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CoCoPoPro: The “Light Sonnets” of Robert Melançon
Biblioasis has just released a stunning collection of poetry by Quebec poet, Robert Melançon (translated from the French by Judith Cowan) called For As Far As the Eye Can See. This collection of “light sonnets” (each has 12 lines instead of the traditional 14), recently received a starred review from Quill & Quire. The back cover of the book calls it “impressionistic, seasonal” and “a measured meditation on art, nature, and mutability.”
Biblioasis has just released a stunning collection of poetry by Quebec poet Robert Melançon (translated from the French by Judith Cowan) called For As Far As the Eye Can See. This collection of "light sonnets" (each has 12 lines instead of the traditional 14), recently received a starred review from the Quill & Quire. The back cover of the book calls it "impressionistic, seasonal" and "a measured meditation on art, nature, and mutability."
Q&A with Robert Melançon
What are you reading right now ?
Francis Parkman, The Jesuits in North America in the Seventeenth Century, a selection of poems by Borges in a French translation, La Proximité de la mer and, as always, Montaigne’s Essais are nearby.
Why should people read poetry?
If they like it, otherwise it’s pointless.
What’s one poem everybody should read?
People should not be compelled to read poetry.
Who are your favourite poets ?
Apollinaire, Cesare Pavese, Saint-Denys Garneau, Du Bellay, Borges, Wallace Stevens, Horace, Bashô … Among living poets: Eric Ormsby, Philippe Jaccottet. But this list can expand and change, because I read a lot of poetry.
What’s your guilty pleasure (when it comes to reading)?
Mystery novels.
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Robert Melançon is one of Quebec’s most original poets. He won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for his collection Blind Painting and shared the Governor General’s Award for Translation with Charlotte Melançon for their French version of A.M. Klein’s The Second Scroll. A long-time translator of Canadian poet Earle Birney, Melançon has been the poetry columnist for the Montreal newspaper Le Devoir and the Radio-Canada program En Toutes Lettres. He lives in North Hatley, in Quebec’s Eastern Townships.
