The Nothing Bird ― Selected Poems

Pierre Peuchmaurd (1948-2009) was born in Paris, and became fascinated with surrealism in his teenage years. Though his poetry came to transcend the boundaries of surrealist work--by being both more lyrical and inhabited by more substantial narratives--he never forgot the movement and the artists that first inspired him. This is the first collection of his work in English. “The Nothing Bird is an exemplar of the art of translation at its best. E. C. Belli has translated the exquisitely lyric, surrealist poems of the late Pierre Peuchmaurd into equally exquisite poems in English. These translations sing. From first page to last, I savored reading this volume, which includes a selection of poems written over three decades of Peuchmaurd's career. With generosity of mind and fine erudition, E. C. Belli has placed her impressive gifts as a linguist and poet in the service of translating a poet whose work feels necessary for our souls." — Cynthia Hogue "E. C. Belli's transfixing translations of Pierre Peuchmaurd make it possible not just to read of the night's elbows 'on the table of the day' but to be at that table, to experience the Peuchmaurdian madness of night's bald child hatching a bald chicken. These are gorgeous, glorious translations of a poet who knows how 'everything roars, and everything falls silent.'" — Idra Novey