Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932–2019) is the author of Every Minute Is First and more than thirty other collections of poetry and several novels. In her lifetime she was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Prix Supervielle, the Prix Max Jacob, and the Prix Robert Ganzo. Bancquart was also president of the French arts council La Maison de la Poésie and a professor emerita of the Université Paris-Sorbonne, where she taught French literature until her retirement in 1994. She lived in Paris for most of her life with her husband, Alain Bancquart, a musician and composer.Jody Gladding is a poet and translator with five books of poems and forty translations from French by authors such as Roland Barthes, Jean Giono, Julia Kristeva, and Pierre Michon. She has published three previous books with Milkweed Editions, including her own poetry in the books Rooms and Their Airs and Translations from Bark Beetle as well as a translation of Geneviève Damas’s novel If You Cross the River, which was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. She has won the Whiting Award, Yale Younger Poets Award, and numerous others for her poetry and was a finalist for the 2004 French-American Foundation Translation Prize with Jean Giono’s The Serpent of Stars. Gladding has taught in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and has lived in France for extended periods over the last twenty-five years. Her most recent poetry collection is I entered without words. She lives and works in East Calais, Vermont.

• PrefaceOtherInOn the Brink of LifeYes, the IntervalEarthOut of ScaleForwardFalters, Wears OutGrass Between the LipsAloneThis Dark TreeRed-HotIn the woods leavesIf we speak in fables, it’s justAfter having followed the formidable path, I will beI hang my lifeWhat is this faceWhat drives youBlack the waterThe throat awakens full of dirtWhen evening comesCut the round loaf, villagerHearingSeptember, eleven o’clock in the morning, without youReplanting the helleboreI desire you in our timeWorried aboutTwenty or thirty centuries agoIt’s sadScent of linden treesAt day’s end things join upUnder the curses of birds—What did you say? Lost empiresWritingLittle breaths, the moments of our livesOur presenceOur lungs breatheThe decorum of wordsThe patient in the recovery roomThe poor stone I’m holdingVery dark matterAt that time, to represent an absurdity or strong emotionYes, heavy, the bloodThe mirror retainsInto my spinal columnTo be traversedTrembleAs for me, I inhabited a large birdHow many trees in the course of this journey XXXThat tremblingI’m endlessly obsessed with one desireBrieflyEach thing according toOn window panes, curtains, books, camp the invisible. . . At the border of the inexorableNo, I will not swallowIf I could seize a little nothingYes, I sankI came back to life. Oh, monorail world, transport meDon’t descendThere are bruised wordsStrange, the objects in certain categoriesYou know what it meansCan weInhale the strong odor of the streetsWe don’t wantAgainst my cheek“See you shortly, in the unknown”To the heights of incandescenceWhen do you want to divorce yourselfWhen I think of you, I transform into tree-lined pathsI don’t believe in heavenTo approach a wordEvery minute is first, when the gardenAs thoughReturn the love of the least thingsFor the music of stones—And nevertheless I pressed against your face my own  You’ve got a run in your peritoneumSitting in the parkCollect a seedWe’re always holding the end of the world, no matter whereA very ripe apricot gets smashedPain: explosion, spasmsWhat have you done, if notI’m writing a letter to I don’t know whomIn my body there’sHoles in the barkEvery morning I formDon’t wake me sleeperSmall noise, rainFollowing the edge of an island. . . But so far off, so unrealized, the peace I’m seekingNew worldEnd-of-life accompanistIt’s possible/impossibleWith your chagrin, you meant to stay aloneIt’s as if there were an earth above. . . But what if it were absurd, our turmoilSickThen a scene imposes itself upon you, impossibly banal: a manShe doesn’t have a nameHow I searched for you, lifeWhy this feeling of exileA very large white pigeonThese are my “Sorrows” I’m writingSo soft, the gray of the sky sometimes occupied by whiteNevertheless loveAs if the earthIn a little while, I will no longer be, you will no longer beNotes

