Jacques Dupin

'To write from the start, for someone, for no one, to write for the stones... to write for a stranger, for a blind man, for a blind stranger...' Notched is translated from Jacques Dupin's mesmerising Echancre (P. O. L, 1991). Jacques Dupin was a double laureate of the Grand prix national de la poesie and the Grand prix de poesie de l'Academie francaise. Alex Andriesse is a poet and has translated, notably, Chateaubriand's Memoirs from Beyond the Grave (NYRB Classics).

Diktene er hentet fra samlingene Gravir (1963), L'embrasure (1969) og Une apparence de soupirail (1982). Dupins poesi er vendt mot seg selv, mot sine egne forutsetninger og muligheter, men også mot det konkrete i virkeligheten. I et goldt, nesten abstrakt landskap konfronteres leseren med ordene i deres materielle form, renset for ornamenter og ytre staffasje.

In this volume, Paul Auster has selected prose poems and lyrics from five volumes of Dupin’s poetry published over a quarter-century. Sharing affinities and landscapes with Reverdy, Char, and Ponge, Dupin has developed, nevertheless, a poetry so distinctive and innovative to the American ear and eye that it could, especially with this selection, tincture the reading and writing of poetry in the United States. Eschewing theory, he creates speculations that enact the self’s effacement, while sustaining the human in brilliant imagery and shadowy narrative. In her introduction to these poems, Mary Ann Caws writes, “Nothing is permitted a reach higher than the human. The very precariousness of living informs this deeply moving poetics, quiet and always at risk.”