Anne Hébert: Selected Poems

Hardcover copies available in limited quantity

This is a first edition, first printing available in limited supply. Books have been archived at BOA Editions, Ltd. since publication and are in good condition. Hardcover. Ideal for collectors.

Translated by A. Poulin, Jr.

Anne Hébert: Selected Poems is the first bilingual collection of poetry by this major world poet—and Canada’s most important French poet of the twentieth century—to be published in the United States and Canada. It includes a generous selection from Hébert’s central book, Poemes (Paris, 1960) and several previously uncollected and untranslated poems. A. Poulin, Jr. is the highly acclaimed poet and translator of Rainer Maria Rilke’s French and German poetry.

“Minor Despair”

The river’s reclaimed the islands I loved
The keys of silence are lost
The hollyhock’s not as sweet as I thought
The water has more secrets than it sings

My heart collapses
The moment no longer supports it.

Praise for the collection

“Anne Hébert was one of the first modern poets that I read—in any language—and her work made an indelible impression on me. I still know some of her poems virtually by heart—they both capture and create their own world.” —Margaret Atwood

“There is a persistent grandeur in Anne Hébert’s writing that is startling in our time and in the current literary context in English. Both the tradition and iconoclasm in the work of this French poet of North America invite us to listen to something beyond our own conventions.” —W.S. Merwin

© BOA Editions, Ltd. 1988