Wings Folded in Cracks: Selected Poems

Where other poets of his generation developed strategies of deconstruction, Jean-Pierre Vallotton invented a brave new mosaic with the parameters left behind by traditionalism, modernism and postmodernism. If William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot are considered decadent, then so is Jean-Pierre Vallotton a decadent; however, the sort of decadent that will be viewed as being great in years to come: “The space between us is a path of magnificence, and here the faintest of our footsteps draws forth a flower.” His neo-baroque poetry stands at the crossroads of whatever styles, forms, and contents led to this spot; and it is with the pernicious artefacts found here that Jean-Pierre Vallotton invents the unknown structures that will welcome the birds of paradise of tomorrow.