Albiach, Anne-Marie 1937-
Albiach, Anne-Marie 1937-
PERSONAL:
Born August 9, 1937, in Saint-Nazaire, France.
ADDRESSES:
Agent—c/o Author Mail, The Post-Apollo Press, Simone Fattal, Publisher, 35 Marie St., Sausalito, CA 94965; fax: 415-332-8045.
CAREER:
Poet, writer, and translator. Founding editor, with Claude Royet-Journoud and Michel Courtier, of Siécle à Mains (journal).
WRITINGS:
Flammigère: poème (poetry), Siècle à Mains (London, England), 1967.
(Translator) Louis Zukofsy, "A"—9 (première partie), Siècle à Mains (Neuilly-sur-Seine, France), 1970.
État (poetry), Mercure de France (Paris, France), 1971, reprinted, 1988.
H II: linéaires (poetry), Collet de Buffle (Paris, France), 1974.
Césure: le corps, avec des collages originaux de Raquel (poetry), Orange Export (Paris, France), 1975.
Objet (poetry), Orange Export (Paris, France), 1976.
Mezza voce (poetry), Flammarion (Paris, France), 1984, translated from the French by Joseph Simas under same title, Post-Appollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 1988.
Anawratha, Spectres familiers (Le Revest-les-Eaux, France), 1984.
Figure vocative (poetry), Lettres de Casse (Paris, France), 1985, translated by Anthony Barnett and Joseph Simas as Vocative figure, Moving Letters Press (Paris, France), 1986, revised 2nd edition, A-B (Lewes, France), 1992.
Le chemin de l'ermitage (fiction), Impact graphique (Pointe-à-Pitre, France), 1986.
Travail vertical et blanc (poem), Spectres Familiers, 1989.
A Geometry (poem), Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 1998.
Figured Image, translated by Keith Waldrop, Post-Apollo Press (Sausalito, CA), 2006.
Also contributor to Série d'ecriture no. 7: The Unbearable Delight of the Connecting Line (poetry), Burning Deck (Providence, RI), 1993.
SIDELIGHTS:
Anne-Marie Albiach is a renowned French poet and writer who became well known with the 1971 publication of her second collection of poetry titled État. "With the publication of État … Anne-Marie Albiach established herself as one of the most respected and influential figures of the French literary avant-garde," wrote a contributor to Contemporary Women Poets. Noting that Albiach frequently "deviates from traditional syntax and semantics," the essayist went on to comment: "Experimenting with punctuation, spacing and typography, many of her poems also abandon stanzaic divisions, isolating and dispersing words and phrases in what Michael Palmer has described as a ‘theater of the page.’" Writing in American Poetry Review, Palmer commented on État, conveying his belief that this volume of poems "seemed a perfect work, a work perfectly realized and perfectly necessary."
Albiach is also the author of the poetry collection Mezza voce. The Contemporary Women Poets contributor wrote: "In the opening section of Mezza voce, Albiach's interest in the intersecting trajectories of language and the body is articulated through the more conventionally discursive cadences of prose poetry." In a review in the Quinzaine Littéraire, Jean-Michel Maulpoix commented: "Mezza voce is a geometrical staging of the splitting of the gesture of writing whose very emergency answers to a frightful tension, a swerve of all our being and whose development remains contradictory since it is both entailed by riddle and commitment."
BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:
BOOKS
Shelton, Pamela L., editor, Contemporary Women Poets, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1998.
PERIODICALS
American Poetry Review,, March-April, 1998, Michael Palmer, "An Introduction and Five Easy Poems for Anne-Marie Albiach."
Nation, December 27, 2004, John Palatella, "The Illusion of Inclusion."
Quinzaine Littéraire, May 16, 1984, Jean-Michel Maulpoix, review of Mezza voce.
Studies in Twentieth Century Literature, winter, 1989, Rosmarie Waldrope, "Shall We Escape Analogy," pp. 113-128.
World Literature Today, winter, 1985, Mary Ann Caws, review of Mezza voce, p. 50.