The Present Hour (Paperback)

A personal narrative surfaces in splinters and shards. Every word from Bonnefoy is multifaceted, like the fragmented figures seen from different angles in cubist painting—as befits a poet who has written extensively about artists such as goya, Picasso, braqueand gris. Throughout this moving collection, bonnefoy’s poems echo one another, returning to and elaborating upon key images, thoughts, feelings and people. Intriguing and enigmatic, this mixture of Sonnet sequences and prose poems, as Bonnefoy sees them, ‘dream texts’—moves from his meditations on friendship and friends like Jorge Luis Borges to a long, discursive work in free verse that is a self-reflection on his thought and process. These poems are the ultimate condensation of bonnefoy’s life and writing and are a valuable addition to the canon of his texts available in English.