You are the Business by Caroline Dubois and translated by Cole Swensen

This is poetry from France.

You are the Business by Caroline Dubois translated by Cole Swensen is published by Burning Deck Books. This is a Book originally written in French. This was published in 2008.0 and has the ISBN of 9.781886224865E12.

You are the Business, by Caroline Dubois and translated by Cole Swensen from French, brings France French-language poetry into English through business, address, and the odd intimacy of a title that sounds both commercial and personal. 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 labor, exchange, selfhood, and the comedy of being spoken to in the language of use, 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. You are the Business belongs in the translated poetry library because it brings a sharper contemporary French feminist and linguistic intelligence to the shelf.

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.