Selected Poems

This keen-sighted wanderer of Europe in confusion taps ancient cultures around the world to trace the warp and woof in the fabric of reality. Yet Auxem廨y also turns to his immediate American forebears to understand our human thirst and the how and why of trans-/substantiations, tapping Olson's poetic propulsion, Creeley's sinuous syllabic dance, and Pound's reinvention of history as one might cook a dish. Nathaniel Tarn's energetic translation, sensitive to shadings and nuance of sound and sense, captures both the echoes of Auxem廨y's masters and the poet's own distinctive voice. --Tess Lewis

What an encounter! Tarn, a poet brought up in his mother's French and who subsequently, as a poet/anthropologist, migrated through numerous cultures and literary milieux to earn his place as one of the last living elders of American modernist poetry, here meets Auxem廨y, a younger French-born poet whose global travels and mastery of divers languages have also taken him far from his native tongue in order, like H闤derlin or Olson, to rediscover a transfigured sense of the local. Both Tarn and Auxem廨y, having undergone what Antoine Berman calls L'夗reuve de 彋ranger--that is the trial of the foreign--here greet each other from amid their mutual histories of translation, learning to speak a common tongue.--Richard Sieburth

For the first time in English--an expansive collection of the poetry of Jean-Paul Auxem廨y, representing over three decades of work inspired by muses ancient and modern. Tarn's careful translations capture Auxem廨y's virtuosic style, paying homage to a poet whose own translation repertoire includes Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, and Charles Olson.

poetry.