Ursa Major

Ursa Major is a sequence of prose poems by the French poet Yves Bonnefoy, the sixth of his books published by Seagull. In it he explores the mysteries of human consciousness in new ways. Readers meet fragments of conversation, overheard and dropped with no possible conclusion, each carrying a meaning that is only partly visible. The poems are translucent and broken by silences, like stones picked up, turned over and set back down at the edge of life.

Bonnefoy opens the collection by describing countless voices that pass through us, as endless as the windings of dreams or the glitter of stars on a summer night. If we simply listen, a few words rise out of the murmur, pointing to precise things, hinting at allusions we would like to understand, and offering opinions that may be worth thinking over.

The collection invites readers to attend to these many voices within and to trust them, as one might lie down in a meadow behind the house on a summer night and drift out among the millions of stars with a sense of falling. This English version is translated by Beverly Bie Brahic and illuminated by the graphic artist Sunandini Banerjee.