Azure: Poems and Selections from the ＂Livre＂

A vibrant new translation of a modernist poet

During his lifetime, Stéphane Mallarmé (1842 - 1898) was recognized as one of the greatest living French poets. He wrote extensively on themes of reality and his desire to turn away from it, marrying form and content in revolutionary ways that departed drastically from the more tightly controlled French tradition. Despite his status as one of the first modernists, much of Mallarmé’s radicalism has been lost in translation. Finally, in this new collection by Blake Bronson-Bartlett and Robert Fernandez, the magic and mastery of form and diction, so striking in Mallarmé’s French verse, comes to life in English. Drawing from Poésies (1899), Un coup de dés (A Cast of Dice), and the ＂Livre＂ (the ＂Book＂--the overarching conceptual work left unfinished at the death of the poet), this collection captures Mallarmé’s true linguistic brilliance, bringing the poems into our current history while retaining the music, playfulness, and power of the originals.

STÉPHANE MALLARMÉ was a poet and critic. Considered an influence on Symbolism, Decadence, and other late nineteenth-century aesthetic movements, Mallarmé’s weekly salons were part of the heart of Parisian intellectual life and drew writers such as Yeats, Rilke, and Valéry. Blake Bronson-Bartlett is a postdoctoral teaching fellow in American Studies at Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany. His scholarship on Walt Whitman in French translation can be found at www.whitmanarchive.org. Robert Fernandez is the author of two collections of poetry, We Are Pharaoh and Pink Reef, and his poems have appeared in Poetry, A Public Space, Court Green, and elsewhere. He lives in Iowa City.