Date:         Mon, 4 Sep 1995 09:46:30 -0400
From:         Pierre Joris

A sad announcement: About ten days ago the Swiss-Italian poet
Franco Beltrametti died suddenly. He was one of our last great
peripatetic travelling companeros, at home as much in Kalifornia or
here on the East Coast than in Japan, Holland, France or Italy. & one
of the gentlest sould it has been my privilege to know. Here a little
poem from his book _Target_.

il monte verita

________________


the mountain is
the same, the truth
changed


19/VIII/78


        Good that Jerry filled the experiemntal/concrete/soungpoetry
gaps in my quick list of frog poets. One could add Julien Blaine & the
work of his Marseille group & magazine DOC(K)S (a scene on which,
incidentally, Franco had been very active these last years). There are
any number of other figures to add to my list: Claude Miniere, Valere
Novarina, Guy Darol for example, but also such towering experiemtal
prose figures as Pierre Guyotat (the last French writer, to my knowledge to
have one of his Gallimard-published works censored by the French
Government!). The list is endless...

        Besides the anthologies already mentioned on the list, here
are two other books worth investigating as they have some of the
younger writers not in the other one:

        _French Poets of Today_ published in 1987 by Guernica Editions
(Montreal then, now based in Toronto) I don't know if the book is
still in print, but worth trying to pick up.

        The spring '87 (Vol 30. n. 3) issue of "The Literary Review"
pubvlished by Fairleigh Dickinson Universioty. This issue is subtitled
"New French Writing" & includes some experiemntal prose by Guyotat &
Sollers (from the latter's _Paradiso_) (my translations) as well as
the usual suspects (Albiach, Hocquard, Jabes, Roet-Journoud) plus a
short bit by one of my favorite French (prose)witers, Pascal Quignard.
        Importantly, the issue contains a secoind section edited by
Eric Sellin, called "Francophone Literature of the Maghreb" presenting
writers such as Dib, Alloula, Amrouche, Sebti, Said, Boujedra, Mimouni
& others. Sellin edits (edited?) a magazine called _The Celfan Review_
essentially on Maghrebian writers from temple University where he teaches.
Otherwise Maghrebian literature is unknown & untranslated here.
        I'll pass along more information as I come across it.

Pierre, but

before signing off, one more by Franco Beltrametti

mental one

__________


(a few hits of the keys) (finally
for once) (she would like that
it would never end) (to focus)
(the problem is choice)
(finally for once) (a few
hits of the keys)


15/II/78
for J.L. Godard