River Underground

Tardieu's poetry has an almost childlike simplicity, and in France his work is studied both in universities and schools. He addresses problems of experience and language central to modern literature, bringing lively wit and humor to bear upon an anguished interrogation of the world. Tardieu was born in 1903, and this selection spans seventy years of his writing. In his early years the difficulties of writing lyric poetry in a schizophrenic age led him to a multiplication of poetic voices, and so to working for the stage, where he was writing what was subsequently dubbed 'Theatre of the Absurd' before Beckett's or Ionesco's plays had ever been performed in public.