Joyce Mansour - Like the eagle at daybreak, Death swallows the dew, The snake smothers the rat, The nomad under his tent listens to the time screeching, On the gravel of insomnia, Everything is there waiting for a word already stated, Elsewhere

Joyce Mansour, Essential Poems and Writings (English and French Edition), Trans. by Serge Gavronsky, Black Widow Press, 2008.


Joyce Mansour (1928-1986) was born in England, raised in Cairo, and moved to Paris where she quickly became one of the major Surrealist figures around Andre Breton. Her writings garnered respect among the Surrealists of this time period and in Paris in general. Now widely recognized as an important poet in Europe, this is the first major anthology of her works (Poems, plays, and essays) to be available in the English language. Translator/editor Serge Gavronsky has been writing and masterfully translating Mansour's works for more than twenty years; he presents a succinct overview of her work in his introduction. Mansour's violent eroticism (in the 1950's before the first waves of feminist writings) and mastery over the poetic form represents a thoroughly modern poet whose poems are fully alive and essential. The extensive poetry section is bilingual.

Finally a very good one volume English language edition of Mansour's works. 349 pages of the 430 pages are bilingual (all the poems)which is always useful. Mansour previously had but small snippets of her work in English language anthologies and small English language chap books or small press printings. For those who are completionists, all of her work is available in one French Language only volume compiled by Hubert Nyssen in 1991. This massive tome (640+pages)has sadly gone out of print and is now expensive. A recent Mansour biography by Missir in 2005 (French only) is a treat as well. Gavronsky has chosen well from amongst Mansour's many books, emphasizing, I think rightly, the poetry. Everyone will have their favorites that they will feel might have been left out but such is the nature of anthologies/compilations. Gavornsky knew the Mansours, has published other books on Mansour, and has written extensively about her for the last 20 years. The poems are very well translated capturing Mansour's nuances (especially in the erotically charged poems)in a way some earlier translations did not. One is always shocked by Mansour that these poems were written in the 1950's-60's. They feel and read fresh and modern as anything written today. Gavronsky has proven once again that he is both an able poet and a compelling translator. His introduction is conversational and anecdotal (sometimes a bit rambling)and at the end of it he shows by listing most major press publications concerning French poetry/poets in English and how Mansour was really ignored from the 1950's until the 1990's. I am glad she is no longer another statistic, this book should help spread her name to more parts of the world. An "essential" addition to any Mansour or French poetry library.

Format:PaperbackSerge Gavronsky has done an admirable job presenting a varied selection of one of the near unknown (in the US), but most important of the female surrealists. Her poetry, so modern and erotically charged, was not published by any US publisher in the 1950's through 1970's, and it is good to finally see a critical anthology of her work available in a bilingual edition. Having read Gavronsky's two other smaller books of translations of Mansour's poems as well as his other writings on Mansour I would have to heavily disagree with a prior review who states with a blanket statement "poorly translated." Gavronsky is a well known poet in France and an able poet/translator. I think the compilation is a marvelous overview and more than ably, in fact, poetically adept translation, as one will find out as it is bilingual and one can translate/reason for oneself. Four hundred pages plus of Mansour is a treat no matter how one looks at it. -
Surrealsw


Joyce Mansour is a great surprise to find and read anywhere. Her books are scarcely known and expensive to buy in the original French editions. Hers are considered like pieces from a Modern Art collection. And she's definitively hard to get in English. Mr Serge Gavronsky must be praised for trying to render this "sister of the wind" into English. But this book fails to show his devotion to the real task in front of him. Maybe someone else will make it happen in the future. Two black-and-white pictures of Joyce Mansour plus the cover make the book a thing to hold dearly, but that's it. His introduction is unreadable and incoherent, adding nothing to the poems and saying so much too little about the poet's life.
Also, in his list of books dedicated to her or not, Mr Gavronsky forgot to mention Mary Beach's 1978 beautiful translation of Mansour's "Flash Card" (in French CARRE BLANC). Why include so much from this title and not LES DAMNATIONS, for example, or HISTOIRES NOCIVES, of which there's nothing in English? Neither does he mention two interesting anthologies (The "Penguin Book of Women Poets" and the "Anthology of Contemporary French Poetry" with superb small selections of Mansour in them) that are worth reading, or Mr Albert Herzing's 1979 translation of RAPACES as BIRDS OF PREY and out of print. Bilingual edition to only just the poetry section. Much is missing from her complete original work and there are no illustrations to any of the stories.
Finally, few misprints and incorrectness are there for all to see on this edition. Joyce Mansour deserves BETTER and so her NEW reader! - Seesaw-Books
         Joyce Mansour , Screams, Trans. by Serge Gavronsky, Post Apollo Press, 1995.

Joyce Mansour's "Screams" was first published in France in 1953. In a time when feminism was in its nascent stage, and explicit sexuality was taboo, Mansour's violent eroticism, and poetic mastery were shocking. In "Screams" Mansour breaks open the female wound--and women's rage, ecstacy, and pain came forth in sharp piercing cries. Until now, American readers have not had access to this powerful erotic text. Translated by Serge Gavronsky, "Screams" is a must for anyone interested in the feminist dimension of the Surrealist movement.

