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The Passions of Mr. Desire: Selected Poems
André Roy and Daniel Sloate (Editor)
Guernica Editions, Spring 1986
81 pages
Trade Paperback
ISBN13: 9780919349643
ISBN10: 0919349641
English
Translated from the French
$5.95 Canada, $5.95 US
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André Roy's poetic universe is rich in imagery which can, at first glance, be disquieting. The version here, as in all worthwhile poetry, is unique, deeply personal but presented with the craftsman's gift for making his personal perspective on things important to others. His texts are pleasure recollected in tranquility but as Roy records it in poetry the pleasure becomes intellectualized, the erotic is abstracted, and love, as the poet says, is a word.
The Passions of Mr. Desire carries this exploration furthest in a suite of poems which focuses on homosexual desire, textuality, and New York. It reads like a mirror inversion of Brossard's Lovhers. Like Brossard's, Roy's poems are rooted in the erotic pleasure of language and tackle head-on the erotic body of language. The translator Daniel Sloate has been eminently successful.
Barbara Godard, Univ of Toronto Quarterly
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