JACQUES DARRAS - JOHN SCOTUS ERIUGENA AT LAON & OTHER POEMS
Jacques Darras
John Scotus Eriugena at Laon & Other Poems
Translated from French by
RICHARD SIEBURTH
$20.00
152 pages
September 15, 2022
ISBN 978-1-954218-04-8
Distributed by Asterism (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
BIOS
JACQUES DARRAS (b. 1939) is the author of the eight-volume epic poem La Maye in addition to numerous literary studies and essays. His translations into French include works by Shakespeare, Blake, Coleridge, Whitman, Pound, Williams, Bunting, MacDiarmid, Hill, and Hughes. He has been honored with the Prix Apollinaire, awarded by the Académie Française for lifetime achievement.
RICHARD SIEBURTH is the translator from the French of works by Nostradamus, Scève, Labé, Nerval, Baudelaire, Artaud, Leiris, and Michaux. His translations from the German include Hölderlin, Büchner, Benjamin, and Scholem. In addition, he is the editor of a number of Ezra Pound's works.
Jacques Darras
John Scotus Eriugena at Laon & Other Poems
Translated from French by
RICHARD SIEBURTH
A long overdue volume of Jacques Darras, celebrated French poet of place and nature, and prolific translator and scholar of American and British poetry.
“John Scotus Eriugena at Laon,” the title poem of this volume, recounts the journey of a ninth-century Irish monk to the cathedral city of Laon in the heart of Picardy to translate a recently discovered Byzantine manuscript into Latin—the first such transmission of ancient Greek thought northward into Carolingian Europe. Eriugena's pithy formulation of neo-Platonism—omnia quae sunt lumina sunt—echoes forth in Pound’s Pisan Cantos as “all things that are are lights.” This is the radiance that pulses through the theophanic nature poetry of Jacques Darras, celebrant of northern rivers, islands, seas, and bard of Picardy. His lifelong commerce with the English language as the translator of Shakespeare, Blake, Whitman, Pound, Bunting and MacDiarmid is here met by Richard Sieburth’s wide-ranging and award-winning forays into French.
“For the first time in English, we have Darras’s Northern tradition, his radical reorientation of French from the Mediterranean to Picardy, and his reaching across the Channel to the burly, material poetries of Bunting, Hill, MacDiarmid, and Hughes. Richard Sieburth has brought that voice into brilliantly energetic English.” —Rosanna Warren
“Who but Richard Sieburth would have even ventured to render this deeply philosophical, sensitive gathering of poems—and do so with such elegance?” —Mary Ann Caws
“There is both an antique and contemporary feel to the work of Jacques Darras. This gives it depth, historical and metaphysical depth, and in these gorgeous translations each line is chiseled and singing.” —Peter Gizzi
“Jacques Darras has always been unique among his French contemporaries in that his poetry, like his critical prose, looks less to Mallarmé or the French Surrealists than to the poets of Northern England he has so ably translated. As interpreted here by Richard Sieburth, one of our very finest translators, the poetry in this volume is as memorable as it is startlingly original—a real discovery.” —Majorie Perloff
“I am reminded of how exhilarating Darras’ poetry can be. I am reminded why we bother, why we persist, in the face of it all.” —Michael Palmer
“From the first page on, the translation reads like an original.” —Susan Howe
“A great selection, with distinct trajectories whose English versions are tonally brilliant.” —Forrest Gander
“Jacques Darras’s deep engagement with American poetry is crucial for our trans-Atlantic conversations. Sieburth channels Darras’s rivers of words in a feat of exuberant fancy.” —Charles Bernstein
“The poems in Darras’ collection help territorialize the conclusion of death, strip it from the tortuous dialecticism of subject-object talk—what is ultimately a more philosophic version of what Heidegger called Gerede, idle chat that, in being passed along, predicates every discourse before it has even pushed off.” —Albe Harlow, Cleveland Review of Books
“No doubt, Sieburth’s translations reflect Darras’ particular sonic ecologies. The result is a resplendent collection that I hope will enthrall new audiences with the vision of this significant French poet.” —Orchid Tierney, Action Books Micro Reviews
BIOS
JACQUES DARRAS (b. 1939) is the author of the eight-volume epic poem La Maye in addition to numerous literary studies and essays. His translations into French include works by Shakespeare, Blake, Coleridge, Whitman, Pound, Williams, Bunting, MacDiarmid, Hill, and Hughes. He has been honored with the Prix Apollinaire, awarded by the Académie Française for lifetime achievement.
RICHARD SIEBURTH is the translator from the French of works by Nostradamus, Scève, Labé, Nerval, Baudelaire, Artaud, Leiris, and Michaux. His translations from the German include Hölderlin, Büchner, Benjamin, and Scholem. In addition, he is the editor of a number of Ezra Pound's works.
PRESS
Reviewed by Albe Harlow for Cleveland Review of Books
Finalist for Derek Walcott Award
152 pages
September 15, 2022
ISBN 978-1-954218-04-8
Distributed by Small Press Distribution (US) and Turnaround Publisher Services (UK & EU)
