COLLECTED FRENCH TRANSLATIONS: PROSE by JOHN ASHBERY

JEFF HARRISON Engages


Collected French Translations: Prose by John Ashbery  
(Farrar, Straus And Giroux, New York, 2014)

[each line below is an excerpt from John Ashbery's Collected French Translations: Prose]

modest fireflies
the lamps of home

what do you anticipate from
magnificent lanterns

lightning flashes
ashes and embers
cypresses and aspens

what zeal

colors slide
from
the seasons

flashes of diamond
cypresses and aspens
ashes and embers

magnificent lanterns
in all eyes
of the young mercenaries

cries, commands

what do you anticipate from
rule-omania

the last lightning flash
ashes and embers
cypresses and aspens

somber bullets
helmeted and plumed
heads are lost

two heads
always the same ones
Arthur and Bertrand
Arthur and Bertrand d'Oclade

bicephalous
warrior with
four hundred brains
pleasure is king
like a stranded whale

distant rockets
disgust me
I,
the last
ichthyosaurus

richness of the pear tree
suite of pear trees
210,000,000
pear trees
what do you anticipate from
the pear tree

****

Jeff Harrison has reviewed books for twelve issues of Galatea Resurrects. He has publications from Writers Forum, MAG Press, Persistencia Press, White Sky Books, and Furniture Press. He has e-books from Blazevox, xPress(ed), and Argotist Ebooks. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Xerography, Moria, NOON: journal of the short poem, Dusie, MiPOesias, EOAGH, EXPLORINGfictions, and elsewhere. You can read a couple of his poems here.  You are welcome to visit Antic View.