In 2005, Christina Cook was working on her MFA thesis. Her subject was the French poet Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932-2019), who’d been a professor at several French universities, including the Sorbonne. Cook was able to arrange an interview with Bancquart at her home in Paris, where she lived with her husband, composer Alain Bancquart (1934-2022).
The interview extended to lunch and then further extended to spending a day with the Bancquarts as they showed her some of their favorite parts of Paris. The day became a friendship, one lasting until Marie-Claire’s death in 2019 and Alain’s in 2022.
The story of that day and that friendship has become Roaming the Labyrinth, written by Cook as part memoir, part diary, part tribute, part Bancquart’s poems and Cook’s translations, and part Cook’s own poems.
To continue reading, please see my post today at Tweetspeak Poetry.
Some Tuesday Readings
The hard Frost – Brenda Wineapple at The New Criterion reviews Love and Need: The Life of Robert Frost’s Poetry by Adam Plunkett.
“Loveliest of trees, the cherry now,” poem by A.E. Housman – Joseph Bottum at Poems Ancient and Modern.
Married Pairs – poem by Sandra Marchetti at Every Day Poems.
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