Poetry
Comme eau retenue
Not translated into English
Jean-Guy Pilon · 1969
Synopsis
The volume brings together five collections published from 1954 to 1963, from Les Cloîtres de l'été, prefaced by René Char, to Pour saluer une ville. It traces the passage from a Romantic inspiration to a simpler, more concise writing, in which love poetry mingles with attention to nature. The country gradually takes first place: “Toutes les rivières de ce pays / Participent d'une seule révélation de montagne”, and, in Recours au pays, love of the land is bound up with the word that links men.
Context
The book appeared from L'Hexagone in 1969, subtitled “poèmes, 1954-1963”, with the foreword given fifteen years earlier to the first collection. Gilles Marcotte read in it, in Études françaises, the slow unfolding of a central theme of contemporary poetry, and compared this work to a quiet stream. The same year, its author published Saisons pour la continuelle in Paris, with Seghers. The 1985 paperback edition extends the selection to poems written up to 1977.
Who it is for
A retrospective of about two hundred pages, to be read in order so as to follow a style that grows simpler from one collection to the next.
Prizes and reception
Governor General's Award for the year 1969 and France-Canada Prize; its author also received, the same year, the Louise-Labé Prize.
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The pages consulted to check this page.