Customer Reviews (3)

Major Screw-up
Why are the first three reviews on "Francis Ponge - Selected Poems not about Francis Ponge poems in this book, but rather about William Carlos Williams and C.K. Williams poetry?I mean, these men are good poets but let's review the right book guys.

Excellently translated introduction to unclassifiable master
Francis Ponge may not yet be a household name, but his famous admirers include the likes of Sartre, Robbe-Grillet and Calvino.It was the latter who introduced me to the poet, whose work is generally classified as being concerned with language, and with things (his most famous collection is called 'Siding with things'), including pebbles, crabs and cigarettes.

Ponge composed mostly in prose poems, and with his direct, precise language, he should be the easiest of foreign poets to translate.He is, however, one of the most difficult, because his 'direct' and 'precise' vocabulary is anything but - like Joyce, Ponge scrapes the banalities from words, and forces us to reconsider the exact meanings of them, their etymologies and implications.This can transform or complicate the poems' meaning completely, but as French words have a different versatility to English ones, the linguistic subtlety isn't always apparent in translation.

this makes the achievement of the three translaters here, all poets, the more admirable, as they catch much of Ponge's rhythmic, tonal and playful art.The poems themselves are marvels of revelation, recreating everyday objects like they never before existed, as the poet journeys through language into their usually ignored essence.You emerge determined to be more observant in future, to be more receptive to life.

Great selection, great translation
It's a shame that Francis Ponge is not more widely read in America.It's an even bigger shame that so much of his work is left untranslated for the American reader.The two slim volumes translated by Lee Fahnstock, Nature ofThings and Vegetation, are fine translations of his earliest work, and the1998 Lane Dunlop translation of Soap should also be considered must-readbooks.But this selected poems is a much better introduction to FrancisPonge.The book presents Ponge's prosepoems in both English and the originalFrench in facing-pages translation.The translations are excellent, andthe selection from Ponge's entire catalogue represents the vast diversityof style and length, while constantly including only the most remarkablepoems.Unless you read French and can track down Ponge's complete works inthe original language, and until his work is translated completely,Guiton's edition is the best one could hope for. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (1)

Ponge's signature
Soap is different from Ponge's other work. He is best known as the author of many brief, well-crafted prose poems which take the form of minute observations on natural and manmade objects. This book, as the title implies, is also an observation on a common household object.

This work is not merely a prose poem, although it contains elements of prose poetry. It is comprised of (fictional?) radio addresses, a short dramatic piece, correspondence, notebook extracts and other narrative forms culled from twenty years of occasional writing on one topic: the nature of soap.

The whole work is a metaphor on the relationship between soap and language. There are affinities between language and soap, their artificiality, their cleansing power, their slipperiness, etc. But these metaphorical connections are not explicitly expressed by Ponge - they are everywhere implied. The fragments of writing here are like bubbles, containing the same substance but constantly changing form ever so slightly. The form relates quite well to the content.

What Ponge has found here is a subject whose nature corresponds almost exactly to his writing style and his narrative method - perhaps this is what motivated him to linger over this particular piece for twenty years and to elaborate and refine it to an extent unfamiliar in his other works. This work, more than any other, displays the virtues and the virtuosity of Ponge.

I give the book four stars mostly because of the presentation. It's a handsome edition and the translation is quite good. But it is a slim volume (about 75 pages of text) and it would have been extremely worthwhile for the publisher to have included the French text on facing pages. Most prospective purchasers of this volume have probably more than a nodding acquaintance with French, since Ponge is known to American readers largely through the influence he has had on other writers and thinkers like Robbe-Grillet or Derrida. Because Ponge relies so much on wordplay and etymological affinities, the French text would have been useful. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
A selection of work by four of the fathers of prose poetry, the French writers Max Jacob, Jean Follain, and Francis Ponge. Baudelaire laid the foundations for prose poetry as a genre in the 19th century; these poets expanded the concept in the first half of the 20th century. Jacob (1876-1944) was a writer of surrealist cubist fables, Ponge (1899-1988) was a master of the language of things, and Follain (1903-1971) merged the everyday with the historical to create a world rich in anniversaries. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Modern Masters of the French Prose Poem
The prose poem is something of a French specialty. Edgar Allan Poe may have coined the term, but it was Poe's French translator Charles Baudelaire who first "dreamed of the miracle of a poetic prose, musical without rhyme, supple and muscular," and became the first of many fine French poets to excel in this oxymoronic genre. "Dreaming the Miracle" brings together a sampling of the work of three masterful French prose poets of the 20th Century: the surrealist Max "the Nut" Jacob (1876-1944), the first great poet to apply dream logic to poetic composition; Francis Ponge (1899-1988), the "would-be encyclopedist" of the poetry of the ordinary object; and (one of the great finds of the last century) Jean Follain (1903-1971), an obscure judge who wrote exquisite vignettes that collectively comprise an intimate albeit anonymous autobiography of the last century.

The Jacob and Ponge translations seem a little uneven at times, but the poetry shines through nonetheless. The translations of Follain's prose poems, beautifully rendered by Mary Feeney and the late, great poet William Mathews, are an unadulterated delight. Since the publisher neglected to put any sample pages up on the Amazon website, let me rectify the omission by quoting a representative prose poem from each poet:


Max Jacob: The Beggar Woman of Naples

When I lived in Naples, there was a beggar woman at my palace gate I'd toss a coin to before getting into my carriage. One day, surprised that she never thanked me, I looked at her. As I did, I saw that what I'd mistaken for a beggar woman was a green wooden crate containing some red earth and a few half-rotten bananas.


Francis Ponge: The Pleasures of the Door

Kings do not touch doors.
They know nothing of this pleasure: pushing before one gently or brusquely one of those large familiar panels, then turning back to replace it--holding a door in one's arms.
The pleasure of grabbing the midriff of one of these tall obstacles to a room by its porcelain node; that short clinch during which movement stops, the eye widens, and the whole body adjusts to its new surrounding.
With a friendly hand one still holds on to it, before closing it decisively and shutting oneself in--which the click of the tight but well-oiled spring pleasantly confirms.


Jean Follain: Untitled

Store windows start to light up: displays that banish thoughts of war or hunger, huge dolls with lifelike lashes, eyelids that close. A storefront with shining jewels catches your eye. A white wall takes on a greengage tint. A gutter along the sidewalk seems to be running with a red liqueur instead of dirty water. Absinthe green smoke floats up from muted roofs. There's a passerby who's never written a word except his signature, using a beat-up wooden holder. He senses this bursting beauty. And the man with a terrible temper, seeing his hand turned orange by the sunset, falls silent before his household who fear him, maybe even forgive him his fits. ... Read more

Product Description
This study of Francis Ponge's essays on contemporary artists (L'Atelier contemporain) attempts to broaden the popular view of the author as a poet of objects. It explores Ponge's perception of art criticism as an inherently problematic genre and exposes the inhibitions surrounding the production of the essays.The study demonstrates how Ponge's essays on artists parallel developments in his other works. They are seen as instrumental in his movement towards open texts and a stress on the creative process itself, as well as opportunities to reaffirm his philosophical and aesthetic stance. ... Read more