This book is the first bilingual selection from the poetic works of Edmund Jabes, long acknowledged for the mastery of his work in the unique prose genre invented by him. "Jabes lives in the French language as if it were the Sea," writes Robert Duncan in the afterword, a truth accessible here both in the French originals and Keith Waldrop's extraordinary translations, drawn from Jabes' earliest and most recent poems. "Poetry was Jabes' proving ground," writes Paul Auster in the Introduction, "and as a careful reader of Keith Waldrop's translations will observe, the styles and themes that characterize The Book of Questions and The Book of Resemblances were already being explored by Jabes in the poems he wrote as a young man. One finds the same economy of reference, the same passionate lyricism, the same tendency toward aphorism, and the same preoccupation with the act of writing itself. Even the theme of exile, which plays such a vital part in the later prose books, is already present in these early poems: 'Always in a foreign country, the poet uses poetry as an interpreter.'" It is impressive to see how much the whole oeuvre of Jabes stands as a continuity and a completion from its first moments to these very recent poems, an inquiry into the nature of writing and being.
About the Author:

Edmond Jabes (Cairo, 1912 - Paris, January 2, 1991) was a Jewish writer and poet, and one of the best known literary figures to write in French after World War II. The son of a Jewish Italian family, he was raised in Egypt, where he received a classical French colonial education. He began publishing in French at an early age, and was made a Knight of the Legion of Honor in 1952 for his literary accomplishments. When Egypt expelled its Jewish population in 1956 (Suez Crisis), Jabes fled to Paris, which he had first visited in the 1930s. There he rekindled friendships with the surrealists although he was never formally a member of that group. He became a French citizen in 1967, the same year that he received the honor of being one of four French writers (alongside Sartre, Camus, and Levi-Strauss) to present his works at the World Exposition in Montreal. Further accolades followed--the Prix des Critiques in 1972 and a commission as an officer in the Legion of Honor in 1986. In 1987, he received France's National Guard Prize for Poetry (Grand Prix national de la poesie).

Jabes is best remembered for his books of poetry, often published in multi-volume cycles, at least fourteen volumes translated by Rosmarie Waldrop, Jabes's primary English translator.