The Gentle Genius of Cecile Perin

Despite limited bibliographical resources available on Périn’s life, we are fortunate to have an impressive body of work that provides us with sufficient material to embrace fully her talent and confidently identify her as an important femme de lettres. For contemporary readers, this work gives a renewed access to the world of female imagination in the mostly male-dominated field of early and mid-20th-century French poetry. Her images of female sexuality, free and uncensored, are placidly combined with descriptions of nature and human emotions—not overly romanticized—to create a harmonious and warm verse, candid and genuine, yet no less profoundly artistic. Rich and diverse, Périn’s poetry is still to be discovered by a larger audience. For someone with an extensive body of work such as hers, it is almost inconceivable that most contemporary readers have never heard of Cécile Périn and her poetry. The present volume, The Gentle Genius of Cécile Périn, gathers poems from all her nineteen published collections, written between the years 1906-1956. Norman Shapiro’s remarkable translation gives English-speaking readers and scholars an opportunity to savor fully Périn’s remarkable work.