{"product_id":"proensa-isbn-9781681370309","title":"Proensa","description":"It was out of medieval Provence—Proensa—that the ethos of courtly love emerged, and it was in the poetry of the Provençal troubadours that it found its perfect expression. Their poetry was also a central inspiration for Dante and his Italian contemporaries, propagators of the modern vernacular lyric, and seven centuries later it was no less important to the modernist Ezra Pound. These poems, a source to which poetry has returned again and again in search of renewal, are subtle, startling, earthy, erotic, and supremely musical.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe poet Paul Blackburn studied and translated the troubadours for twenty years, and the result of that long commitment is \u003ci\u003eProensa\u003c\/i\u003e, an anthology of thirty poets of the eleventh through thirteenth centuries, which has since established itself not only as a powerful and faithful work of translation but as a work of poetry in its own right. Blackburn’s \u003ci\u003eProensa\u003c\/i\u003e, George Economou writes, “will take its place among Gavin Douglas’ \u003ci\u003eAeneid\u003c\/i\u003e, Golding’s \u003ci\u003eMetamorphoses\u003c\/i\u003e, the Homer of Chapman, Pope, and Lattimore, Waley’s Japanese, and Pound’s Chinese, Italian, and Old English.”“Shortly after \u003ci\u003eProensa\u003c\/i\u003e was first published by Robert Creeley in Mallorca in 1953, Paul Blackburn wrote his own best definition of these songs: ‘To give \/ and man enough to receive, LOVE, \/ when he finds it offered. \/ To take the sun and the goods of earth, while it lasts.’ Over sixty years later his voicings of the troubadours still ring fresh—leaping with joy, sorrowing with duende.” —Richard Sieburth\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Blackburn’s forgotten translation of Troubadour poets, \u003ci\u003eProensa\u003c\/i\u003e,  is a testament to translation as a test of truth...never did strings  plucked at such a distance reverberate so closely.”—Paul Pines, \u003ci\u003eBig Bridge\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Blackburn has skillfully incorporated musical elements and also ‘high’ diction and syntax...a great translation.”—Stephen Fredman, \u003ci\u003eChicago Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “Spare, modern, and abstract without violating the artistic intricacy of the original...\u003ci\u003eProensa \u003c\/i\u003eis a boon to those who will never experience the pleasure of studying the troubadours in\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003etheir original accents but who now can appreciate their complex beauty in Paul Blackburn’s\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003edense dynamic re-creations.”—Patricia Harris, \u003ci\u003eRomance Philology\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003ePaul Blackburn\u003c\/b\u003e (1926–1971) was born in St. Albans,  Vermont, the son of the poet and children’s book author Frances Frost.  When he was fourteen he moved from Vermont to Greenwich Village, later  spending a year at New York University before enlisting in the army.  After his military service he transferred to the University of Wisconsin  at Madison, where he studied Old Provençal and began a correspondence  with Ezra Pound. Through Pound he became friends with Robert Creeley and  was introduced to many in Creeley’s circle. In 1954 Blackburn received a  Fulbright to study Provençal literature in the south of France and it  was there he embarked on the project that would become \u003ci\u003eProensa\u003c\/i\u003e.  Back in New York, he continued to write and publish poetry while  working various jobs, including printing-house clerk and  encyclopedia-entry writer, and running a reading series that would  become the legendary Poetry Project at St. Mark’s in the Bowery. He was  known for encouraging the work of the young poets who later rose to  prominence as members of the New York School and the Beats. By the  mid-1960s, Blackburn had become recognized enough to take on traditional  teaching jobs, and in 1967 received a Guggenheim Fellowship, which  allowed him to live in Europe and concentrate on his own work. In all he  published thirteen books of poetry and five translations, including  works by El Cid, Pablo Picasso, Federico García Lorca, and Julio  Cortázar. The final version of \u003ci\u003eProensa\u003c\/i\u003e was published in 1978 seven years after Blackburn’s death from esophageal cancer.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eGeorge Economou\u003c\/b\u003e taught English and comparative literature at Long Island University and  the University of Oklahoma for forty-one years. He has published  twenty-one books of poetry, translations, and criticism.","brand":"NYRB Classics","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46302785274085,"sku":"NP9781681370309","price":22.95,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781681370309.jpg?v=1767735151","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/products\/proensa-isbn-9781681370309","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}