Atlas inutilis by Hervé Le Tellier and translated by Cole Swensen, Cole Swenson

This is poetry from France.

Atlas inutilis by Hervé Le Tellier translated by Cole Swensen, Cole Swenson is published by BSE (Black Square Editions). This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780986005091E12.

Atlas inutilis, by Hervé Le Tellier and translated by Cole Swensen, has a title that makes uselessness sound suspiciously useful. An atlas promises orientation, but an inutilis atlas may map what cannot be navigated in any ordinary sense. Le Tellier is associated with playful, formally alert writing, and Swensen is a translator especially skilled at carrying French experiment into supple English. I would read this book for its cartographic mischief: the poem as map, false map, anti-map, or route toward the pleasure of losing one’s bearings. The title suggests a work less interested in destination than in the strange intelligence of arrangement. Sometimes a useless map is exactly what poetry needs: a way to wander without pretending to master the world.

If you’d like to see international poetry continue and gain traction, consider requesting this work from your local library, or purchasing it from places like Open Books (a poetry only bookstore), Asterism Books (an independent press distributor), or bookshop.org to connect you with your local bookstores.

Check out more of the always in-progress translated poetry index here.