Carcanet Press - The Landscapist

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'After I began translating Pierre Martory, that is, after I began to realize that his marvelous poetry would likely remain unknown unless I translated it and brought it to the attention of readers, I started to find echoes of his work in mine. His dreams, his pessimistic résumés of childhood that are suddenly lanced by a joke, his surreal loves, his strangely lit landscapes with their inquisitive birds and disquieting flora, have been fertile influences for me, though I hope I haven’t stolen anything—well, better to steal than borrow, as Eliot more or less said. All of which may be a way of saying that there is no very easy way to describe Martory’s poetry. It is sui generis and it deserves to be read. And reread.'

John Ashbery

John Ashbery’s translations of Pierre Martory’s poems offer a unique insight into the work of the French poet, and into the creative dialogue between two poets. Ashbery describes Martory’s writing as ‘touched by the gaiety of René Clair’s films and the melancholy of Piaf, echoing the witty surrealism of Pierre Reverdy and Raymond Queneau’; in Ashbery’s translations, the distinctive flavour of Martory’s poetry, ‘located somewhere between Paris and New York’, finds its English voice. The Landscapist gathers Ashbery’s published translations, some with emendations, together with uncollected pieces and facing-page French text. With a definitive introductory biographical essay by Ashbery and bibliographies of both the translations and Martory’s publications, The Landscapist is an indispensable introduction to Martory’s poetry and an illuminating addition to Ashbery’s work.

Cover painting Pierrot and Peonies by Jane Freilicher (collection of Deborah S. Pease; courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York). Cover design by StephenRaw.com.

Table of Contents
Introduction by John Ashbery
Editors' Note

From Every Question but One

Image
Image
Dialogue
Dialogue
Retour des oiseaux
Return of the Birds
Il est grand temps
It's High Time
Lettre recommandée
Registered Letter

The Landscape Is behind the Door

Ma Chandelle est morte
Ma Chandelle est morte
Ce que je dis, peut-etre, n'est pas vrai
What I Say, Perhaps, Isn't True
Sur le pont Marie
On the Pont Marie
Dimanche et fetes
Sundays and Holidays
En bas des marches
At the Bottom of the Steps
Le Paysage est derrière la porte
The Landscape Is behind the Door
Sous l’orme
Under the Elm
Dune
Dune
Un Dimanche à Monfort l’Amaury
A Sunday in Monfort l’Amaury
La Cage
The Cage
Prose des Buttes-Chaumont
Prose des Buttes-Chaumont
Archives indéchiffrables
Undecipherable Archives
Urbs
Urbs
Dans le ventre de la baleine
In the Belly of the Whale 5
Blues
Blues
Quatorze Millions d’années-lumière
Fourteen Million Light-Years
Après l’orage
After the Storm
Diamant noir
Black Diamond
Capsule
Capsule
Lac rouge et noir
Red and Black Lake
Pêle-mêle
Pell-Mell
L’Heure qu’il est
What Time It Is
Une Veuve
A Widow
Rien à dire
Nothing to Say
Trois Petits Poèmes
Three Little Poems
Toten Insel
Toten Insel
Toutes les questions sauf une
Every Question but One
Passant la frontière
Passing the Frontier
Ganymède
Ganymede
Une Nuit sur la mer Morte
A Night on the Dead Sea
Le Paysagiste
The Landscapist
Des Nuits et des corps
Of Nights and Bodies
Collage
Collage
Poème
Poem
Entr’acte
Entr’acte
Nocturne américain
American Nocturne
Entre elle et moi
Between Her and Me
Récitatif et air des larmes
Recitative and Aria of the Tears