Praise for Every Minute is First “This collection by a major French poet brings original perception and a gift for surreal detail to one of life’s essential crossroads: its nearing close. Objects claim their own agency; strangeness and side-leap remind at times of Jean Valentine; small acts of witness, invention, questioning, and memory feel dropped into a well without bottom. Suffusing these poems also: an enormous tenderness toward the existence its writer knows she soon will be leaving—but not yet.”—Ploughshares“In Marie-Claire Bancquart's Every Minute Is First, endlessness goes inward. We encounter—via images of ants and leaves, lungs breathing, a bar of white soap—the infinite divisibility of time, of daily life, the transitory nature of our bones and skin. Gladding's translation, visceral yet clear as glass, renders each poem as a lucid pane into a world that is eternally dissolving, eternally becoming, a world that ‘doesn’t refuse / to be broken like fresh bread.’ This collection brought me, again and again, to the place where eternity touches the body, a cleansed and renewed here and now, leaving me with the keen sense (and life-affirming reminder) that being able-bodied is a temporary state for all of us.”—Michael Bazzett, author of The Echo Chamber and translator of The Popol Vuh“[In Every Minute Is First,] we instantly sense the connection between the human physical and the world around us, and it is both taut and trembling. [. . .] We don’t need to know the reference to the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower for it is all left open: ‘Go change.’ Gladding points out Bancquart’s practice and poem about living lightly. Even as we are cognizant of the poet’s learning—and ours—that death isn’t easy, we learn to know why every minute is indeed the first. How ‘absolute / a moment!’”—Mary Ann Caws, editor of The Yale Anthology of 20th Century French Poetry

Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932–2019) is the author of Every Minute Is First and more than thirty other collections of poetry and several novels. In her lifetime she was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Prix Supervielle, the Prix Max Jacob, and the Prix Robert Ganzo. Bancquart was also president of the French arts council La Maison de la Poésie and a professor emerita of the Université Paris-Sorbonne, where she taught French literature until her retirement in 1994. She lived in Paris for most of her life with her husband, Alain Bancquart, a musician and composer.Jody Gladding is a poet and translator with five books of poems and forty translations from French by authors such as Roland Barthes, Jean Giono, Julia Kristeva, and Pierre Michon. She has published three previous books with Milkweed Editions, including her own poetry in the books Rooms and Their Airs and Translations from Bark Beetle as well as a translation of Geneviève Damas’s novel If You Cross the River, which was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. She has won the Whiting Award, Yale Younger Poets Award, and numerous others for her poetry and was a finalist for the 2004 French-American Foundation Translation Prize with Jean Giono’s The Serpent of Stars. Gladding has taught in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and has lived in France for extended periods over the last twenty-five years. Her most recent poetry collection is I entered without words. She lives and works in East Calais, Vermont.

• PrefaceOtherInOn the Brink of LifeYes, the IntervalEarthOut of ScaleForwardFalters, Wears OutGrass Between the LipsAloneThis Dark TreeRed-HotIn the woods leavesIf we speak in fables, it’s justAfter having followed the formidable path, I will beI hang my lifeWhat is this faceWhat drives youBlack the waterThe throat awakens full of dirtWhen evening comesCut the round loaf, villagerHearingSeptember, eleven o’clock in the morning, without youReplanting the helleboreI desire you in our timeWorried aboutTwenty or thirty centuries agoIt’s sadScent of linden treesAt day’s end things join upUnder the curses of birds—What did you say? Lost empiresWritingLittle breaths, the moments of our livesOur presenceOur lungs breatheThe decorum of wordsThe patient in the recovery roomThe poor stone I’m holdingVery dark matterAt that time, to represent an absurdity or strong emotionYes, heavy, the bloodThe mirror retainsInto my spinal columnTo be traversedTrembleAs for me, I inhabited a large birdHow many trees in the course of this journey XXXThat tremblingI’m endlessly obsessed with one desireBrieflyEach thing according toOn window panes, curtains, books, camp the invisible. . . At the border of the inexorableNo, I will not swallowIf I could seize a little nothingYes, I sankI came back to life. Oh, monorail world, transport meDon’t descendThere are bruised wordsStrange, the objects in certain categoriesYou know what it meansCan weInhale the strong odor of the streetsWe don’t wantAgainst my cheek“See you shortly, in the unknown”To the heights of incandescenceWhen do you want to divorce yourselfWhen I think of you, I transform into tree-lined pathsI don’t believe in heavenTo approach a wordEvery minute is first, when the gardenAs thoughReturn the love of the least thingsFor the music of stones—And nevertheless I pressed against your face my own  You’ve got a run in your peritoneumSitting in the parkCollect a seedWe’re always holding the end of the world, no matter whereA very ripe apricot gets smashedPain: explosion, spasmsWhat have you done, if notI’m writing a letter to I don’t know whomIn my body there’sHoles in the barkEvery morning I formDon’t wake me sleeperSmall noise, rainFollowing the edge of an island. . . But so far off, so unrealized, the peace I’m seekingNew worldEnd-of-life accompanistIt’s possible/impossibleWith your chagrin, you meant to stay aloneIt’s as if there were an earth above. . . But what if it were absurd, our turmoilSickThen a scene imposes itself upon you, impossibly banal: a manShe doesn’t have a nameHow I searched for you, lifeWhy this feeling of exileA very large white pigeonThese are my “Sorrows” I’m writingSo soft, the gray of the sky sometimes occupied by whiteNevertheless loveAs if the earthIn a little while, I will no longer be, you will no longer beNotes

