Translated from the French by John F. Deane

ABOUT THE BOOK

The sequential poem is the connective tissue of At the Devil's Banquets, a collection that holds at its heart the raw materials of familial relations and emotional inheritance. Koltz is tuned to a dark frequency, uncomfortably listening at the edge of the universe and forever seeking clarity of feeling. This work is highly metaphorical, self-incriminating, and spare, with an anger turned gently inward. John F. Deane's direct, clear translations from the French serve Koltz's somber vision exquisitely.

"There are few poets who look honestly at this world we eat and note the thin margin of time we live in, ‘stricken with light / in order to pay our part of the dream / that will survive us.’ Anise Koltz is one who does, and this book is fierce, open-eyed and radiant. Her poems interrogate the gods and grapple with the death- and birth-giving body. They fearlessly trace the soul as it survives." 

—Rachel Jamison Webster

ABOUT ANISE KOLTZ

Anise Koltz was born in Luxembourg in 1928 and is a major contemporary poet. She is the founder and director of the festival Les Journées de Mondorf, as well as a member of the Mallarmé Academy in Paris and of the Grand-Ducal Institute of Arts and Letters. She is also Vice President of the European Academy of Poetry. Her many books include: The Wall of the Alphabet, The Cry of the Hawk, The Land Rises, and I Shall Be Born.

ABOUT JOHN F. DEANE

John F. Deane was born in Achill Island in 1943. He is the author of several collections of poetry, including Christ with Urban Fox, Toccata and Fugue: New & Selected, Manhandling the Deity, The Instruments of Art, A Little Book of Hours, Eye of the Hare, and Snow Falling on Chestnut Hill. Deane’s legacy as an editor includes the founding of Dedalus Press, Poetry Ireland, the National Poetry Society, and The Poetry Ireland Review. His work has been honored with the O’Shaughnessy Award for Irish Poetry and the Marten Toonder Award for Literature, among others, and has been shortlisted for the T. S. Eliot Prize and The Irish Times Poetry Now Award. He is a member of Aosdana, the body established by the Arts Council to honor artists “whose work had made an outstanding contribution to the arts in Ireland.” In 2007 the French Government honored him by making him Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. Deane became the first Irish writer to win the Golden Key of Smederevo Award.

112 pages | 5.5 x 7.5 in.
ISBN-13: 978-1-935635-66-6 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-935635-68-0 (hardcover)