King of a hundred horsemen by Marie Étienne and translated by Marilyn Hacker

This is poetry from France.

King of a hundred horsemen by Marie Étienne translated by Marilyn Hacker is published by Hacker Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780374181185E12.

King of a hundred horsemen, by Marie Étienne and translated by Marilyn Hacker, carries a title that sounds half medieval pageant, half dream of authority. Étienne’s French poetry often moves through memory, theater, travel, and intimate address, and Hacker’s translation gives the work a sharp lyric intelligence in English. I would not approach this as a simple narrative of royalty or command. Better to let the title open into questions of procession, desire, spectacle, and the strange power language grants to figures who may never fully arrive. There is pleasure here in the ceremonial surface, but also in the quieter human pressure beneath it. The book feels useful for readers interested in French poetry that can be both worldly and inward, elegant and unsettled.

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.