Through brilliant collaboration, Robert Bononno and book designer Jeff Clark translated one of Mallarmé’s most well-known and visually complex poems into contemporary English language and design. This bilingual softcover edition not only includes Mallarmé's original preface, but also matches the typography of the last round of proofs that Mallarmé was correcting at the time of his death. Clark's presentation is both visually stunning and typographically radical, mirroring the dark mystery of Mallarmé’s poem. With a keen understanding of poetics, Bononno’s translation offers myriad interpretations, while capturing the visionary spirit of the original. Together, Clark and Bononno have created a singular version of A Roll of the Dice that is markedly unique in its attention to the ways layout, design, typeface, and language all contribute to the meaning making of this masterpiece.
“Un Coup de Dés,” Mallarmé’s climactic experiment… is available in a slender, handsome volume from the Seattle press Wave Books, in a fine translation by Jeff Clark and Robert Bononno. Here, Mallarmé leapfrogs over the most radical exponents of free verse: a text of seven hundred and fourteen words is scattered across eleven double pages, in staggered lines and in type of varying sizes, often with independent sentences juxtaposed… The layout evokes musical notation, with voices rising and falling amid expectant silences.
Alex Ross, The New Yorker
Physical Info: 7.5 x 0.5 x 10.5 inches | 96 Pages | Paperback