Hitting the Streets

Taxi drivers, street sweepers, a bouquiniste, unsuccessful prostitutes, a menaced bicycle rider, noisy children, an old woman shunted aside in a crowd, and some disgruntled animals at the zoo populate these poems. Unreeling like a series of clips recorded during a stroll through Paris, the book is wickedly funny, but it is also a bittersweet meditation on how "the river of forgetfulness carries away the city." This is the poet's love letter to Paris--a Paris that is always in the process of becoming superannuated. Rachel Galvin's lively, idiomatic version is the first complete translation available in English.