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4.5
Every Minute Is First: Selected Late Poems
ByPublisher Description
The first full-length English translation of this celebrated French poet offers a penetrating and encompassing collection touching on death, domesticity, nature, language itself, and—always—the body. French literary icon Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932–2019) is known for an uncanny inhabitation of the concrete, finding whole worlds, even afterlives, in daily instances and spaces. “If I could seize a little nothing / a bit of nothing ,” she muses, “all things would come to me / those that dance / in its cloth.” The tiniest moments can be acts of utterance, defiance, communion, and immortality. Yet death does indeed appear in the everyday, though it’s more than a fact of existence. It is fiction as well, small cunning stories we create so we’re not merely waiting for “one sets / close by / the pot of orange flowers / the here and now / to block the view.” Here, the infinitesimal has no end; the smaller life gets, the deeper and more carefully Bancquart has us pause to notice its offerings. Though for her “the body” is the surest, most trustworthy way of knowing, the mystery of language is often referenced, and reverenced. And translator Jody Gladding, an award-winning poet herself, beautifully carries forward Bancquart’s lifetime of distinctive work. Every Minute Is First is lean, lucid yet philosophical poetry, reflecting visceral life and experiential thought, walking in the dark with a light, lighting words—or alighting on them—in their own incandescent power to make the long-lived journey meaningful.
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Meet readers like you in the Fable For You feed, designed to build bookish communitiesEvery Minute Is First: Selected Late Poems Reviews
4.5
“Banquart writes about the temporality of things and the frailty of the human body so beautifully. She does this while masterfully highlighting our desire for indistinct permanence.
Also, “I did not love my own birth but taking stock of my life, I did not find it lacking.” Is so bittersweet and really emphasizes the tone of the collection!”
“Her poetry forces you to see life and bodies in a different way. It awakens you to the senses and to the silent processes of the body that keeps us living. Very fascinating read that makes you look at ordinary things in a new way.”
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