A Celebration of Jean Follain and Jean Giono

PLEASE NOTE THAT AN RSVP DOES NOT GUARANTEE YOU A SEAT. We can accommodate approximately 50 seated and 80 standing. If you require a seat, please plan to arrive early.

Join us for an evening of celebration and discussion of Jean Follain's Earthly and Jean Giono's Serpent of Stars. Andrew Seguin and Mark Polizzotti will read from the books, and will be joined in conversation by Edwin Frank and Michael Wood.

About the books:

Jean Follain was of that generation who watched the men and animal-powered conveyances of his rural childhood go off to World War I, most never to return. The embers of that agrarian world were further extinguished by increasing industrialization and another global war. "There are almost no more horses," Follain wrote in 1960. In this new volume, Follain's poems feel timely, as the ravages of our human-centric worldview upon plants and animals mount toward irreversibility, and as war unfolds where it has so many times before. Arranged chronologically, Earthly, artfully translated by Andrew Seguin, favors work that has not previously been translated into English, and includes a number of prose poems fromTout Instant, making this the first volume in English to offer poems from all of Follain's books.

The Serpent of Stars takes place in rural southern France in the early in the 20th century. The novel’s elusive narrative thread ties landscape to character to an expanse just beyond our grasp. The narrator encounters a shepherding family and, glimpse by glimpse, each family member and the shepherding way of life is revealed. The novel culminates in a large shepherds’ gathering where a traditional Shepherd’s Play—a kind of creation myth that includes in its cast The River, The Sea, The Man, and The Mountain—is enacted.

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