Remembrance of Water / Twenty-Five Trees

Poetry. Art. Art by Caroline François-Rubino. The poetic sequences in this book have all stemmed from collaborative projects with the French artist Caroline François-Rubino. As with our earlier books, sometimes a sequence of poems has stimulated a series of drawings; at other times, it is a series of paintings that has provoked poetic responses. Moreover, some of our joint efforts originally appear in unusual handmade forms. A few poems in this book were first used, alongside an ink drawing or a watercolor painting by the artist, as 'livres pauvres, ' an international project conceived by Daniel Leuwers and associated with a special collection at the Pierre de Ronsard House near Tours. As to the sequence 'Remembrance of Water, ' it was conceived as a 'livre unique, ' in other words a single book consisting of both poems and original drawings. In some cases, we have initially agreed upon a general theme: 'trees, ' for instance, with the result that, in this book, the poems are often (but not always) linked to my American childhood memories, whereas the drawings take their inspiration from the artist's own emotions about trees intimately related to her life in France. Trees, like some of the other subject matter dealt with here--water (and memory), the haunting word 'ever, ' or a 'last' element of nature: to wit, another tree--provoke thoughts and feelings which may differ in their sources but which ultimately enter into dialogue. Whatever the impetus of the collaboration, our goal is indeed dialogue, not illustration. Whence the underlying wish that these poems and images be appreciated on their own terms as well as in their interrelation.--John Taylor

About the Author :
John Taylor, born in 1952, is an American writer, critic, and translator who has lived in France since 1977. His most recent books of poetry and short prose are REMEMBRANCE OF WATER / TWENTY-FIVE TREES (Bitter Oleander Press), IF NIGHT IS FALLING (Bitter Oleander Press), THE DARK BRIGHTNESS (Xenos Books), and Grassy Stairways (The MadHat Press). As a translator, he has won grants and prizes from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Sonia Raiziss Charitable Foundation, and the Academy of American Poets. In 2015, his translation of José-Flore Tappy's poetry (Sheds, Bitter Oleander Press) was a finalist for the National Translation Award of the American Literary Translators Association. For the Bitter Oleander Press, he has also translated generous selections of the poetry of Jacques Dupin (Of Flies and Monkeys, 2011) and Pierre Voélin (TO EACH UNFOLDING LEAF, 2017). His other recent translations include books by Philippe Jaccottet, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Pierre Chappuis, Catherine Colomb, Georges Perros, Alfredo de Palchi, and Lorenzo Calogero. Caroline François-Rubino is a French artist who was born in 1960 and currently lives in southwestern France. Along with her philosophically resonant personal work, which is often oriented toward our innermost experiences of landscape, she has published four livres d'artistes in collaboration with John Taylor: Hublots (Éditions L'OEil ébloui), Boire à la source (Éditions Voix d'encre), Vent (Éditions Æncrages & Co.), and Grassy Stairways (The MadHat Press). She was also one of the four artists who contributed drawings to Taylor's THE DARK BRIGHTNESS (Xenos Books). Ever ready to enter into an artistic dialogue with literary texts, she has worked on joint projects with many French and European poets. Her pictorial language is full of ever-changing lights, shades and matter, but also of empty spaces, silence, and never-ending, constantly evolving roaming.