Yves Di Manno

I barely can wait to get my hands again, but for good, on a copy of this anthology. Ironically, I had it borrowed from a high-profile figure who otherwise claims regularly that French contemporary poetry is no match to the American poetry of the same period. This kind of generalizing comparison drives me crazy, because it totally does injustice to the efforts of poets who were eclipsed a great deal by the overwhelming reputation of pre-WW2 poets and then the massive reputation of French theory.

Postwar and contemporary French poetry seems therefore to be criminally underrated and underappreciated, and if you still believe that after reading "Un nouveau monde", then you're just living in a different paradigm. First of all, because the anthology goes back several years before 1960 in order to cover towering figures such as Gherasim Luca, some of the best experimental poetry ever written is in here. Which also means, unfortunately to some readers, that the selection tends to be biased towards the experimental poets, the central poetic scene, the poets of publishing houses such as especially Gallimard itself.

However, a remarkable feature for an anthology assembled by two poets, this anthology covers pretty diverse ground and, without sacrificing coherence, spotlights sets of more independent voices, and not just authors who are associated with one group or movement. Perhaps suspiciously so, the poetic landscape of this huge timeframe is very neatly organized, which is a blessing for a reader like me who was looking forward to understand what has been truly going on in France since the '70s, the last time when Romanians had a proper anthology of contemporary French poetry.

Judging from some reviews glimpsed on French poetry sites, I might be offended too by some shortcomings of this anthology, but since I'm not an insider of French poetry, I am more than content for now with this.… (més)