"In “French Licks,” which is dedicated to Ron Padgett, North cites snippets from the works of French poets and writers such as Valery Larbaud, Henri Michaux, Charles Baudelaire, and Max Jacob. It is both an homage to Padgett, whose translations of many of these and other French writers are exemplary, and a letter to him that ends with a line from Michaux: “I don’t know what else to say. Am I ever going to see you?” What makes “French Licks” more than citation is that in the “Acknowledgments” page you learn that North did all the translations, which suggests that he read all the works in their original language."
-John Yau: The Writer as Citizen of the World, published in Hyperallergic, May 2, 2020.
Softcover.
Publisher: Smoke Specs
