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The LandscapistSelected PoemsPierre MartoryTranslated by John Ashbery![]()
Categories: 20th Century, French, Translation
Imprint: Carcanet Poetry Publisher: Carcanet Press Available as: Paperback (296 pages) (Pub. Sep 2008) 9781847770004 Out of Stock
'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
Awards won by John Ashbery
Winner, 1997 Gold Medal for Poetry
Winner, 2001 Wallace Stevens Award
Winner, 1995 Robert Frost Medal
Winner, 1976 National Book Critics Circle Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Winner, 1976 National Book Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Winner, 1976 Pulitzer Award (Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror)
Praise for John Ashbery
'That Ashbery had these several extended works underway simultaneously testifies not only to his unflagging fealty to the form but also to his extravagantly various powers of invention and intelligence... Even as the references that undergird these projects range from the reassuringly familiar to the dauntingly obscure, as is typical with Ashbery, they characterize a rarefied mental atmosphere, one in which the poet's droll self-awareness deflates what otherwise might be pretension... Ashbery recognized the porous border between decision and delusion, between finality and its seeming appearance. This collection of unfinished works allows readers to tread that border as well.'
Albert Mobilio, Poetry 'This is an exciting missing piece of the jigsaw for Ashbery enthusiasts. Here language fizzes with a vital "off-kilter quality" and an Ashberian state of open-ended possibility.' The Poetry Book Society Summer Bulletin 'I'll keep returning to The Wave, knowing that each time I do, I'll connect with poems, and lines in poems, I haven't noticed before and recconect with those that have resonated already' Pam Thompson, The North 'John Ashbery's final collection of poetry disguises itself well as a mid-career high. The energy and modernity of his strange little worlds tell nothing of his age.' Stand Magazine 'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.' Harold Bloom 'A fine collection of poems rooted in 21st-century America.' Robert McCrum, The Observer 'More than a century after Arthur Rimbaud composed his Illuminations they are reborn in John Ashbery's magnificent translation. It is fitting that the major American poet since Hart Crane and Wallace Stevens should give us this noble version of the precursor of all three.' Harold Bloom 'Quick Question, with the hushed intensity of its music and great lyric beauty, could only be Ashbery.' Ian Thomson, Financial Times The book invites the reader to poetic gluttony. It serves as a corrective to the monoglot provincialism by which the Anglophone world is still bedevilled. Sean O'Brien, Independent 'The lyrics in Breezeway, a new collection by the octogenarian poet John Ashbery are as good as his finest. I especially like the final poem, poignantly reprising the last line of Keats' Ode to a Nightingale', "Do I wake or sleep?"' Salley Vickers, The Observer - The New Review, 29.11.2015. '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 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 '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
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