Elegies

Emmanuel Hocquard, Cole Swensen

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French

NYRB Poets
25 November 2025

Literature: history & criticism

The central works of one of France's most renowned poets, now translated into English for the first time.

The central works of one of France's most renowned poets, now translated into English for the first time.

Emmanuel Hocquard's Elegies lie at the core of his ?uvre, one of the most admired in contemporary French poetry. Written over some twenty-five years, the elegies trace an expressive thread throughout the whole of his work as they wander through a capacious past, and, like rolling thunder, make that past larger and larger. Whose past is it? And to whom does the past, in general, belong? Hocquard seems to suggest that, like air and water, the past is a commons shared by all, for while these works are studded with vivid autobiographical glimpses, they also sweep through wide swaths of the ancient world as well as contemporary markets, streets, and other public places, overhearing conversations and capturing quotidian details.

Elsewhere, Hocquard has distinguished between two types of elegiac poet-the classic and the inverse. He goes on to say that the classic ruminates on the past while the inverse remakes it. They both love anecdote, he says, but for the classic, anecdote saves a memory from oblivion, while for the inverse, it is a tiny clue that opens up a new path, a path toward the present. Hocquard is clearly an inverse elegiac poet; his Elegies are full of rich anecdotes, and they all lead us to an ever-expanding present.

By: Emmanuel Hocquard, Cole Swensen
Imprint: NYRB Poets
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions: Height: 178mm, Width: 114mm,
Weight: 369g
ISBN: 9781681379920
ISBN 10: 1681379929
Pages: 104
Publication Date: 25 November 2025
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Emmanuel Hocquard (1940-2019) was a French poet, editor, and translator who grew up in Tangiers. He is the author of over twenty books, including The Invention of Glass and Theory of Tables, and he has translated into French the work of writers such as Charles Renikoff, Paul Auster, Michael Palmer, and Fernando Pessoa. Cole Swensen is a poet, editor, and translator from the French. She is the author of twenty collections of poetry and is the founding editor of La Presse Books. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, a PEN USA Award for Literary Translation, the 2024 National Translation Award in Poetry, and the Iowa Poetry Prize.