La conversation transatlantique: Les échanges franco-américains en poésie depuis 1968 by Abigail Lang (review)

Abigail Lang’s La conversation transatlantique: Les échanges franco-américains en poésie depuis 1968 [Transatlantic Conversation: Franco-American Exchanges in Poetry Since 1968] is a book that needed to be written. Anyone reading and studying French and/or American poetry of the mid- to late twentieth century was keenly aware of the fruitfulness of the exchanges between French and American poets. This book archives, records, and documents the challenging theoretical, national, and literary questions that both French and American poetries of this period address. Lang’s book is composed of an approximately thirty-page introduction, followed by chapters dedicated to Objectivist poetry, the “community of poets,” and the various forms of “spoken and performed poetry,” followed by a ten-page conclusion that asks necessary questions concerning the issues of the day.