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A Matter of Blue » (Bilingual)

Book cover image of A Matter of Blue by Jean-Michel Maulpoix

Authors: Jean-Michel Maulpoix, Dawn Cornelio
ISBN-13: 9781929918676, ISBN-10: 1929918674
Format: Paperback
Publisher: BOA Editions, Ltd.
Date Published: July 2005
Edition: Bilingual

Author Biography: Jean-Michel Maulpoix

Jean-Michel Maulpoix was born November 11, 1952 in Montbeliard, France. He is the author of twenty-five poetry collections, and thirteen volumes of essay and criticism. He is director of the quarterly literary journal Le Nouveau Recueil and Professor of Modern and Contemporary Poetry at the University Parix X-Nantere. Dawn Cornelio received her PhD in French from University of Connecticut. Her thesis was based on translating the poetry of Jean-Michel Maulpoix. Since 2002 she has been assistant professor of French Studies at University of Guelph (Ontario). Her translations have appeared in various literary journals.

Book Synopsis

Prose poems and blank verse poems encompassing melancholy, nostaligia and hope with formal and thematic symmetry.

	We know love exists through hearsay	21
	The sea within us tries out sentences	23
	Sometimes one of us stands near the sea	25
	On nice days, the open sea shimmers	27
	Blue's recovery after the downpour ...	29
	"There were some unusual clouds that year"	31
	"The sky's substance is strangely tender"	33
	Dark-eyed women have a blue gaze	35
	Do not think all this blue is without pain	37
	In summer, in the evening ...	41
	They move about	43
	Alive, they proceed hands first	45
	The sea is a picture book	47
	They look at the blue, but will never know how to say it	49
	They are sometimes seen beneath lampposts	51
	He's heading out to sea is what they say of someone embarking on a journey ...	53
	They leave their islands to go to sea	55
	He picks up a pen or a paintbrush	57
	Orthodoxy of blue	61
	For centuries, she's been beating	63
	The sea is the gods' vacancy	65
	Sometimes, it's only the light sound of forks against earthenware	67
	Soon there was nothing left of belief but the memory of its color	69
	Nothing remains but an empty gesture resembling prayer	71
	Sometimes words hurry	73
	Soul	75
	There	77
	Blue makes no noise	81
	All this blue is not the same ink	83
	We don't know : we don't understand	85
	Blue increases and reproduces on the debris of our life	87
	The blue of the sky can do without our help	89
	Like a cloth, the sky soaks	91
	The blue around here blurs when night falls	93
	There is nothing that can be locked up in a book	95
	This blue belongs to no one	97
	The sea's masts are illusory	101
	Bugles, horses of the deep, mouth of the sea!	103
	With my dulcimers, my trumpet and my timpani	105
	Here we strike the iron of the soul	107
	The man swimming there is an iodine and cobalt poem	109
	Unending narration of the open sea	111
	So much light in tears	113
	From all over, she flows	115
	A horizon of slate and slag	117
	You there, the tiny body of a transfixed man ...	121
	You're soaking in dreams, you lose your foothold in yourself	123
	White swimmer in the sea's arms	125
	Use this blue to compose	127
	Don't balk at the expense	129
	You have blue at your fingertips	131
	You burn with your sentences	133
	And you there, smeared with cherries?	135
	You were the bluest in your dress	137
	Nine days at sea as in a church	141
	This blue sticks to my lips	143
	Start from nothing, emphasize this nothing	145
	I've been putting words next to words for a long time	147
	In language, I contemplate the blue of the sky	149
	For me, writing is about departing	151
	I cannot survive in the impossible	153
	Late in the autumn, when the rain falls with a soft noise ...	155
	Everything I've loved, everything I've lost ...	157
	Death falls asleep right against the sea	161
	Aluminum-colored fish wander in the sea's baggage holds	163
	Along the cliffs and beaches, the sea looks after our remains	165
	In the evening when it pulls back to leave all the room to darkness ...	167
	The edge of the world is quite near ...	169
	Broken old women move about all evening ...	171
	A heart of crushed glass	173
	What kind of snow continuously falls ...	175
	Does the sky enjoy hearing this faint sound of a creaking heart?	177
	Emma liked blue	181
	Her dresses must be mentioned	183
	When she loosens her dress, the man is silent	185
	No one can express her desire	187
	If you call her, she doesn't come	189
	She sometimes remembers her childhood	191
	So many days have passed ...	193
	Some say she once dreamed of evaporating	195
	Loves is what she calls these departing sailors and sailboats on the open sea ...	197

Subjects

Poetry

French Poetry

French poetry -> 20th century
Fiction Books & Literature