EyeSeas: Selected Poems (Les Ziaux)

In the United States, Raymond Queneau (1903-1976) is known mainly for his novel Zazie dans le metro, which was made into a film by Louis Malle, for Excercises in Style, and for being the founder and one of the most important members of the literary movement known as Oulipo. In France and much of Europe Queneau is known for his prolific and wide ranging writings. During his lifetime some eighteen novels, ten volumes of poetry, seven volumes of essays, and countless other published essays and commentaries kept him in public view and continue to do so today as new biographies, symposiums, and critical writings on him appear with regularity. Les Ziaux (Eyeseas) present a bilingual survey of his poems as written from his early Surrealist days of the 1920’s through to 1943 and is representative of Queneau’s range of poetic voices. As so little of Queneau’s poetry has been published in English, we hope this translation will not only fill a serious void but may also help to inspire interest in the poetry of one of the most important French writers of the twentieth-century.