Readers who denounce most contemporary French poetry as self-referential experimentation, word games, exercises in deconstruction, or other kinds of incomprehensible writing disconnected from everyday life—brace yourselves for a revelation. Erotic and urbane, distinguished by formal skill yet marked by the subtlest shades of feeling, Guy Goffette’s unabashedly lyrical poems pay homage to both Verlaine and Rimbaud, whom he counts as his important forbears, with echoes of Auden and Pound, Pavese and Borges.
Long known and admired in France, Guy Goffette’s Charlestown Blues: Selected Poems, a Bilingual Edition is the first English-language collection of his works. Poet and translator Marilyn Hacker’s crystalline, musical renderings will show Anglophones why this poet is considered one of the most important writing in French today.
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