Like Bits of Wind

Of the key figures from a remarkable generation of French-language poets--Anne Perrier, Yves Bonnefoy, Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Andre du Bouchet, Jacques Reda, and Pierre-Albert Jourdan--who have poetically scrutinized what might be called "the nature of Nature," Pierre Chappuis (b. 1930) has remained unjustly absent in English except for scattered translations in print magazines, online reviews, and two anthologies. This book rights this situation by making available a generous representative selection of his prolific output, ranging from his pioneering collections of short prose, Blind Distance (1974), and of short verse, Full Margins (1997), through his most recent book of poetry, Cuts (2014). Long celebrated in his native Switzerland, Chappuis delves into questions related to landscape, phenomenology, the essence of life, and the role of the perceiver. He writes with contagious passion, both in his poetic prose (with its sinuous style and parenthetical inserts) and in his--in contrast--succinct, skeletal, haiku-like verse whose titles, like invigorating afterthoughts, are often placed at the end. Two styles fascinate in Chappuis' oeuvre: his stream-like prose with its eddies and rapids and his poetry that captures "bits of wind."