Oh, lac / Oh, Lake

Litanies
Litanies
Avant, pendant, après
Before, During, After
Gestes obscurs
Obscure Gestures
Élégie
Elegy
Le Rachat
The Buying Back
Carrefour
The Crossroads
Poème chocolat
Chocolate Poem
Soirée
Soirée 161
Solitude brisée
Broken Solitude
Mairie du Quinzième
Town Hall, Fifteenth Arrondissement
Bastille
Bastille
Allée-venue
Coming and Going
Sans rime ni raison
Without Rhyme or Reason
Dix Ans par exemple après
Ten Years for Example After
Oh, lac . . .
Oh, Lake . . .
Sérénité
Serenity
Vin
Wine
D’un domaine privé
From a Private Domain
Une Visite
A Visit
Ballade
Ballad

Uncollected Poems

Eau calme
Calm Water
Connivences
Collusion
Petit matin
Early Morning
Histoire non naturelle
Unnatural History
Musique
Music
Carrière
Career
L’Essentiel d’un visage se lit un jour de gel
The Main Thing in a Face Can Be Read on a Freezing Day
Ciel scintillant
Scintillating Sky
Les Soirées de Rochefort
Evenings in Rochefort
Arbre
Tree
Perspective
Perspective
Cause commune
Common Cause
Pygmalion
Pygmalion
Psyché
Psyche
Le Père-Lachaise
Père-Lachaise
Quel enfant?
What Child?
Complainte de l’amant
The Lover’s Complaint

Appendix I: Translation with Lost French Original
Bridge Passed

Appendix II: Poem Written in French and English
Tchat

Appendix III: Variant French and English Texts
L’Heure de musique
The Hour of Music
Calendrier
Calendar

Appendix IV: Bibliography
Periodical and Anthology Publications for Ashbery
Translations of Martory Poems
Previously Unpublished Translations
Poetry Books and Other Publications by Pierre Martory

Notes on the Editors

Pierre Martory

Pierre Martory was born in Bayonne in 1920 and spent much of his childhood in Morocco.� He entered the School of Political Science in Paris in 1939, and in June 1940 escaped from Paris on the last train to leave before the Germans arrived.� After a brief stay in prison in ... read more

John Ashbery

John Ashbery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, most recently Quick Question (January 2013). He is the recipient of many honours, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and a MacArthur ‘genius’ award. Born in Rochester, New York, he was educated at Harvard and Columbia. In ... read more

Praise for John Ashbery 'Praised as a magical genius, cursed as an obscure joker, John Ashbery writes poetry like no one else.' The Independent 'Great poetry, as T.S. Eliot said, can communicate before it is understood: Ashbery communicates in a way that both pays homage to language and transcends it at the same time.' The Guardian '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 language of [John Ashbery's] books is informed by his roving enthusiasms for particular composers. His tastes are both eclectic and out-of-the-way.'- Michael Glover, 'A blue rinse for the language,' The Independent, 13 November, 1999 '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 'Harold Bloom regards [John Ashbery] as something akin to a genius...' - Michael Glover, 'The poet as frustrated composer,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Independent, 14 August, 1998 '...Ashbery is still exuberantly dedicated to the truthful rendering of experience as a flow of sensations that defy interpretation. Consciousness is not so much a stream as a series of jump-cuts from one haunting or zany impression to the next. His best poems have a weirdly, intriguingly satisfying quality.' - Alan Brownjohn, 'Creating a sensation,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Sunday Times, 10 January, 1999