Praise for Every Minute is First “This collection by a major French poet brings original perception and a gift for surreal detail to one of life’s essential crossroads: its nearing close. Objects claim their own agency; strangeness and side-leap remind at times of Jean Valentine; small acts of witness, invention, questioning, and memory feel dropped into a well without bottom. Suffusing these poems also: an enormous tenderness toward the existence its writer knows she soon will be leaving—but not yet.”—Ploughshares“In Marie-Claire Bancquart's Every Minute Is First, endlessness goes inward. We encounter—via images of ants and leaves, lungs breathing, a bar of white soap—the infinite divisibility of time, of daily life, the transitory nature of our bones and skin. Gladding's translation, visceral yet clear as glass, renders each poem as a lucid pane into a world that is eternally dissolving, eternally becoming, a world that ‘doesn’t refuse / to be broken like fresh bread.’ This collection brought me, again and again, to the place where eternity touches the body, a cleansed and renewed here and now, leaving me with the keen sense (and life-affirming reminder) that being able-bodied is a temporary state for all of us.”—Michael Bazzett, author of The Echo Chamber and translator of The Popol Vuh“[In Every Minute Is First,] we instantly sense the connection between the human physical and the world around us, and it is both taut and trembling. [. . .] We don’t need to know the reference to the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower for it is all left open: ‘Go change.’ Gladding points out Bancquart’s practice and poem about living lightly. Even as we are cognizant of the poet’s learning—and ours—that death isn’t easy, we learn to know why every minute is indeed the first. How ‘absolute / a moment!’”—Mary Ann Caws, editor of The Yale Anthology of 20th Century French Poetry

Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932–2019) is the author of Every Minute Is First and more than thirty other collections of poetry and several novels. In her lifetime she was the recipient of numerous prizes, including the Prix Supervielle, the Prix Max Jacob, and the Prix Robert Ganzo. Bancquart was also president of the French arts council La Maison de la Poésie and a professor emerita of the Université Paris-Sorbonne, where she taught French literature until her retirement in 1994. She lived in Paris for most of her life with her husband, Alain Bancquart, a musician and composer.Jody Gladding is a poet and translator with five books of poems and forty translations from French by authors such as Roland Barthes, Jean Giono, Julia Kristeva, and Pierre Michon. She has published three previous books with Milkweed Editions, including her own poetry in the books Rooms and Their Airs and Translations from Bark Beetle as well as a translation of Geneviève Damas’s novel If You Cross the River, which was a finalist for the PEN Translation Prize. She has won the Whiting Award, Yale Younger Poets Award, and numerous others for her poetry and was a finalist for the 2004 French-American Foundation Translation Prize with Jean Giono’s The Serpent of Stars. Gladding has taught in the MFA in Writing Program at Vermont College of Fine Arts and has lived in France for extended periods over the last twenty-five years. Her most recent poetry collection is I entered without words. She lives and works in East Calais, Vermont.

