Misty Thule by Adolphe Retté and translated by Brian Stableford

This is poetry from France.

Misty Thule by Adolphe Retté translated by Brian Stableford is published by Snuggly Books. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781943813704E12.

Misty Thule, by Adolphe Retté and translated by Brian Stableford, points toward a misted, symbolist, perhaps occult corner of French literary atmosphere. Retté belongs to an era in which poetry and prose often approached landscape as spiritual weather, not mere scenery. The title’s “Thule” already invokes remoteness, myth, northern edge, and a kind of geographic imagination that is more psychic than cartographic. I would read this book less for direct statement than for mood: fog, distance, devotion, and the strange romance of places that may be partly invented by longing. Stableford’s translation gives English-language readers access to a writer whose work sits outside the most obvious French canon, which is part of its usefulness here. Some books are valuable because they expand the map’s shadowed corners.

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.