I’ve been reading with immense pleasure a translation of the great French poet Guillevic’s Art Poétique (scroll down for the publisher’s description), brought over into crisp English by Maureen Smith. As the cover description says, this book “is a highly personal account of the process and experience of writing poetry,” which makes it sound like a dry business. It isn’t. Guillevic’s poems amount to a subtle and varied meditation on the nature of poetry and the nature of the poet. He is sometimes tentative, sometimes assertive, and never doctrinaire.Read More