of Flies and Monkeys by Jacques Dupin

Poetry. Translated from the French by John Taylor. In the field of contemporary French poetry, Jacques Dupin (b. 1927) is a leading figure in a remarkable generation that also includes Yves Bonnefoy (b. 1923), Philippe Jaccottet (b. 1925), Pierre-Albert Jourdan (1924-1981), Andr du Bouchet (1924-2001), and Pierre Chappuis (b. 1930)–to mention only these five poets whose poetics and subject matter are remotely comparable. However, in contrast to Bonnefoy and Jaccottet especially, Dupin’s work has been little available in English. A single substantial volume, Selected Poems (Wake Forest University Press, 1992; translated by Paul Auster, Stephen Romer, and David Shapiro), collects early work, but none of the poet’s recent verse has appeared in English-speaking countries. Two pioneering anthologies dating back some forty years, respectively to 1970 and 1973–the poems from Gravir ( To Climb ) in the seventh issue of Cronopios (to which six translators contributed) and the Fits and Starts: Selected Poems of Jacques Dupin rendered by Auster for the second number in the Living Hand Editions series–provide more access to Dupin’s challenging oeuvre, yet several of those renderings were reprinted (sometimes with revisions) in the aforementioned Selected Poems . All told, these three initial gatherings have given a good look that can now be prolonged.