'Stemming in part from Mallarme and in part from Whitman, Ashbery's work creates a tension in which the fine networks of linguistic reverie are balanced by the strong sense of American tradition.'- Peter Ackroyd, 'Books of the Year,' The Times Literary Supplement, 4 December, 1992 '...an Ashbery [poem] does not stand on its own but floats off into the reader's limitless consciousness like a balloon. Balloons can be very beautiful, inspire longing and also make you smile.'- Grey Gowrie, 'Where the commonplace is wonderful,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Daily Telegraph, 5 October, 1996 'John Ashbery's distinctiveness as a poet paradoxically resides in his ability to evade all single identities; like Whitman, he feels most fully himself when he contains multitudes ... [Ashbery] deploys a staggering variety of dictions, ranging from fragments of novelettish narratives to lyrical dream-visions, from the cliché of public speech to scraps of surrealist collage...'- Mark Ford, 'Free-wheeling towards the abyss,' Times Literary Supplement, 27 December, 1991 'Notoriously hard to characterise, Ashbery's poetry has been likened to many things - a spiritual experience or an animated cartoon ... No poet's lines are more accommodating to other voices and idioms ... Like restless guests, his subjects arrive and mingle, don unlikely disguises and abruptly announce they are "off on some expedition"...Such poise lends authority to his "positive melancholy," makes even his excesses ... masterly, and ensures that The Ashbery remains the destination of choice, the place "where everything gets unravelled just right."'- Julian Loose, Book and Poetry Review section, The Guardian, 3 November, 1992 '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 'John Ashbery is probably the most highly regarded living poet in America ... The "story" element in Ashbery comes over in fragmented and non-consequential ways, but the fragments have a strong power of visual evocation, and a startling precision of outline ... His focus is on a bravura artifice, a depersonalised surface crackling with "possibility," a brilliant randomness in which analogy with Action Painting asserts itself with special force...'- Claude Rawson, 'A poet in the postmodern playground,' Times Literary Supplement, 4 July, 1986

Pierre Martory (1920-98) was that rare thing, a poet who for most of his long and varied writing life seemed to have little or no interest in seeing his poetry appear in print. read more

With eyes wide shut Adam Thorpe enters a world of vivid dreams but elusive meanings John Ashbery is regarded as America's leading poet, the grand old master of a 'difficult Modernism'. read more

The Times Christmas Books 2008: Poetry A surprising discovery was John Ashbery's translations of Pierre Martory in The Landscapist ... read more

