The Anchor’s Long Chain

Yves Bonnefoy

Translated by Beverly Bie Brahic

 

5.5 x 7.75 inches, 112pp. October 2015

ISBN : 9780857423023

Rs  450.00 (HB)
$21.00 (HB)
£14.50 (HB)

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First published in France in 2008, The Anchor’s Long Chain is an indispensable addition to Yves Bonnefoy's oeuvre. Enriching his earlier work, the volume includes an unprecedented sequence of 19 sonnets which combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful and allusive, the poems are also autobiographical—but only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up life’s eternal questions with each new poem.

Longer, discursive pieces, including the title poem’s meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoy’s powerful, discursive poetry.

Yves Bonnefoy was born in Tours, France, in 1923. Poet, critic and professor emeritus of comparative poetics at Collège de France, Paris, he has received several major international awards for his work, including the Prix mondial Cino Del Duca (1995) and the Franz Kakfa Prize (2005). In addition to poetry and literary criticism, he has published numerous works on art history and translated into French several of Shakespeare’s plays.

 

 

Beverley Bie Brahic is a Canadian poet and translator. She has published two collections of poetry, and translations of French writers, including Guillame Apollinaire, Francis Ponge and Hélène Cixous.

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