"A penetrating and encompassing English-language translation from the celebrated French poet touching on death, domesticity, nature, language itself, and-always-the body.
French literary icon Marie-Claire Bancquart (19322019) is known for an uncanny inhabitation of the concrete, finding whole worlds, even afterlives, in daily instances and spaces. ""If I could seize a little nothing / a bit of nothing,"" she muses, ""all things would come to me / those that dance / in its cloth."" The tiniest moments can be acts of utterance, defiance, communion, and immortality. Yet death does indeed appear in the everyday, though it's more than a fact of existence. It is fiction as well, small cunning stories we create so we're not merely waiting for it: ""one sets / close by / the pot of orange flowers / the here and now / to block the view.""
Here, the infinitesimal has no end; the smaller life gets, the deeper and more carefully Bancquart has us pause to notice its offerings. Though for her ""the body"" is the surest, most trustworthy way of knowing, the mystery of language is often referenced, and reverenced. And translator Jody Gladding, an award-winning poet herself, beautifully carries forward Bancquart's lifetime of distinctive work. Every Minute Is First is lean, lucid yet philosophical poetry, reflecting visceral life and experiential thought, walking in the dark with a light, lighting words-or alighting on them-in their own incandescent power to make the long-lived journey meaningful."
By:
Marie-Claire Bancquart
Translated by:
Jody Gladding
Imprint: Milkweed Editions
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 215mm,
Width: 139mm,
ISBN: 9781639550906
ISBN 10: 1639550909
Pages: 128
Publication Date: 17 July 2024
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
Preface Other In On the Brink of Life Yes, the Interval Earth Out of Scale Forward Falters, Wears Out Grass Between the Lips Alone This Dark Tree Red-Hot In the woods leaves If we speak in fables, it’s just After having followed the formidable path, I will be I hang my life What is this face What drives you Black the water The throat awakens full of dirt When evening comes Cut the round loaf, villager Hearing September, eleven o’clock in the morning, without you Replanting the hellebore I desire you in our time Worried about Twenty or thirty centuries ago It’s sad Scent of linden trees At day’s end things join up Under the curses of birds —What did you say? Lost empires Writing Little breaths, the moments of our lives Our presence Our lungs breathe The decorum of words The patient in the recovery room The poor stone I’m holding Very dark matter At that time, to represent an absurdity or strong emotion Yes, heavy, the blood The mirror retains Into my spinal column To be traversed Tremble As for me, I inhabited a large bird How many trees in the course of this journey XXX That trembling I’m endlessly obsessed with one desire Briefly Each thing according to On window panes, curtains, books, camp the invisible . . . At the border of the inexorable No, I will not swallow If I could seize a little nothing Yes, I sank I came back to life. Oh, monorail world, transport me Don’t descend There are bruised words Strange, the objects in certain categories You know what it means Can we Inhale the strong odor of the streets We don’t want Against my cheek “See you shortly, in the unknown” To the heights of incandescence When do you want to divorce yourself When I think of you, I transform into tree-lined paths I don’t believe in heaven To approach a word Every minute is first, when the garden As though Return the love of the least things For the music of stones —And nevertheless I pressed against your face my own You’ve got a run in your peritoneum Sitting in the park Collect a seed We’re always holding the end of the world, no matter where A very ripe apricot gets smashed Pain: explosion, spasms What have you done, if not I’m writing a letter to I don’t know whom In my body there’s Holes in the bark Every morning I form Don’t wake me sleeper Small noise, rain Following the edge of an island . . . But so far off, so unrealized, the peace I’m seeking New world End-of-life accompanist It’s possible/impossible With your chagrin, you meant to stay alone It’s as if there were an earth above . . . But what if it were absurd, our turmoil Sick Then a scene imposes itself upon you, impossibly banal: a man She doesn’t have a name How I searched for you, life Why this feeling of exile A very large white pigeon These are my “Sorrows” I’m writing So soft, the gray of the sky sometimes occupied by white Nevertheless love As if the earth In a little while, I will no longer be, you will no longer be Notes
Marie-Claire Bancquart (19322019) is the author of Every Minute Is First and more than thirty other collections of poetry and several novels. In her lifetime she was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Prix Supervielle, the Prix Max Jacob, and the Prix Robert Ganzo. Bancquart was also president of the French arts council La Maison de la Posie and a professor emerita of the Universit Paris-Sorbonne, where she taught French literature until her retirement in 1994. She lived in Paris for most of her life with her husband, Alain Bancquart, a musician and composer. Jody Gladding is a poet and translator with five books of poems and forty translations from French by authors such as Roland Barthes, Jean Giono, Julia Kristeva, and Pierre Michon. She has published three previous books with Milkweed Editions, including her own poetry in the books Rooms and Their Airs and Translations from Bark Beetle as well as a translation of Genevive Damas's novel If You Cross the River, which was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. She has won the Whiting Award, Yale Younger Poets Award, and numerous others for her poetry and was a finalist for the 2004 French-American Foundation Translation Prize with Jean Giono's The Serpent of Stars. Gladding has taught in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and has lived in France for extended periods over the last twenty-five years. Her most recent poetry collection is I entered without words. She lives and works in East Calais, Vermont.
Reviews for Every Minute Is First: Poems
"Praise for Marie-Claire Bancquart « Marie-Claire Bancquart est incontournable pour le lecteur cherchant ce qu'il s'estpassé de singulier dans la poésie française des quarante dernière années. »En attendant Nadeau""Marie-Claire Bancquart is inescapable for readers seeking out the most remarkable developments in French poetry over the past forty years.« Un poème de vie autant qu'une pensée majeure. »France Culture""As much a poem of a life as powerful thought."""
