Ponge, Pastures, Prairies by Philippe Jaccottet and translated by John Taylor

This is poetry from Switzerland.

Ponge, Pastures, Prairies by Philippe Jaccottet translated by John Taylor is published by Black Square Editions. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2021.0 and has the ISBN of 9.78097914958E12.

Ponge, Pastures, Prairies, by Philippe Jaccottet and translated by John Taylor from French, brings Switzerland French-language poetry into English through pastures, prairies, and Jaccottet thinking near Ponge’s attention to things. The metadata gives the reader a doorway, but the real value is what happens once the poem starts making its own weather. I would read it for grass, prose, object, and the patient strangeness of looking long at the ordinary, not as a fixed lesson about a country or period. The best entry point is still the poem itself: the line that catches, the image that refuses to explain itself, the feeling that arrives before paraphrase. Ponge, Pastures, Prairies belongs in the translated poetry library because it gives the library a meditative field where landscape and object-study meet.

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.