Pressestimmen
"Cocteau is better known in America as filmmaker and playwright than poet. This generous collection featuring both French originals and their English translation should help rectify that. Translator Reed, himself a poet of note, has permitted himself the latitude to betray literary meaning when necessary to capture the elusive strains of Cocteau's experimentation. Reed is particularly adept at transmitting the clashing images...that are Cocteau's specially. Cocteau is rich and wild, driving metaphors like rangy horses. Nicely counter-pointing his texts in this edition are evocative drawings by David Austen". -- Booklist.
Kurzbeschreibung
Film-maker, novelist, artist, playwright, entrepreneur, Jean Cocteau (1889-1963) regarded himself above all as a poet. No matter how diverse or prolific his creativity, he saw poetry as central to his vision of all the arts. And it was as a poet that he began his career, publishing "Le Cap de Bonne-Esperance" in 1919, and it was in this vocation that he published "Le Requiem" in 1962, shortly before his death. While Cocteau's prose has found sympathetic translators, no substantial collection of his poetry exists in English. Drawing on poems from all stages of Cocteau's life, Jeremy Reed has rectified this deficiency by translating a generous selection of some of Cocteau's most durable poems.
