Jacques Dupin, selected poems

In this volume, Paul Auster has selected prose poems and lyrics from five volumes of Dupin’s poetry published over a quarter-century. Sharing affinities and landscapes with Reverdy, Char, and Ponge, Dupin has developed, nevertheless, a poetry so distinctive and innovative to the American ear and eye that it could, especially with this selection, tincture the reading and writing of poetry in the United States. Eschewing theory, he creates speculations that enact the self’s effacement, while sustaining the human in brilliant imagery and shadowy narrative. In her introduction to these poems, Mary Ann Caws writes, “Nothing is permitted a reach higher than the human. The very precariousness of living informs this deeply moving poetics, quiet and always at risk.”