The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry [Paperback]

Paul Auster (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Language Notes

Text: English, French

Product Details

• Paperback: 688 pages
• Publisher: Vintage; Vintage books ed edition (January 12, 1984)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0394717481
• ISBN-13: 978-0394717487
• Product Dimensions: 6.2 x 1.4 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #283,164 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Invaluable, February 1, 2001

By 

"luxetveritas" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry (Paperback)

Vintage, the publisher, should feel deep, dark, spooky shame for letting this remarkable book go out of print. The reviewer below is misguided in his or her belief that there are more than a few clunkers among the translations: hogwash. Wilbur's rendition of "Le Pont Mirabeau" is an exceptionally musical version of an exceptionally musical poem, and approximates beautifully the Whistleresque mood. To critique Pound's translation is like saying "Damn the Moon, it's full of holes." Sure, but its the Moon. On the whole, this book gets it right, offering an interesting selection of poets and translators (just as there is more than one kind of poet, so too are there different, and equally valid, forms of translation). Seek it out till Bertlesman come to their multinational senses.

6 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars GREAT TO HAVE IT, BUT OO-LA-LA! SOME POOR TRANSLATIONS!, August 15, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Random House Book of 20th Century French Poetry (Paperback)

Paul Auster chose his poems well, and the bilingual presentation, format, and ordering of the poets are all clear and easy to follow. It's wonderful to have this access to modern French poetry in English. There are two problems, however: First, there are hardly any women poets (I think 1 out of 50 - the unrelenting masculine viewpoint gets tedious, like being trapped in a cigar-smoke-filled men's room). And second, some of the translations are graceless and inaccurate. Mr. Auster's secondary goal was to choose among already-existing translations by American and British poets. Many of these ruin the mood, parallelisms and imagery of the poems. For instance, Apollinaire's "Mirabeau Bridge" is tortured into English rhyme, destroying all subtlety. Milosz's "November Symphony" has had a meaningless name change to "Strophes" by Ezra Pound, who, if he was going to re-name it, should have called it "Truncations", since he seems to have gotten tired and omitted the last third of the poem. All in all, though, I'm very pleased to have it.