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ShorterReviews

Paul EluardLast Love Poems of Paul Eluard, translated by Marilyn Kallet, 165pp, $17.95, ISBN978-0-9768449-3-8; CapitalofPain, translatedbyMaryAnnCaws, PatriciaTerry& Nancy Kline, 279pp, $19.95, ISBN978-0-8449-6-9; Love, Poetry, translated by Stuart Kendall, 205pp, $18.95, ISBN 978-0-9768449-7-6(all paperback, all BlackWidowPress). The latest editions fromBoston publisher Black Widow Press offerneweditionsof theearly-twentieth-centuryFrench Surrealist poet, includingStuartKendall’sLove, Poetry, the first Englishversionof Eluard’s 1929collectionL’amour lapoéésie, dedicatedto his Russianfirst wife, Gala (‘I lookedfor you beyondwaiting/beyondmyself/andI love somuchthat I no longer know/whichof us is absent.’). As Kendall recounts in his excellent introduction, afewmonths after completingthe volume andafter Gala hadleft himfor MaxErnst (she later marriedSalvador Dali), Eluardfell inlove withMaria Benz (‘Nusch’), thesubjectof Last Love Poems (‘wearebodytobody weareearthtoearth/Wearebornofeverywherewearewithout limits’). As ever, theseareall high-qualitypublications, with excellent translations andaccompanyingessays fromleading practitionersof theirart.

SoleïïmanAdelGuéémar, StateofEmergency , translatedbyTom Cheesman&JohnGoodby, introducedbyLisa Appignanesi, Arc,166pp, paperback, £9.99, ISBN978-1-904614-39-5 AlgerianpoliticalexileGuéémar,nowlivinginWales,might bea newname inFrenchpoetry but, as Lisa Appignanesistates in her introduction to this important work, ‘Britain has inadvertentlyinheriteda political poet of stature, one whose language sings.’ Awardeda recent EnglishPENWriters in TranslationAward, this is at once a disturbinganddeeply movingvolume, chartingbrutal state violence inGuéémar’s homelandas he adopts manydifferent voices andpersonae – theimprisoned, theabusedandthosebereavedbyterror (‘we were scattered into torment/my hand held your/mangled hand/andIranthroughthestreetsofAlgiers/tohugyouinmy