Fredegund, France - Richard Robinson

Fredegund, France is the second book of poetry written by American poet Richard Robinson. The poetry is both modern and not so modern. The theme is France, but a different kind of France than what one might visit today, or yesterday even. Itʼs a France in the mind. Or itʼs a place where France and the mind cross. In his own words, in the preface, the author says: "What can I say, France is to me like a woman, the one that got away maybe, or a vintage bottle of wine that one drank once and could never find again. She is to me what Woman is to Villiers [de lʼIsle-Adam]..." As for Villiersʼ concept of Woman, Léon Bloy describes it as follows:

It has nothing to do with a pleading, with a dithyrambic paranymph, with such and such fawning praise for the dangerous Sex. It has to do with a renewal of earthly Paradise, after the harsh winter of six thousand years. It has to do with rediscovering that famous Garden of Voluptuousness, symbol and accomplishment of Woman, which all men search gropingly for throughout the centuries. [The Resurrection of Villiers...]

That is what Fredegund, France is, and as the author says, it is "very banal."

Here is an excerpt from the volume, the poem Laus Perennis:

And gone are the days of gestes, and tonnes

Of cider, or ambrosia, or fermented mead

Quaffed between daybreak and 3, and the need

For damsels in forgotten towers to get undone,

The Veleda, and the hordes of blonde leudes,

Lying in "wait" in the Septentrion. And I,

Like a Sigismund, foreseeing myself dead

At the bottom of a well, and hearing,

Above the aqueous and glaucous swell,

The stagnant echoes of a laus perennis -

Not for me, not for me, not for me...