Juliology by Nicolas Pesquès and translated by Cole Swensen

This is poetry from France.

Juliology by Nicolas Pesquès translated by Cole Swensen is published by Counterpath Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78193399608E12.

Juliology, by Nicolas Pesquès and translated by Cole Swensen, feels like a book built from sustained attention rather than narrative momentum. Pesquès’s French poetry is often associated with serial perception, landscape, color, and the nearly impossible task of looking at the same subject until it changes. In English, Swensen is a particularly apt translator for that kind of patient, fragmentary intensity. I would read Juliology not as a book that explains itself, but as one that trains the eye to stay longer than habit allows. The title has the odd brightness of a season, a system, maybe even a private science. What matters is the permission it gives the reader to linger, to let an image become weather, then texture, then thought.

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.