The Violet Blood of the Amethyst by Louis Calaferte and translated by John Taylor

This is poetry from France.

The Violet Blood of the Amethyst by Louis Calaferte translated by John Taylor is published by Chelsea Editions. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2013.0 and has the ISBN of 9.780988478749E12.

The Violet Blood of the Amethyst, by Louis Calaferte and translated by John Taylor from French, brings France French-language poetry into English through color, body, gemstone, and a decadent pressure between beauty and wound. 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 violet, blood, amethyst, and the body made strange by precious language, 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. The Violet Blood of the Amethyst belongs in the translated poetry library because it belongs as a French work of intensity, sensuality, and unstable radiance.

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.