Earthly

Follain captures the destruction of both earth and society with his heartbreaking, sparse verses evocative of Reverdy and Apollinaire

Highly regarded yet little known, the work of French poet Jean Follian (1903-71) evokes a specific consciousness, with intense affection for the world around it, surveying the landscape and its species, yet intimate with the most minute particulars. Follain was of that generation who watched the men and animal-powered conveyances of his rural childhood go off to World War I, most never to return. The embers of that agrarian world were further extinguished by increasing industrialization and another global war. "There are almost no more horses," Follain wrote in 1960. In this new volume, Follain's poems feel timely, as the ravages of our human-centric worldview upon plants and animals mount toward irreversibility, and as war unfolds where it has so many times before. Arranged chronologically, Earthly, artfully translated by Andrew Seguin, favors work that has not previously been translated into English, and includes a number of prose poems from Tout Instant, making this the first volume in English to offer poems from all of Follain's books.