The poems of A.O. Barnabooth by Valéry Larbaud and translated by Bill Zavatsky

This is poetry from France.

The poems of A.O. Barnabooth by Valéry Larbaud translated by Bill Zavatsky is published by Black Widow Press. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780979513794E12.

The poems of A.O. Barnabooth, by Valéry Larbaud and translated by Bill Zavatsky, offers English readers a chance to enter one of French modernism’s more playful acts of literary self-invention. Barnabooth is not simply a poet but a persona, a cosmopolitan mask through which Larbaud can explore travel, wealth, adolescence, and the performance of being modern. Zavatsky’s translation carries that fictional lyric life into English. I would read this book for its wit and mobility, the sense of poetry as passport, disguise, diary, and stage. The pleasure is not only in what the poems say, but in the strangeness of their invented speaker. Sometimes a mask lets a poet become more honest by becoming someone else.

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.