Alparegho, Like-nothing-else by Hélène Sanguinetti (trans. Ann Cefola) [PREORDER]

Alparegho, Like-nothing-else by Hélène Sanguinetti
Translated and with an afterword by Ann Cefola
106 pgs.

“What country are you
from,
where are you from” as
one says to those to enter
for the first time
and that one looks at in depth
without knowing that it’s
pierced everywhere,
and
that it’s not a bottom
but
a line, the edge of the
wall, very narrow,
which runs across the
countryside!

“My name is Alparegho,
yes, I am telling you and will tell
everyone.
Snake-like and neck-high
as I am.
Soft and straight as I
am.
Here I am and here I am,
on the thread,
like all, hung”

Alparegho, Like-nothing-else is a nearly unclassifiable mock-epic poem that unfolds in seven parts. We follow our titular hero, without country or face, on a quest for self-discovery through a hallucinatory, apocryphal realm of snails, claws, blackened teeth, and flames. With nods to Orpheus, Dante, René Char, La Fontaine, and the French courtly tradition, Hélène Sanguinetti’s poem seems sculpted from the tattered materials of some primordial past, but sung by a choir from an alternate future. These multivocal chants and fables meet syntactic disruption, typographic play, and shards of totemic imagery in Sanguinetti’s protean, sui generis form. Reissued twice in France since it first appeared in 2005, Alparegho, Like-nothing-else is the third of Sanguinetti’s books to be translated into English by Ann Cefola.

Read an excerpt

Praise for Alparegho, Like-nothing-else:

It seems to me an oratorio, a cantata, moreover—not exactly made for the present time but for the time to come, dispossessed of us, our history, our Alzheimered era that will not survive us, but scraps of which will have constituted the painful intelligence, awareness and feeling of a generous otherness in the world.

—Georges Guillain

Hélène Sanguinetti’s work is a singular undertaking—one difficult to situate in the contemporary landscape—that, through two previous works—De la main gauche, exploratrice (1999) and D’ici, de ce berceau (2003) [...] has imposed her heroic and broken gesture, which seems to emerge from a legendary past, a golden age, and loose stones. This is done according to the law of an eminently concrete writing, more chanted than inspired, and more open to the epic than to the lyrical lament.

—Yves di Manno

Sanguinetti’s Alparegho, Like-Nothing-Else is seductive, as fairy tales are, or the art of Bosch and Dürer. Here is a world, brightly lit and brimming full of objects, animals, bodies, and landscapes; visually sharp and distinct—but what improbable conjunctions! Yet Sanguinetti compels the reader to go deeper into her dream-logic. Cefola’s translation effortlessly keeps pace with this breathless romp, following every zig and zag with scrupulous fidelity and joy.

—Ann Lauinger

Hélène Sanguinetti’s whimsical and inventive Alparegho, Like-Nothing-Else transports us to the world of fairy tales and legends. Voices from a distant past evoke the arrival and exploits of the comical and charismatic hero Alparegho. With childlike playfulness, Sanguinetti refracts traditional tales of valor through a postmodern lens—questioning as much as lyrically retrieving them. Ann Cefola’s deft and satisfying translation of this remarkable text adapts the rhythm of the French original, and skillfully conveys its meaning in a very readable English version.

—John C. Stout

Praise for The Hero (tr. Ann Cefola, Chax Press, 2018):

Sanguinetti takes on the archetype of the hero from every angle—at times many simultaneously—and in a language itself heroic in its leaps and shifts and its inventive riffs that tap into ambient legend, with its steaming horses, epic journeys, and, of course, battle. Volatile style, startling content, super-charged tone—Cefola captures them all in her splendidly nuanced translation, a rare case in which nothing at all is lost, and the English language gains a powerful and beautiful book.

—Cole Swensen

~~~

Hélène Sanguinetti, who lives in Arles, is also the author of Jadis Poïena, forthcoming from Flammarion in February 2025; Do Not Cross, forthcoming from Lurlure in October 2025; Et voici la chanson (Lurlure, 2021), reprinted from L'Amandier, 2012; Domaine des englués (La Lettre Volée, 2017); Le Héros (Flammarion, 2008), D'ici, de ce berceau (Flammarion, 2003), and De la main gauche, exploratrice (Flammarion, 1999).

Ann Cefola is the translator of two previous books by Hélène Sanguinetti, The Hero (Chax Press, 2018) and Hence, this cradle (Seismicity Editions, 2007). She is also the author of When the Pilotless Plane Arrives (Trainwreck Press, 2021), Free Ferry (Upper Hand Press, 2017), and Face Painting in the Dark (Dos Madres Press, 2014); and recipient of a Witter-Bynner Translation Residency, and Robert Penn Warren Award selected by John Ashbery.