Quand on vient d'un monde d'Idées, la surprise est énorme / When One Comes from a World of Ideas, Vast Is the Surprise

N. Lombardi Jr. The Plain of Jars Roundfire Books Dorothy Kozeny goes halfway across the world in the search for truth, from Ohio to Laos, to uncover what the Air Force tried to hide about her dead son. She enlists the help of a local guide and treks deep into the mountains and villages of Laos. Heartfelt, rewarding, and at times hilarious, The Plain of Jars is a compelling novel. Pascale Kramer The Child Tamsin Black, tr. Bellevue Literary Press The Child is a raw look at the cycles of decay that stalk our lives—the violent deterioration of a low-income neighborhood, the physical degradation of a cancer-wracked body—and the unexpected sources of hope that keep us going. Simone and Claude have resigned themselves to quiet despair when a young boy arrives and brings renewed life to their home. Nota Bene the stars of the divine (“Illumined Night”) to find a center of what poetry is: earthly and spiritual. Aimee Fagent San Diego, California Jean-Paul Michel. Quand on vient d’un monde d’Idées, la surprise est énorme / When One Comes from a World of Ideas, Vast Is the Surprise . . . Michael Bishop, tr. Bedford, Nova Scotia. VVV / William Blake & Co. 2013. isbn 9782841032051 Set in free form, Jean-Paul Michel’s idealistic and analytical poetry shows him struggling with the confrontation between intellect and life. The poet attempts to answer a question that is fundamentally important to Western dualism: how to reconcile the highest, purest ideals with the messy candor of daily life. Beauty and poetic mystery live somewhere between these extremes, yet they remain elusive. In Michel’s poetry, they are found in a coded language rooted in the tension between an ever-changing original picture and its immobile image. This disconnect is reflected in the carefully constructed de-composition of the poems and in the unusual caesurae of certain words. To translate this disconcerting and difficult work takes a translator whose style can faithfully mirror the poet’s. Michael Bishop, Michel’s lifelong translator, has the exact degree of literalness with a British charm that softens the violent austerity of Michel’s thought. The editors’ choice of placing the French and the English texts sequentially, instead of side by side, emphasizes the disconnects present in the French version. From the poem “Du diaphragme à la barri ère des dents . . .” (From diaphragm to the teeth’s gate . . .): “Décide le Dieu du jour à venir. / Va / avec confiance à / ce qui vient. S’il est dit / que l’heure est bonne un vent / chassera les nuages. / Si l’heure est mauvaise, médite. Fais silence.” (Choose the coming day’s God. / Go / with confidence towards that / which is coming. Should a good hour / be announced, a breeze / will chase the clouds away. / Should the hour be bad, meditate and keep silent.) The founder and publisher of William Blake & Co. Editions located in Bordeaux, a child of 1968 whose masters include Hölderlin, Nietzsche, and Bataille, Michel has been active on the French literary scene since the early 1970s. To date, he has published twenty-three volumes of poetry. His latest distinction was the 2013 Grand Prix Léopold Senghor de Poésie awarded by the Paris-based Cénacle de Poésie, Arts, et Lettres. Alice-Catherine Carls University of Tennessee at Martin Nenad Milošević. Vode i Vetrovi. Novi Sad. Umetničko društvo Vujica Rešin Tucić. 2012 (rel. 2013). isbn 9788689457001 In his seventh collection of poems, Vode i Vetrovi (Waters and the winds), Serbian poet Nenad Milošević shows his poetic maturity through the utilization of themes underscored by a feeling of high anxiety—the passage of time and the change that comes with the flow of waters. The book has four named sections: “Waters and Winds,” “Hotel Room on the Moon,” “House for Sale,” and “What Remained in the Last Century.” He begins with a disaster, “The Hundred Year Level Water” of the Sava River, when the speaker and his friend drag their boat to a houseboat to get drunk. By toasting the past, the friends vow to remember January–February 2014 • 71

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