Transparence of the World

Jean Follain. Copper Canyon Press, $14 (120pp) ISBN 978-1-55659-190-7

The indefatigable W.S. Merwin, who won the Howard S. Landon Award from the Academy of American Poets for last year's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, here moves into 20th-century French, with Transparence of the World, a selection of poems by deceptively limpid French lyric poet Jean Follain (1903-1971).

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