The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

Emmanuel Hocquard 1940–

tangiers, morocco

A

poet, novelist, professor, editor, and translator, Hocquard has written

on subjects ranging from Greek and Latin classics to Objectivism. With

the painter Raquel, he founded and served as an editor of the small

press Orange Export Ltd. He also edits the series Un bureau sur l’Atlantique,

dedicated to translating the works of contemporary American poets. He coedited

two large anthologies of new American poets with Claude Royet-Journoud: 21 + 1:

Poètes américains d’aujourd’hui (1986) and 49 + 1: Nouveaux poètes américains

(1991). Principal works: Album d’images de la Villa Harris, 1978; Les Élégies, 1990;

Théorie des tables, 1992; Tout le monde se ressemble: Une anthologie de poésie

contemporaine, 1995; Un test de solitude: Sonnets, 1998; Ma haie, 2001.

At Christmas

I

At Christmas, Cyrille brought the wolves into the
house.
Where does he find them.
They sing for forty minutes
at the bitching hour.
Part of a pack, echoes, scraps of distance
Ever since I’ve listened to them for several
These wolves, Viviane, sing around the points.
Do they need to enter the room to hear the snow
falling.
Heaps of little lives in juxtaposition.
If I wrote to you in the past tense I would feel I
was lying.
Will you be back on New Year’s Day?

II

What empties a name of its substance.
What kind of grammar would a grammar