Yves Bonnefoy (1923-2016), a major poet, was equally a seminal essayist and thinker. This second and final volume of the Yves Bonnefoy Reader, contains what he regarded as his foundational essays, as well as a generous selection of essays from all periods translated into English for the first time. Subjects include comparative French and English poetics, Shakespeare's theatre, the paintings of Piero della Francesca and Poussin, the sculpture of Bernini, Mozart's operas, a re-assessment of Rimbaud, the impact of photography on art, and much more. The range is broad, but the metaphysical challenge is the same: to affirm presence, and finitude, against all forms of life-sapping conceptual thought. Language may have become suspect, but these essays affirm the 'project of hope' that was Bonnefoy's from the outset. A range of translators contributes, from the editors whose work on Bonnefoy is celebrated and of long standing, to Iain Bamforth, Michael Bishop, Hilary Davies, Jennie Feldman, Emily Grosholz, Mark Hutchinson, Steven Jaron, Viviane Lowe, Hoyt Rogers, John Taylor and Ahren Warner.

Yves Bonnefoy, celebrated translator and critic, is widely considered the most important and influential French poet since World War II. Named to the College de France in 1981 to fill the chair left vacant by the death of Roland Barthes, Bonnefoy was the first poet honored in this way since Paul Valery. Winner of many awards, including the Prix Goncourt in 1987 and the Hudson Review's Bennett Award in 1988, he is the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry. Carcanet published the first of two volumes of his works, Poems, in 2017. Stephen Romer was born in Hertfordshire in 1957 and read English at Cambridge. Since 1981 he has lived in France, where he is Maitre de Conferences at Tours University. He has held Visiting Fellowships at Oxford and Cambridge and has taught in the US. He has published four full collections, including Yellow Studio (2008), shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. He translates widely from the French, and has edited the Faber anthology Twentieth-Century French Poems. Recently he has published translations of Yves Bonnefoy's The Arriere-pays (2012) and an anthology French Decadent Tales (2013). His poetry is described in the British Council Writers Directory and in Poetry International, and he has recorded a selection for the Poetry Archive. He was elected FRSL in 2011. Anthony Rudolf is the author of literary criticism (on Primo Levi, Piotr Rawicz and others), autobiography (Silent Conversations) poetry, and translator of French poetry (Bonnefoy, Vigee, Jabes), Russian (Vinokourov and Tvardovsky). He has been Paula Rego's companion and model since 1996. Rudolf is the founder of Menard Press. He was Visiting Lecturer in Arts and Humanities at London Metropolitan University (2000-2003) and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.