The hero by Hélène Sanguinetti and translated by Ann Cefola

This is poetry from France.

The hero by Hélène Sanguinetti translated by Ann Cefola is published by Chax Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2018.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781946104144E12.

The Hero, by Hélène Sanguinetti and translated by Ann Cefola, takes up one of literature’s oldest figures and immediately makes me suspicious in a productive way. Who gets called a hero? What violence hides inside that word? What tenderness or absurdity survives it? Sanguinetti’s French poetry is known for intensity, bodily imagination, and a fierce lyric strangeness, and this title gives her a mythic figure to worry, fracture, or remake. Cefola’s translation brings that energy into English without needing to make it polite. I would read The Hero for its pressure against inherited grandeur. The book likely asks whether the heroic can still exist after the body, the mother, the wound, and the ordinary terror of being alive have had their say.

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.