Some continue to dismiss Joyce Mansour as a sort of third-rate Edith Piaf, and others revere her as the French Sylvia Plath. In truth we have not been able to properly appreciate her until now for no good translations existed of her often interesting work. Hooray for Serge Gavronsky and his willingness to climb into a Procrustean bed of nails into which few men would have willingly travelled; he is among the most accomplished translators of our day and teaches at Barnard where he is helping to organize the upcoming Zukofsky 100 centennial celebrations.
Eh bien, Mansour is a different kettle of poisson entirely than Louis Zukofsky, being much more indebted to Surrealism for one thing, and to ideas of the erotic for another. In brief, SCREAMS is a fantastic collection of poetry which will make you think at the same time as it will give you the erotic frissons previously only supplied via the rotting teeth of a rabbit. - Kevin Killian

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JOYCE MANSOUR
Joyce Mansour (1928-1986), while of Egyptian origins, was born in Bowden, England.
ansour's parents planned her birth in England so that she could carry a British passport, thus easing travel between Europe and Egypt. She grew up between the two cultures, 'vivant la moitié de l'année en Egypte', where she attended school.
During her teenage years she was educated in Switzerland and later graduated from Cairo University before travelling to France. Mansour moved to France in her late twenties, publishing her first collection of poetry, Cris, in that same year, 1953.
This collection caught the attention of the Surrealists and she joined the Surrealist Group soon after, becoming particularly well known for her poetry. She died in 1986 in Paris.
She was married twice, her first husband dying while she was still  English was Mansour's first European language, she is reported as speaking French with an English accent, yet it was in French that she chose to write. This mixture of cultures and loyalties is a common feature amongst Francophone writers from countries other than France. They belong neither completely to the East, nor to the West. Mansour's identity lay in her difference, for while her identity crossed several cultures it belonged to no single one. Mansour describes herself as "une femme étrange", both strange and foreign.
It is this meeting of cultures, the ability to stand on the edge of both, that gives Mansour her most powerful images. Her writing is tight with puns and word play. To appreciate her work fully the reader must be aware not only of French, but also of English meanings and associations.
udith Preckshot titled her discussion of Mansour's narratives Identity Crises, and, starting with two lines from Mansour's work:
"If God is a kite
what the hell is George Sand?"
Preckshot sets out to explore the multiplicity that is Joyce Mansour:
"(...) behind which mask(s) will we discover Joyce Mansour, English-born Egyptian but French language poet and prose writer? As the term of compalison in George Sand implies, Mansour will not be defined other than through a writerly persona that integrates bi-national, dual-linguistic and double-gendered characteristics."
Mansour has commented that her work is largely autobiographical; however the scenarios that she writes are larger than life, mythical and fantastic. Although it would be risky to read too many parallels between her life and her writing, it is possible to discover, from the recurring tensions and images in her work, the issues and struggles Mansour faced in writing.
On first reading, Mansour appears to follow the Surrealist tradition of the brutalisation of women. Women characters in her work are raped, murdered, silenced, and driven mad. This brutality against women is a common feature of myth and literature. Yet Mansour's characters question these roles, leading the reader to also question the literary and mythical histories which have assigned them. Mansour uses the fantastic dream world of Surrealism to take the reader through to the other side of literature and into its image world. The literary world is explored through the imagery which has been used to describe it and it is revealed as sexual, violent and disturbed. Mansour journeys through literature and myth, subverting images and questioning the place of her own identity within this world. Mansour uses the tools of Surrealism to dismantle the patriarchal model of literature both outside the Surrealist movement and within.
Mansour was placed firmly in the margin both of mainstream literature and the Surrealist movement, yet she fought back in her writing. Her work is often described as erotic and violent, for Mansour's own exploration of the role of women in writing would appear to be both thrilling and ten-ifying, as in it her identity was both found and threatened. This dichotomy is manifested in an internal struggle which is powerfully portrayed in her writing. Mansour's writing is not the conclusion or advancement of a theory of literature. Her writing is the process of creating text. As a result, Mansour's relationship with literature is played out as she writes.

* Antoun, Elizabeth Tanya. Writing across the Lines - A study of selected novels by Joyce Mansour, Vénus Khoury-Ghata, Andrée Chedid and Leila Barakat, University of Canterbury, 2001


may my breasts provoke you
I want your rage
I want to see your eyes thickening
Your cheeks hollowing and bleaching
I want your spasms.
May you burst between my thighs
My desires die on the fertile soil
Of your shameless body


I’ve stolen the yellow bird
living in the Devil’s sex
It will teach me how to seduce
Men, deer, double-winged angels
It will tear away my thirst my clothes my illusions
It will sleep
But my sleep runs across rooftops
Murmuring, gesturing, violently making love
to cats

Invite me to spend the night in your mouth
Tell me about the youth of rivers
Press my tongue against your glass eye
Give me your leg as wet-nurse
Then let’s sleep, brother of my brother,
For our kisses die faster than the night.


Let me love you.
I love the taste of your thick blood
I keep it for a long time in my toothless mouth.
Its ardour burns my throat.
I love your sweat.
I love to caress your armpits
Dripping with ecstasy.
Let me love you
Let me lick your closed eyes
Let me pierce them with my sharp tongue
And fill their hollow with my triumphing saliva
Let me blind you.

Four Poems by Joyce Mansour