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French-language collections

49 articles

A Season in Hell

A Season in Hell (Une saison en enfer) is a collection of prose poems by Arthur Rimbaud, published in Brussels in 1873, his only book in his lifetime.

Alcools

Alcools is a 1913 collection of 48 poems by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire, published by the Nouvelle Revue française and regarded as a landmark of modern French poetry.

Calligrammes

Calligrammes is a 1918 poetry collection by Guillaume Apollinaire, written between 1913 and 1916, that named the calligram, a poem whose typographical layout draws a picture.

Capitale de la douleur

Capitale de la douleur ("Capital of Pain") is a 1926 collection of poems by Paul Éluard, his first major surrealist work, published in Paris by Gallimard.

Carnac

Carnac is a book-length poem by the French poet Eugène Guillevic, published by Gallimard in Paris in 1961 and named for the Breton town where he was born.

Chants d'ombre

Chants d'ombre (Shadow Songs) is the first poetry collection of Léopold Sédar Senghor, published in Paris in 1945, gathering poems written during his years of exile in France.

Charmes

Charmes is a 1922 collection of 21 poems by French poet Paul Valéry, whose title plays on the Latin carmina, meaning both "poems" and "magic chants."

Cinq Grandes Odes

Cinq Grandes Odes (Five Great Odes) is a cycle of five Catholic odes in free verse by Paul Claudel, composed in China and published in 1910.

Corps et biens

Corps et biens is a 1930 collection of poems by the French surrealist poet Robert Desnos, published by Gallimard in Paris and spanning his surrealist decade, 1919 to 1929.

Derniers vers

Derniers vers (Last Verses) is a posthumous 1890 collection of poems by the French writer Jules Laforgue, generally regarded as the first full-length volume of free verse in French poetry.

Du mouvement et de l'immobilité de Douve

Du mouvement et de l'immobilité de Douve, On the Motion and Immobility of Douve, is a 1953 poetry collection, the first book by the French poet Yves Bonnefoy.

Éloges

Éloges is the first poetry collection of the French poet and diplomat Alexis Léger, later known as Saint-John Perse, published in 1911 and celebrating his childhood in Guadeloupe.

Émaux et camées

Émaux et camées is a collection of short poems by the French writer Théophile Gautier, first published in 1852, embodying art for art's sake and founding Parnassianism.

Éthiopiques

Éthiopiques is the title of three works: a 1956 poetry collection by Senegalese poet Léopold Sédar Senghor, a Dakar journal founded in 1975, and Heliodorus's ancient Greek novel.

Ferrements

Ferrements is a 1960 poetry collection by the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire, his fifth book, published by Éditions du Seuil in Paris amid the decolonization era.

Fêtes galantes

Fêtes galantes is an 1869 collection of 22 poems by the French poet Paul Verlaine, transposing Watteau's paintings of masked aristocrats and lovers into verse.

Feuillets d'Hypnos

Feuillets d'Hypnos (Leaves of Hypnos) is a 1946 collection of 237 short prose texts by the French poet René Char, written while he served in the French Resistance.

Harmonies poétiques et religieuses

Harmonies poétiques et religieuses (Poetic and Religious Harmonies) is a collection of 47 religious poems by Alphonse de Lamartine, published in Paris in 1830 and later inspiring Franz Liszt's piano cycle of the same name.

Hosties noires

Hosties noires, or Black Hosts, is a 1948 collection of French poems by Senegalese poet and statesman Léopold Sédar Senghor, a founding work of Negritude honoring the African colonial soldiers who fought for France.

Jadis et naguère

Jadis et naguère is a poetry collection by the French poet Paul Verlaine, published in Paris by Léon Vanier in 1884 and containing "Art poétique".

L'Amour la poésie

L'Amour la poésie is a 1929 collection of poems by the French surrealist poet Paul Éluard, dedicated to his wife Gala and containing the famous line "The earth is blue like an orange."

L'Année terrible

L'Année terrible, "the terrible year," is Victor Hugo's phrase for France's 1870–1871 catastrophe of war, siege of Paris, and the Commune, also the title of his 1872 poetry collection.

L'Art d'être grand-père

L'Art d'être grand-père is a collection of poetry by Victor Hugo, published in Paris in 1877 and dedicated entirely to his grandchildren Georges and Jeanne Hugo.

La Bonne Chanson

La Bonne Chanson is an 1870 collection of 21 poems by Paul Verlaine, written for Mathilde Mauté de Fleurville and published in Paris by Alphonse Lemerre.

Lais of Marie de France

The Lais of Marie de France are twelve narrative poems in Anglo-Norman French composed around 1160, the earliest known secular writing by a woman in medieval Europe.

Le Cornet à dés

Le Cornet à dés is a collection of about 300 prose poems by the French writer and painter Max Jacob, published at his own expense in 1917.

Le Marteau sans maître

Le Marteau sans maître ("The Hammer without a Master") is a 1934 poetry collection by the French poet René Char, the best-known book of his early period.

Le Parti pris des choses

Le Parti pris des choses, Francis Ponge's first major book, is a 1942 collection of prose poems on everyday objects like the oyster, bread, and soap.

Le Spleen de Paris

Paris Spleen (Le Spleen de Paris, also published as Petits Poèmes en prose) is a 1869 collection of fifty prose poems by Charles Baudelaire, a founding text of literary modernism.

Les Châtiments

Les Châtiments is an 1853 collection of 98 satirical poems by Victor Hugo, written in exile on Jersey to denounce Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's 1851 coup d'état and his regime.