A Descriptive Method

Every so often a book appears in translation before it appears in its original language, and when it does, it is a tribute both to the extent of the writer’s influence and to the work’s inherent tendency to surpass its own linguistic boundaries… Keith Waldrop is the ideal translator for these works because his long association with Royet-Journaud—as the translator of three of his previous books and as a colleague of long standing—allows him to approach the work from the inside, beginning the recreation of the texts close to their own point of origin.

—Cole Swensen, Poetry Flash

A descriptive method from which all conventional indicators have been withheld? Like a theory of colors in which no colors are shown? Yes—but then. But then, “from the scriptive” arises a tale, a constellation of voices and silences as singular and engaging as any other in contemporary poetry. To read Claude Royet-Journoud is to experience the elements of telling itself. Less, for once, is truly more.

— Michael Palmer

Now Keith Waldrop, who has already translated a number of Royet-Journoud’s books of poems, gives us a beautiful rendering of Une Methode Descriptive, poetry as dense as it is spare, as concise as it is explosive—a poetry of the literal made strange.

— Marjorie Perloff