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The Landscapist Selected Poems Pierre Martory Translated by John Ashbery RRP: GBP£ 12.95 Discount: 10% You Save: GBP£ 1.29 Price: GBP£ 11.65 Available Paperback ISBN: 978 1 847770 00 4 Categories: 20th Century, French Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Published: September 2008 216 x 135 mm 296 pages Publisher: Carcanet Press Description Excerpt Author Contents Reviews 'After I began translating Pierre Martory, that is, after I began to realize that his marvelous poetry would likely remain unknown unless I translated it and brought it to the attention of readers, I started to find echoes of his work in mine. His dreams, his pessimistic résumés of childhood that are suddenly lanced by a joke, his surreal loves, his strangely lit landscapes with their inquisitive birds and disquieting flora, have been fertile influences for me, though I hope I haven’t stolen anything—well, better to steal than borrow, as Eliot more or less said. All of which may be a way of saying that there is no very easy way to describe Martory’s poetry. It is sui generis and it deserves to be read. And reread.' John Ashbery John Ashbery’s translations of Pierre Martory’s poems offer a unique insight into the work of the French poet, and into the creative dialogue between two poets. Ashbery describes Martory’s writing as ‘touched by the gaiety of René Clair’s films and the melancholy of Piaf, echoing the witty surrealism of Pierre Reverdy and Raymond Queneau’; in Ashbery’s translations, the distinctive flavour of Martory’s poetry, ‘located somewhere between Paris and New York’, finds its English voice. The Landscapist gathers Ashbery’s published translations, some with emendations, together with uncollected pieces and facing-page French text. With a definitive introductory biographical essay by Ashbery and bibliographies of both the translations and Martory’s publications, The Landscapist is an indispensable introduction to Martory’s poetry and an illuminating addition to Ashbery’s work. Cover painting Pierrot and Peonies by Jane Freilicher (collection of Deborah S. Pease; courtesy Tibor de Nagy Gallery, New York). Cover design by StephenRaw.com. Table of Contents Introduction by John Ashbery Editors' Note From Every Question but One Image Image Dialogue Dialogue Retour des oiseaux Return of the Birds Il est grand temps It's High Time Lettre recommandée Registered Letter The Landscape Is behind the Door Ma Chandelle est morte Ma Chandelle est morte Ce que je dis, peut-etre, n'est pas vrai What I Say, Perhaps, Isn't True Sur le pont Marie On the Pont Marie Dimanche et fetes Sundays and Holidays En bas des marches At the Bottom of the Steps Le Paysage est derrière la porte The Landscape Is behind the Door Sous l’orme Under the Elm Dune Dune Un Dimanche à Monfort l’Amaury A Sunday in Monfort l’Amaury La Cage The Cage Prose des Buttes-Chaumont Prose des Buttes-Chaumont Archives indéchiffrables Undecipherable Archives Urbs Urbs Dans le ventre de la baleine In the Belly of the Whale 5 Blues Blues Quatorze Millions d’années-lumière Fourteen Million Light-Years Après l’orage After the Storm Diamant noir Black Diamond Capsule Capsule Lac rouge et noir Red and Black Lake Pêle-mêle Pell-Mell L’Heure qu’il est What Time It Is Une Veuve A Widow Rien à dire Nothing to Say Trois Petits Poèmes Three Little Poems Toten Insel Toten Insel Toutes les questions sauf une Every Question but One Passant la frontière Passing the Frontier Ganymède Ganymede Une Nuit sur la mer Morte A Night on the Dead Sea Le Paysagiste The Landscapist Des Nuits et des corps Of Nights and Bodies Collage Collage Poème Poem Entr’acte Entr’acte Nocturne américain American Nocturne Entre elle et moi Between Her and Me Récitatif et air des larmes Recitative and Aria of the Tears Oh, lac / Oh, Lake Litanies Litanies Avant, pendant, après Before, During, After Gestes obscurs Obscure Gestures Élégie Elegy Le Rachat The Buying Back Carrefour The Crossroads Poème chocolat Chocolate Poem Soirée Soirée 161 Solitude brisée Broken Solitude Mairie du Quinzième Town Hall, Fifteenth Arrondissement Bastille Bastille Allée-venue Coming and Going Sans rime ni raison Without Rhyme or Reason Dix Ans par exemple après Ten Years for Example After Oh, lac . . . Oh, Lake . . . Sérénité Serenity Vin Wine D’un domaine privé From a Private Domain Une Visite A Visit Ballade Ballad Uncollected Poems Eau calme Calm Water Connivences Collusion Petit matin Early Morning Histoire non naturelle Unnatural History Musique Music Carrière Career L’Essentiel d’un visage se lit un jour de gel The Main Thing in a Face Can Be Read on a Freezing Day Ciel scintillant Scintillating Sky Les Soirées de Rochefort Evenings in Rochefort Arbre Tree Perspective Perspective Cause commune Common Cause Pygmalion Pygmalion Psyché Psyche Le Père-Lachaise Père-Lachaise Quel enfant? What Child? Complainte de l’amant The Lover’s Complaint Appendix I: Translation with Lost French Original Bridge Passed Appendix II: Poem Written in French and English Tchat Appendix III: Variant French and English Texts L’Heure de musique The Hour of Music Calendrier Calendar Appendix IV: Bibliography Periodical and Anthology Publications for Ashbery Translations of Martory Poems Previously Unpublished Translations Poetry Books and Other Publications by Pierre Martory Notes on the Editors Pierre Martory Pierre Martory was born in Bayonne in 1920 and spent much of his childhood in Morocco.