Customer Reviews

Paroles (French Edition)

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Jacques Prévert is able to communicate so much by saying so little. His poems are simple yet somehow manage to touch people on levels much deeper than one would think. To not have experienced Prévert is to have truly missed out on one of the truly gifted poets of this century.

Prevert's words leave you spinning as if you know where he is, what he looks at, what he's thinking. He describes his world in such a manner...that the reader has no choice. His Blood and Feathers volume is just as good.

Reading these poems - especially the longer poems - one can easily see why Ferlinghetti was attracted to these poems - there is a significant overlap of poetic sensibilities with those of the beatniks. The opposition of Prevert to war and religion is highly visible but generally not strident. Prevert's use of repetition, the ordinariness of his observations create a very accessible poetry.

As an example "Flowers and Wreathes" explores thought in the image of flower, the pull of beauty and pleasure over reality etc. The poem ends with the following use of repetition: "Because / In their head / Sprouts the sacred flower / The thin little filthy flower / The sick flower / The bitter flower ..."

The poet Jacques Prevert is a master at describing people's emotional life in simple language. His French is easy, the vocabulary familiar, the voice compelling. Read "Familiale", "Rue de Seine", "Dejeuner de Matin" to begin with.

These poems are so insightful not only to the human mind, but the heart and soul as well. Through the beautiful language and images that the poet chose to compile this masterpiece, we see our own feelings and desires. He points out the way things should be, the way things are, and the way we only sigh and wish they were different rather than changing them. A poet through and through, though you must read his work in his native tounge to understand the true beauty of of Prevert....