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The Anchor's Long Chain
An experiment with the sonnet form by one of the foremost French poets of his generation.

Yves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, The Anchor’s Long Chain is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. Enriching Bonnefoy’s earlier work, the volume, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, also innovates, including an unprecedented sequence of nineteen sonnets. These sonnets combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful, and allusive, the poems are also autobiographical—but only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up life’s eternal questions with each new poem.

Longer, discursive pieces, including the title poem’s meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoy’s powerful, discursive poetry.
 
1121561547
The Anchor's Long Chain
An experiment with the sonnet form by one of the foremost French poets of his generation.

Yves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, The Anchor’s Long Chain is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. Enriching Bonnefoy’s earlier work, the volume, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, also innovates, including an unprecedented sequence of nineteen sonnets. These sonnets combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful, and allusive, the poems are also autobiographical—but only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up life’s eternal questions with each new poem.

Longer, discursive pieces, including the title poem’s meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoy’s powerful, discursive poetry.
 
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The Anchor's Long Chain

The Anchor's Long Chain

The Anchor's Long Chain

The Anchor's Long Chain

Overview

An experiment with the sonnet form by one of the foremost French poets of his generation.

Yves Bonnefoy has wowed the literary world for decades with his diffuse volumes. First published in France in 2008, The Anchor’s Long Chain is an indispensable addition to his oeuvre. Enriching Bonnefoy’s earlier work, the volume, translated by Beverley Bie Brahic, also innovates, including an unprecedented sequence of nineteen sonnets. These sonnets combine the strictness of the form with the freedom to vary line length and create evocative fragments. Compressed, emotionally powerful, and allusive, the poems are also autobiographical—but only in glimpses. Throughout, Bonnefoy conjures up life’s eternal questions with each new poem.

Longer, discursive pieces, including the title poem’s meditation on a prehistoric stone circle and a legend about a ship, are also part of this volume, as are a number of poetic prose pieces in which Bonnefoy, like several of his great French predecessors, excels. Long-time fans will find much to praise here, while newer readers will quickly find themselves under the spell of Bonnefoy’s powerful, discursive poetry.
 

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780857423023
Publisher: Seagull Books
Publication date: 10/15/2015
Series: The French List
Pages: 112
Product dimensions: 5.50(w) x 7.75(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Yves Bonnefoy (1923-2016) is recognized as the greatest French poet of the past fifty years. By the time of his death,  he had published eleven major collections of poetry in verse and prose, several books of tales, and numerous studies of literature and art.


Beverley Bie Brahic is the author of four poetry collections of poetry. She is an award-winning Canadian translator living in Paris and Palo Alto.
 

Table of Contents

Translator's Acknowledgements

The Disorder

The Anchor's Long Chain (Ales Stenar)

America

Child's Play

     Child's Play

     The Long Name

     The Trees

     Mouth Agape

     The Painter Whose Name is the Snow

The Divine Names

Passerby, Do You Want To Know?

Almost Nineteen Sonnets

    Tomb of L.-B. Alberti

    Tomb of Charles Baudelaire

    'Facesti come quei che va di notte...'

    The Mocking of Ceres

    The Tree on Rue Descartes

    The Invention of the Flute with Seven Pipes

    Tomb of Giacomo Leopardi

    Mahler, the Song of the Earth

    Tomb of Stéphane Mallarmé

    To the Author of 'The Night'

    San Giorgio Maggiore

    On Three Paintings by Poussin

    Ulysses Sails Past Ithaca

    San Biagio, at Montepulciano

    A God

    A Poet

    A Stone

    Tomb of Paul Verlaine

    One of Wordsworth's Childhood Memories

Remarks on the Horizon

On Leaving the Garden: A Variation

Another Variation
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Related Subjects

Poetry
European Poetry
French Poetry
Poetry
European Poetry
French Poetry

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