The Tower
(Paperback)
Publishing Details
The Tower
By (Author) Paul Legault
Coach House Books
Coach House Books
30th April 2020
Canada
Classifications
General
Non Fiction
811.6
Physical Properties
Paperback
112
Width 127mm, Height 203mm
Description
The Tower is a "translation" of W. B. Yeats's The Tower-an homage and reinvention of the poet's greatest work. Whereas Yeats's book contended with his mortality as an aging spiritualist Irish Senator, this version contends with a new mortality: ours. The poems in this collection crystallize the transition from Legault's late twenties to his early thirties, situated in North America during a time of political upheaval. It takes each of Yeats's poems as a starting point and queers them. It translates Yeats's modernist urge, on the other side of a long century. In her review of The Tower, Virginia Woolf says Yeats has "never written more exactly and more passionately." One might imagine she'd conclude the same here. You can't fault these poems for lacking passion. Yeats used to talk to ghosts. His wife would let ghosts talk through her. They would talk to Yeats, and he would write down what they say. Another way you could put it is that Yeats talked to his wife. Ghosts are much closer than you think. They like to live in books. So Legault spent some time talking to Yeats's ghost. Or, Yeats's ghost talked to him. This is him talking back.
Reviews
"If you've never cared about poetry, you will after reading these modern-day renderings" Marie-Claire
"Sheer genius that begs to be recited aloud." Daily Candy
"A valuable contribution to the field of radical translation." Lambda Literary Review
"Through Legault, the opening of Yeats words in the title poem shift and turn from absurdity to one of anxieties around ageing" rob mclennan's Blog
Author Bio
Paul Legault is the author of The Madeleine Poems (Omnidawn, 2010), The Other Poems (Fence, 2011), The Emily Dickinson Reader: An English-to-English Translation of the Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson (McSweeneys, 2012), Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror 2 (Fence, 2016), and Lunch Poems 2 (Spork, 2018). He also co-edited The Sonnets: Translating and Rewriting Shakespeare (Nightboat, 2012).
