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.