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Things: Selected Writings
English, French (translation)
123 pages, Paperback
First published October 11, 1971
90 people want to read
About the author
Francis Ponge
84 books92 followersFrancis Jean Gaston Alfred Ponge was a French essayist and poet. Influenced by surrealism, he developed a form of prose poem, minutely examining everyday objects.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 22, 2016
Easily the best English versions of Ponge's writing imo, a beautiful-looking book & one of the rare truly successful book-length negotiations/translations by an English-language poet.
January 23, 2022
As the sound of a night fountain, under a bell of leaves, of a tree itself against its trunk, calm and cold - Father - so, in a cold room, one day your presence was to us.
You were cold, under a single sheet, veiled, one window open.
What equilibrium we four together, without time all seated, you even better at rest, stretched out, dead.
What pure health of leafgreen, of soil, of liquid.
Equal in us flowed a water in silence incessantly from neck to back to the limbs under the grass. By the mute window a gust spilt from the dark depths of the sky dried the evening's sweat from the women's brows.
And let a star too, like the son's eye, revive,
Without saying so, you would enjoy it, Father!
* * *
"What is more engaging than the azure if not a cloud, in docile clarity?
This is why I prefer any theory whatever to silence, and even more than a white page some writing that passes an insignificant.
It is all my exercise, and my hygienic sigh."
* * *
The boat pulls upon its tether, shifts its body from one foot to the other, restless and stubborn as a colt.
It is however only a rather crude receptacle, a wooden spoon without a handle: but, dug out and arched to permit a pilot direction, it seems to have a mind of its own, like a hand signalling così-cosà.
Mounted, it adopts a passive attitude, slips gently away, is easy to guide. If it kicks up, it has good reasons.
Left alone, it follows the current and goes, like everything in the world, to its destruction like a straw.
* * *
You can twist at the foot of stems
The elastic of your heart
It is not as a caterpillar
That you will know the flowers
When with more than a sign is announced
Your hastening towards happiness
................................................
He shudders and in one bound
Rejoins the butterflies.
* * *
Let us render first the atmosphere at once misty and dry, dishevelled, in which the cigarette is always set askew since continually creating it.
Then her person: a small touch a good deal luminous than scented, from which are detached the drop to a rhythm to be determined a calculable number of small masses of ash.
Her passion at last: this glowing bud, desquamating in silvery scurf, which an immediate muff mad of the most recent encircles.
* * *
Each piece of meat is a sort of factory, blood mill and press.
Tubulures, blast-furnaces, vats are close up against pile-drivers, cushions of fat.
Steam springs out boiling. Bright or dark fires glow.
Bloodstreams open wide carry off slag and gall.
And it all slowly grows cold again at night, at death.
At once, if not rust, at least other chemical reactions set in releasing pestilential odors.
You were cold, under a single sheet, veiled, one window open.
What equilibrium we four together, without time all seated, you even better at rest, stretched out, dead.
What pure health of leafgreen, of soil, of liquid.
Equal in us flowed a water in silence incessantly from neck to back to the limbs under the grass. By the mute window a gust spilt from the dark depths of the sky dried the evening's sweat from the women's brows.
And let a star too, like the son's eye, revive,
Without saying so, you would enjoy it, Father!
- The Sage's Family, pg. 11
* * *
"What is more engaging than the azure if not a cloud, in docile clarity?
This is why I prefer any theory whatever to silence, and even more than a white page some writing that passes an insignificant.
It is all my exercise, and my hygienic sigh."
- The Insignificant, pg. 14
* * *
The boat pulls upon its tether, shifts its body from one foot to the other, restless and stubborn as a colt.
It is however only a rather crude receptacle, a wooden spoon without a handle: but, dug out and arched to permit a pilot direction, it seems to have a mind of its own, like a hand signalling così-cosà.
Mounted, it adopts a passive attitude, slips gently away, is easy to guide. If it kicks up, it has good reasons.
Left alone, it follows the current and goes, like everything in the world, to its destruction like a straw.
- The Boat, pg. 17
* * *
You can twist at the foot of stems
The elastic of your heart
It is not as a caterpillar
That you will know the flowers
When with more than a sign is announced
Your hastening towards happiness
................................................
He shudders and in one bound
Rejoins the butterflies.
- Metamorphosis, pg. 21
* * *
Let us render first the atmosphere at once misty and dry, dishevelled, in which the cigarette is always set askew since continually creating it.
Then her person: a small touch a good deal luminous than scented, from which are detached the drop to a rhythm to be determined a calculable number of small masses of ash.
Her passion at last: this glowing bud, desquamating in silvery scurf, which an immediate muff mad of the most recent encircles.
- The Cigarette, pg. 28
* * *
Each piece of meat is a sort of factory, blood mill and press.
Tubulures, blast-furnaces, vats are close up against pile-drivers, cushions of fat.
Steam springs out boiling. Bright or dark fires glow.
Bloodstreams open wide carry off slag and gall.
And it all slowly grows cold again at night, at death.
At once, if not rust, at least other chemical reactions set in releasing pestilential odors.
- The Piece of Meat, pg. 32
February 7, 2010
A Great find. Obviously a prose poet though he didn't like to be called one.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews