Wry-Blue Loves: Les Amours jaunes

Poetry Book Society Recommended Translation
 
The chronically invalid son of a robust sea-captain and novelist father, Tristan Corbière (1845-75) published one book of verse and was virtually unheard of in his lifetime. He is an informal formalist, delighting in clashing registers of diction and outrageous puns. With pervasive self-mocking humour, his poems combine a hopeless love, a grounded sea-fever, a ferocious ironic compassion and a savage sympathy with dogs and underdogs. As Peter Dale writes in his introduction: 'Above all, he is his own man, able to resist the blandishments of literary theory, social expectations, and the mollifications of religion.' The book contains the entire Les Amours jaunes' and a selection of Corbière's uncollected poems.
 
Peter Dale worked as a secondary school teacher before becoming a freelance writer in 1993. He was co-editor of the poetry journal Agenda for many years. Well known for his translations from Dante, Jules Laforgue and François Villon, Dale is also an accomplished poet in his own right: Anvil published his new and selected poems, Edge to Edge in 1996 and his most recent collection, Under the Breath in 2002.