ABSTRACT
The poetry of Michel Deguy cannot be read in a city park, a subway car, perhaps not even a quiet kitchen. To an extent surpassing the "pensivity" of even his most cerebral French contemporaries, Deguy writes an abstruse, formally complex poetry that could hardly be more removed from the spirit and letter of mainstream Anglo-American verse. Deguy's poetry is also concerned with ethics, exchange, and relations of "likeness." Deguy's highly intellectualized writings can suddenly flush with feeling, accompanied by flashes (but rarely prolonged sequences) of vivid imagery. Deguy "interweaves poetry with poetics and criticism in a totally innovative way," remarks the translator, before concluding: "What Derrida is to deconstruction, Deguy is to the history of poetics in contemporary Europe. Deguy desires to make a gift to the possibilities of telling not only by in-weaving poetry with a phenomenologist's lucidity and a deconstructionist's skepticism, but also by questioning what it means to "want" to tell a story.
