Adieu Paris — Phinal Photos

by Pierre Joris · July 2, 2007

& here the last snapshots from the Marché de la Poésie:

Castor Astral publisher & recent Janis Joplin French bio-book author Jean-Yves Reuzeau

Eric Sarner — poet, docu-film maker, translator (most recently my ALJIBAR) — with his grandson

Jean-Pierre Faye: poet, editor (CHANGE magazine, one of the essential 70ies French magazines) & philosopher (his Langages Totalitaires, one of the great linguistic & cultural analyses of the rise of fascistic language in Germany, is still in dire need of an English translation — as is most of his poetry). Here at a book-signing table.

Abdelwahab Meddeb, the Tunisian poet & essayist, as we sit on the terrace of the Café de la Mairie, discussing the sad fact that his superb book-length essay The Malady of Islam (translated by Charlotte Mandell Kelly & myself) never got any attention in the US while it was a major success almost everywhere else in the world.

& finally, Cole Swensen, in animated discussion — which was the mode we were all in for the three days of the 2007 mouture of the Marché de la poésie…

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Paul says:

July 3, 2007 at 9:35 am

Well considering the tumult that is engulfing Islam I understand why M. Meddeb may not have a huge reception in the USA. If the Frensh like him c’est la vie.

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Pierre Joris says:

July 3, 2007 at 1:01 pm

And it is exactly that kind of response that is the problem with cocksure gringos. If you want to give an informed comment, please read the book first.

Reply
Paul says:

July 4, 2007 at 6:20 pm

What makes you think that I have not read the book sir? As to your aspersion,I reject it categorically! I am Eurasian.

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Pierre Joris, born in Strasbourg, France in 1946, was raised in Luxembourg. Since age 18, he has moved between Europe, the Maghreb & the US & holds both Luxembourg & American citizenship. He has published over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies — most recently Interglacial Narrows (Poems 1915-2021) & Always the Many, Never the One: Conversations In-between, with Florent Toniello, both from Contra Mundum Press. In 2020 his two final Paul Celan translations came out: Microliths They Are, Little Stones (Posthumous prose, from CMP) & The Collected Earlier Poetry (FSG). Forthcoming are: Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” (Small Orange Import, 2023) & Diwan of Exiles: A Pierre Joris Reader (edited with Ariel Reznikoff, 2024). For a full list see the right column on this blog.

In 2011 Litteraria Pragensia, Charles University, Prague, published Pierre Joris: Cartographies of the In-between, edited by Peter Cockelbergh, with essays on Joris’ work by, among others, Mohammed Bennis, Charles Bernstein, Nicole Brossard, Clayton Eshleman, Allen Fisher, Christine Hume, Robert Kelly, Abdelwahab Meddeb, Jennifer Moxley, Jean Portante, Carrie Noland, Alice Notley, Marjorie Perloff & Nicole Peyrafitte (2011).

Other work includes the CD Routes, not Roots (with Munir Beken, oud; Mike Bisio, bass; Ben Chadabe, percussion; Mitch Elrod, guitar; Ta’wil Productions). With Jerome Rothenberg he edited Poems for the Millennium, vol. 1 & 2: The University of California Book of Modern & Postmodern Poetry, and with Habib. Tengour Poems for the Millennium, vol. 3: The University of California Book of North African Literature.

When not on the road, he lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, with his wife, multimedia praticienne Nicole Peyrafitte. A volume of their collaborative work, to be called Domopoetics, will be published in the near future.