Du parti pris des chaises en poésie

The paper begins by offering a close reading of three poems on chairs, by Tony Harrison, Philip Larkin and William Wordsworth. Things are dumb, in all senses of the word, and their muteness is foreign to human language—and yet they are to be named, so as to become literary objects. Borrowing its title from that of a famous collection of poems by Francis Ponge, who claims to be favourably prejudiced about things, the essay purports to examine the various ways in which poets attempt to mould the shape of their poems around that of objects, and vice versa. It follows three main outlines: “In the aspect of things” covers what Bonnefoy sees as a characteristically English fondness for the empirical aspect of things, as opposed to the more abstract bias of French poets; “In the truth of things” (with poems by Craig Raine, Douglas Dunn, Derek Mahon and Philip Larkin) discusses various strategies by which things are either made glorious or trivial; “Dependent on things” (featuring poems by William Carlos Williams, Wallace Stevens, Tony Harrison) plumbs the depths of what is first and foremost for poets a linguistic bias