Book record
The Voice of Things
Francis Ponge
Translated from French by Beth Archer
Francis Ponge’s The Voice of Things, translated by Beth Archer, gives English-language readers a title that might as well be the motto for Ponge’s entire practice. Things have voices, or perhaps the poet must lend them one by paying almost absurd attention. Ponge’s poetry and prose poems are famous for approaching objects with descriptive devotion until the object begins to reveal philosophical comedy, sensuality, and resistance. Archer’s translation has to keep that balance: exactness without stiffness, wit without reducing the work to cleverness. I would read this book as an apprenticeship in attention. It suggests that the world is not mute so much as unheard, and that poetry may begin when a door, oyster, table, or patch of mud is finally allowed to speak.
- Publisher
- McGraw-Hill Books
- Language
- French
- Country
- France