Preludes and fugues by Emmanuel Moses and translated by Marilyn Hacker

This is poetry from France.

Preludes and fugues by Emmanuel Moses translated by Marilyn Hacker is published by Oberlin College Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2016.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780932440938E12.

Preludes and fugues, by Emmanuel Moses and translated by Marilyn Hacker, borrows its title from musical architecture, and that feels like the right way to enter it. A prelude begins, tests a key, opens a room; a fugue repeats, transforms, and lets voices chase one another through structure. Moses’s French poetry often moves between memory, exile, Jewish history, and European cultural inheritance, while Hacker’s translation brings formal intelligence and musical ear to the English. I would read this book as a set of lyric compositions, not merely poems arranged in sequence. The title suggests that feeling may arrive through pattern, variation, and return. It is a good reminder that poetry can think musically, letting grief and memory become counterpoint rather than explanation.

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.