Daybreak: New and Selected Poems

“Here’s one of the finest poets now writing in France in the magnificent new translation of Marilyn Hacker. Claire Malroux is a name every devoted reader of poetry will want to know. She reminds us that lyric poetry can speak of our lives in the way that nothing else can.” —Charles Simic“The personal and universal cataclysms in Claire Malroux’s poetry—a maelstrom of love, torment and sweetness—are viewed as though through the calm lens of a dream. All is surging, hushed, violently human. Marilyn Hacker’s gifted translation captures the tone flawlessly.” —John Ashbery“Here is the journey of a soul toward its truth. A refusal of despair, a clash with an absence, a trembling before the multiple: these are Claire Malroux’s greatnesses. ‘You must persevere,’ she says to us, for beyond the disorder and conflict, at the threshold of language, is the meaning of our existence. ‘You must persevere.’” —Henri Cole"Like Dickinson, Malroux tends toward fragmented narratives and vivid imagery; often, her poems sound at once melancholy and breathless, as echoes might…. In Daybreak, Hacker offers readers a striking, panoramic view of Malroux’s body of work." — Lily Meyer, Poetry Foundation