Nonetheless we must live through the winter
before exile feel our way
among these lunar embers in the fog
toward those unrubied crowns.
Claire Malroux, from "Octet Before Winter," Daybreak: New and Selected Poems (NYRB Poets, 2020)
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When night has died
The stars’ memory keeps burning
A dazzling ink remains
In the handwriting of dawn
The world bursts forth
Tearing nothing apart
Like gives birth to like
Joyful renewal
Bellies are haloed
Heavy with unborn suns
Bird-arrows dart up
Toward fertile forms
Virgins are blossoming
On the bed of time
Angel bushes
Spring from their navels
Everything
Is possible
When Night Has Died by Claire Malroux (Translated by Marilyn Hacker)
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NYRB Fall Preview 2020: NYRB Poets
Our fall season includes two bilingual collections of poetry newly translated from the French, by Alice Paalen Rahon and Claire Malroux—both poets who occupy the space between two worlds, be they of language, nation, culture, sexuality, or philosophy.
Alice Paalen Rahon, Alice Paalen Rahon (September)
Alice Paalen Rahon was a shapeshifter: a surrealist poet turned painter who was born French and died a naturalized citizen of Mexico. Bicultural, bisexual, and fiercely independent, her romantic life included affairs with Pablo Picasso and the poet Valentine Penrose. This new selection of Rahon’s poems celebrates the visionary work of a woman who defied easy definition.
Claire Malroux, Daybreak: New and Selected Poems (October)
Claire Malroux holds a unique place in contemporary French poetry, with influences from both the French and Anglophone traditions—especially the work of Emily Dickinson. Her subtle, intimate poems move between an intense, abstract interiority and an acute engagement with the material world. This new volume is a bilingual selection by the award-winning poet and translator Marilyn Hacker.
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Whitecaps surge in from some infinite distance
Rocks, grottoes, clay stridencies beneath the storm
Amalgams of sea-wrack and brownish moss
Each tide pushes forth its flesh-antennae
The persistent squid stretches its arms, wave-crests
Cave in, everything gives way to sand
Which silently drinks up the acid, cold red sweat
Those children launched in assault against the waves
How could they turn their heads
Back toward those who've brought them this far
To be taken even farther in their turn
They passed though the crowd, laughing
Or crying without telling the password
They've passed, the ferret runs and runs
Memory, the battlefield nurse, can barely
Triage the rarest ones
Whose heat shifts at the crater's edge
Yet they give our trajectory
Its dreamlike depth: the whole chain
Coils up in our smallest cells
And in a lifetime time annuls itself
Claire Malroux, PREHISTORIC (Translated by Marilyn Hacker)
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The Manhattan Review - Volume 19, no. 2
The Manhattan Review – Volume 19, no. 2
«The Manhattan Review», Philip Fried editor, vol. 19, n.2, 2020. In this issue: D. Nurkse, Philip Gross, Nicola Vulpe, John Burnside, Erich Fried, Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Christopher Bursk, Marc Kaminsky, Cheryl Moskowitz, Kate Farrell, John Greening, Penelope Shuttle, Claire Malroux, George Szirtes, Chris McCabe, Richard Hoffman, Carol Rumens, Rosalind Hudis, Menno Wigman, Howard Altmann,…
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Here is a a collection of Marilyn Hacker's essays on Poetry and Poets. One is on Claire Malroux, with whom she read last night in a Brooklyn Bookstore, that was circulated on Zoom. The first essay on the American language and how it responds to others made me weep (literally) with joy when I first read it, and articulated things I have felt since we lived together on the Lower East Side. I gave a copy to the then-director of the creative writing program at Temple, and suggested we bring Hacker to the read at the school. Sadly, it didn't happen. But I still wish we could have done it. via Facebook https://ift.tt/3mx65TP
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J'ai bu une Gorgée de Vie -
Savez-vous ce que j'ai payé -
Exactement une existence -
Le prix, ont-ils dit, du marché.
Ils m'ont pesée, grain par grain de Poussière -
Ont mis en balance Pellicule contre Pellicule,
Puis m'ont donné la valeur de mon Être -
Une unique Goutte de Ciel !
Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) / traduction de Claire Malroux.
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"Deciding" / Memorable Fancies #2834
“Deciding” / Memorable Fancies #2834
[“Today / Once again, nothing will be decided.” – Claire Malroux]
It was decided today that nothing would be decided today. But the decision that nothing would be decided today was challenged by those who wished to decide that something should be decided today. So we decided to do something. What we will do has not yet been decided.
“books Terence Kuch” on Amazon or Google will lead you to more…
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Le temps viendra
où, avec allégresse,
tu t’accueilleras toi-même, arrivant
devant ta propre porte, ton propre miroir,
et chacun sourira du bon accueil de l’autre
et diras : assieds-toi. Mange.
Tu aimeras de nouveau l’étranger qui était toi.
Donne du vin. Donne du pain. Redonne ton cœur
à lui-même, à l’étranger qui t’a aimé
toute ta vie, que tu as négligé
pour un autre, et qui te connaît par cœur.
Prends sur l’étagère les lettres d’amour,
les photos, les mots désespérés,
détache ton image du miroir.
Assieds-toi.
Régale-toi de ta vie.
Derek Walcott -Sea grapes- traduction de Claire Malroux,
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Out there, something we don’t know is closing,
A pulsing of transparencies that leave no prints
Without blood to guide us back to the swarm
Of tiny joys that used to give us
A taste of milk and honey
Each bee
Dazzles the woven pattern it destroys
Cavernous breaths awaken in the breast
Of summer, as does the sea when she surges
And hurls herself against the rocks and bites them
In the hours when the moon is lashing her
With Byronic suicide
Seeking naked
Beneath her fur the voluptuous wound
And burning his lips yet once again
On the cauldron of pain, inhaling the poison
Of entrails at the entrance of death.
Undertow by Claire Malroux (Translated by Paul Weinfield)
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(In spite of its resemblance to sepulchers
Opening the underworld to the light of day
This will never be a ground for excavations
Except perhaps after the galactic wars)
*
from "Elegy for a Young Garden" by Claire Malroux (translated by Marilyn Hacker)
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