The Dream’s Restlessness

Yves Bonnefoy (1923–2016) is often acclaimed as one of France’s greatest poets. He published ten major collections of verse, several books of tales, and numerous studies of literature and art, and was a celebrated translator of Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, and Leopardi. His work has been translated into scores of languages, and he earned many honors, including the European Prize for Poetry (2006) and the Kafka Prize (2007). He succeeded Roland Barthes in the Chair of Comparative Poetics at the Collège de France.

Lisa Sapinkopf’s translations have appeared in Boston Review, Partisan Review, Southern Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, and elsewhere. She won the Columbia Translation Center award and has read her work at the United Nations. (updated 1991)