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kasper_au's review
4.0
Queer Women Book Club read
I enjoyed A Crown of Violets and even though the poems are probably better read in french, I thought they still translated beautifully. My favourites were:
Victory (Victoire)
Amazon (Amazone)
Upon the Death of a Friend who was Truly Loved (Devant la mort d'une amie véritablement aimée)
Double Ambiguity (La Double Ambiguïté)
The Drowned Women (Les Noyées)
"I drink the words you whisper in the dark...
I taste the fine perfumes where we recline,
The night's complicity, the shadows cast
By the gold Pleiads, whom the Moon outshines."
I enjoyed A Crown of Violets and even though the poems are probably better read in french, I thought they still translated beautifully. My favourites were:
Victory (Victoire)
Amazon (Amazone)
Upon the Death of a Friend who was Truly Loved (Devant la mort d'une amie véritablement aimée)
Double Ambiguity (La Double Ambiguïté)
The Drowned Women (Les Noyées)
"I drink the words you whisper in the dark...
I taste the fine perfumes where we recline,
The night's complicity, the shadows cast
By the gold Pleiads, whom the Moon outshines."
eavans's review
4.25
I read this translation for my AP Research paper, which made it a bit difficult due to Pious' sometimes (rather) liberal translation, but I am so glad at the side by side french for reference. It bothered me at times to always have to look over and make sure the wording was similar enough for me to take as fact for the sake of my paper, but it does lend itself to casual English reading. Pious tries to recreate the rhyme scheme and does hold the original flavor of the poem in it, but if you can read the French well enough there shouldn't be a reason to read it, obviously. My French (and French poetry vocabulary at that) isn't good enough yet to go solely on her original poetry to quickly refer back to things for researching, so the book was good for me. Read the French if you're unsure of her translations, but enjoy them nevertheless if you can.
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