In 2010 the Éditions Flammarion published a book that gathered together three suites of poems by a poet recently widely hailed as having offered a reinvigoration, a powerfully uplifting yet lucid energy thought by some to be urgently needed in a genre – if poetry can, rather idly, be deemed such – often dominated by melancholia or a certain self-undermining scepticism: Jean-Paul Michel’s Je ne voudrais rien qui mente, dans un livre. The first suite, “Le Héros veut battre la douleur” (The Hero seeks to beat pain) offers two series of theatricised, dialogued feuillets or folios written in 1978-81 but never previously published. It is followed by an equally unpublished series of five cahiers or notebooks, Rappel à l’ordre à Ferrare (Call to Order in Ferrara), written in 2003-4, whose focus and manner broadens whilst...
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Citation: Bishop, Michael. "Je ne voudrais rien qui mente, dans un livre". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 February 2013 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=34886, accessed 09 June 2026.]
