The Plural of Happiness: Selected Poems

by Herman de Coninck, Laure-Anne Bosselaar (Translator), Kurt Brown (Translator)

Belgium's leading poet for many decades, Herman de Coninck has never been translated into English and collected in a single extended volume until now. Witty, tender, wise, de Coninck's poems range from playful, terse love lyrics to darkly ironic, somberly truthful observations about human experience. The ability to compress huge subjects into small, formally sculpted poems is a hallmark of his style; conversely, what might seem too small to write about is often transformed by his imagination into the very essence of things.

109 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Herman August Paul De Coninck was een Vlaamse dichter, essayist en journalist. Hij was gehuwd met schrijfster Kristien Hemmerechts.

Herman de Coninck in de Nederlandstalige Wikipedia

Herman de Coninck in de Digitale Bibliotheek voor de Nederlandse Letteren

Herman de Coninck bij "Schrijversgewijs"


Herman August Paul De Coninck was a Flemish poet, essayist and journalist. He was married to Kristien Hemmerechts.

Herman_de_Coninck in the English Wikipedia

Reviews

[Danielle DeTiberus]

These poems are eerily weird and brilliantly to the point. They are lovely little lyrics, they are full of astounding lines and sharp turns. Brown and Bosselaar have somehow managed to translate these poems so that the reader cannot imagine they originated in any language other than English. To a poet (or any writer) that is obsessed or interested in distilling a theme or idea into one singular moment, these are poems to study. Especially, “Two Kinds of Nothing,” “He had hoped it could be done without autumn,” “Glass Shards in the Sun,” “For six years she learned what lasting was,” and (the brilliantly contrasted) “Here,” & “Ars Poetica.”

[Laure-anne]

I cp translated this book with Kurt Brown