� He entered the School of Political Science in Paris in 1939, and in June 1940 escaped from Paris on the last train to leave before the Germans arrived.� After a brief stay in prison in ... read more John Ashbery John Ashbery is the author of more than twenty books of poetry, most recently Quick Question (January 2013). He is the recipient of many honours, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, and a MacArthur ‘genius’ award. Born in Rochester, New York, he was educated at Harvard and Columbia. In ... read more Praise for John Ashbery 'Praised as a magical genius, cursed as an obscure joker, John Ashbery writes poetry like no one else.' The Independent 'Great poetry, as T.S. Eliot said, can communicate before it is understood: Ashbery communicates in a way that both pays homage to language and transcends it at the same time.' The Guardian '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 language of [John Ashbery's] books is informed by his roving enthusiasms for particular composers. His tastes are both eclectic and out-of-the-way.'- *Michael Glover, 'A blue rinse for the language,' The Independent, 13 November, 1999* '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** 'Harold Bloom regards [John Ashbery] as something akin to a genius...' - *Michael Glover, 'The poet as frustrated composer,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Independent, 14 August, 1998* '...Ashbery is still exuberantly dedicated to the truthful rendering of experience as a flow of sensations that defy interpretation. Consciousness is not so much a stream as a series of jump-cuts from one haunting or zany impression to the next. His best poems have a weirdly, intriguingly satisfying quality.' - *Alan Brownjohn, 'Creating a sensation,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Sunday Times, 10 January, 1999* 'Stemming in part from Mallarme and in part from Whitman, Ashbery's work creates a tension in which the fine networks of linguistic reverie are balanced by the strong sense of American tradition.'- *Peter Ackroyd, 'Books of the Year,' The Times Literary Supplement, 4 December, 1992* '...an Ashbery [poem] does not stand on its own but floats off into the reader's limitless consciousness like a balloon. Balloons can be very beautiful, inspire longing and also make you smile.'*- Grey Gowrie, 'Where the commonplace is wonderful,' Book and Poetry Review section, The Daily Telegraph, 5 October, 1996* 'John Ashbery's distinctiveness as a poet paradoxically resides in his ability to evade all single identities; like Whitman, he feels most fully himself when he contains multitudes ... [Ashbery] deploys a staggering variety of dictions, ranging from fragments of novelettish narratives to lyrical dream-visions, from the cliché of public speech to scraps of surrealist collage...'*- Mark Ford, 'Free-wheeling towards the abyss,' Times Literary Supplement, 27 December, 1991* 'Notoriously hard to characterise, Ashbery's poetry has been likened to many things - a spiritual experience or an animated cartoon ... No poet's lines are more accommodating to other voices and idioms ... Like restless guests, his subjects arrive and mingle, don unlikely disguises and abruptly announce they are "off on some expedition"...Such poise lends authority to his "positive melancholy," makes even his excesses ... masterly, and ensures that The Ashbery remains the destination of choice, the place "where everything gets unravelled just right."'*- Julian Loose, Book and Poetry Review section, The Guardian, 3 November, 1992* '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* 'John Ashbery is probably the most highly regarded living poet in America ... The "story" element in Ashbery comes over in fragmented and non-consequential ways, but the fragments have a strong power of visual evocation, and a startling precision of outline ... His focus is on a bravura artifice, a depersonalised surface crackling with "possibility," a brilliant randomness in which analogy with Action Painting asserts itself with special force...'*- Claude Rawson, 'A poet in the postmodern playground,' Times Literary Supplement, 4 July, 1986* Pierre Martory (1920-98) was that rare thing, a poet who for most of his long and varied writing life seemed to have little or no interest in seeing his poetry appear in print. read more With eyes wide shut Adam Thorpe enters a world of vivid dreams but elusive meanings John Ashbery is regarded as America's leading poet, the grand old master of a 'difficult Modernism'. read more The Times Christmas Books 2008: Poetry A surprising discovery was John Ashbery's translations of Pierre Martory in The Landscapist ... read more You might also be interested in: Collected French Translations: Poetry John Ashbery Selected Prose John Ashbery, Edited by Eugene Richie	Share this... 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The Landscapist

Selected Poems

Pierre Martory

Translated by John Ashbery