Europes by Jacques Réda

Translated by Aaron Prevots

In Europes, Jacques Réda takes the reader on a leisurely, lyrical journey across the continent, from the bucolic pastures of Switzerland to the colorful streets of his beloved Paris. Réda's encounters and observations subvert preconceived notions of travel and home, and provide an unforgettable glimpse of landscapes in flux. With its sumptuous blend of poetry and prose, Europes is an endearing and idiosyncratic travelogue.

Recording the fleeting instants of the narrator's peregrinations, Europes includes essays on Portugal, Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Germany, Scandinavia and France—one or two essays followed by one or more poems for each country. The poems are "poèmes de circonstance," that is, topical poems, in this case, poems on the countries described in the preceding essays, written in the tradition of Raymond Queneau: playful, silly, ironically rhymed.

– Three Percent Review

  8.5" x 5.5"
 153 pages                                                                                                         Bilingual French/English