Jaccottet, Philippe: Seedtime III: Notebooks, 1995-1998

Translated by Tess Lewis (Seagull Books, hardcover) Publication Date: September 3, 2021 Publisher Marketing: Writers' notebooks sometimes prove more revelatory than diaries or intimate journals. At first they might appear to be rag-and-bone shops of ideas, insights, hesitations, doubts, and records of things seen, heard, read, dreamt. But eventually they coalesce into a labyrinthine map of the creative process. Swiss poet Philippe Jaccottet has faithfully kept notebooks for many decades, and the selections that make up the Seedtime volumes have retained a vividness of insight and discovery despite the passage of time. After all, as the poet himself says, his notebooks are "a collection of delicate seeds with which I try to replant my 'spiritual forest.'" Seedtime III, which brings this series to a close, records numerous fleeting thoughts, ephemeral experiences, and philosophical observations from a renowned poet well into his seventies, charting the single steps--sometimes forwards, s