The Gentle Genius of Cecile Perin: Poems (1906-1956)

Despite limited bibliographical resources available on Perin s life, we are fortunate to have an impressive body of work that provides us with sufficient material to embrace fully her talent and confidently identify her as an important femme de lettres. For contemporary readers, this work gives a renewedaccess to the world of female imagination in the mostly male-dominated field of early and mid-20th-century French poetry. Her images of female sexuality, free and uncensored, are placidly combined with descriptions of nature and human emotions not overly romanticized to create a harmonious and warm verse, candid and genuine, yet no less profoundly artistic. Rich and diverse, Perin s poetry is still to be discovered by a larger audience. For someone with an extensive body of work such as hers, it is almost inconceivable that most contemporary readers have never heard of Cecile Perin and her poetry. The present volume, The Gentle Genius of Cecile Perin, gathers poems from all her nineteen published collections, written between the years 1906-1956. Norman Shapiro s remarkable translation gives English-speaking readers and scholars an opportunity to savor fully Perin s remarkable work."

Cecile Perin (1877-1956) was born in Reims, France. Her first book of poetry was published in 1906. She eventually had some 20 volumes of poetry published in Paris and France. She died in an auto accident in France in 1956. Despite wide popularity and respect in France, at a time when women poets were often neglected, her poetry is almost unknown in the United States. Norman R. Shapiro has taken on the responsibility to see that she is better known, putting together this 700 page selected poems, covering and selecting from all 20 plus published books.