• PrefaceOtherInOn the Brink of LifeYes, the IntervalEarthOut of ScaleForwardFalters, Wears OutGrass Between the LipsAloneThis Dark TreeRed-HotIn the woods leavesIf we speak in fables, it’s justAfter having followed the formidable path, I will beI hang my lifeWhat is this faceWhat drives youBlack the waterThe throat awakens full of dirtWhen evening comesCut the round loaf, villagerHearingSeptember, eleven o’clock in the morning, without youReplanting the helleboreI desire you in our timeWorried aboutTwenty or thirty centuries agoIt’s sadScent of linden treesAt day’s end things join upUnder the curses of birds—What did you say? Lost empiresWritingLittle breaths, the moments of our livesOur presenceOur lungs breatheThe decorum of wordsThe patient in the recovery roomThe poor stone I’m holdingVery dark matterAt that time, to represent an absurdity or strong emotionYes, heavy, the bloodThe mirror retainsInto my spinal columnTo be traversedTrembleAs for me, I inhabited a large birdHow many trees in the course of this journey XXXThat tremblingI’m endlessly obsessed with one desireBrieflyEach thing according toOn window panes, curtains, books, camp the invisible. . . At the border of the inexorableNo, I will not swallowIf I could seize a little nothingYes, I sankI came back to life. Oh, monorail world, transport meDon’t descendThere are bruised wordsStrange, the objects in certain categoriesYou know what it meansCan weInhale the strong odor of the streetsWe don’t wantAgainst my cheek“See you shortly, in the unknown”To the heights of incandescenceWhen do you want to divorce yourselfWhen I think of you, I transform into tree-lined pathsI don’t believe in heavenTo approach a wordEvery minute is first, when the gardenAs thoughReturn the love of the least thingsFor the music of stones—And nevertheless I pressed against your face my own  You’ve got a run in your peritoneumSitting in the parkCollect a seedWe’re always holding the end of the world, no matter whereA very ripe apricot gets smashedPain: explosion, spasmsWhat have you done, if notI’m writing a letter to I don’t know whomIn my body there’sHoles in the barkEvery morning I formDon’t wake me sleeperSmall noise, rainFollowing the edge of an island. . . But so far off, so unrealized, the peace I’m seekingNew worldEnd-of-life accompanistIt’s possible/impossibleWith your chagrin, you meant to stay aloneIt’s as if there were an earth above. . . But what if it were absurd, our turmoilSickThen a scene imposes itself upon you, impossibly banal: a manShe doesn’t have a nameHow I searched for you, lifeWhy this feeling of exileA very large white pigeonThese are my “Sorrows” I’m writingSo soft, the gray of the sky sometimes occupied by whiteNevertheless loveAs if the earthIn a little while, I will no longer be, you will no longer beNotes

Praise for Every Minute is First “This collection by a major French poet brings original perception and a gift for surreal detail to one of life’s essential crossroads: its nearing close. Objects claim their own agency; strangeness and side-leap remind at times of Jean Valentine; small acts of witness, invention, questioning, and memory feel dropped into a well without bottom. Suffusing these poems also: an enormous tenderness toward the existence its writer knows she soon will be leaving—but not yet.”—Ploughshares“In Marie-Claire Bancquart's Every Minute Is First, endlessness goes inward. We encounter—via images of ants and leaves, lungs breathing, a bar of white soap—the infinite divisibility of time, of daily life, the transitory nature of our bones and skin. Gladding's translation, visceral yet clear as glass, renders each poem as a lucid pane into a world that is eternally dissolving, eternally becoming, a world that ‘doesn’t refuse / to be broken like fresh bread.’ This collection brought me, again and again, to the place where eternity touches the body, a cleansed and renewed here and now, leaving me with the keen sense (and life-affirming reminder) that being able-bodied is a temporary state for all of us.”—Michael Bazzett, author of The Echo Chamber and translator of The Popol Vuh“[In Every Minute Is First,] we instantly sense the connection between the human physical and the world around us, and it is both taut and trembling. [. . .] We don’t need to know the reference to the sparkle of the Eiffel Tower for it is all left open: ‘Go change.’ Gladding points out Bancquart’s practice and poem about living lightly. Even as we are cognizant of the poet’s learning—and ours—that death isn’t easy, we learn to know why every minute is indeed the first. How ‘absolute / a moment!’”—Mary Ann Caws, editor of The Yale Anthology of 20th Century French Poetry