Duncan Fallowell

Pondering the flowers

The markets and flower shops of Paris inspire reflections on life, lyric poetry and human endurance that are both portentous and trite

  • Orphic Paris

    Henri Cole

    NYRB, pp. 176

This new book, from the NYRB’s publishing arm, is in a non-fiction genre I love: short entries dedicated to an integrating purpose; approaching a subject via concentrated, separated stabs rather than extended unfolding text. In philosophy this is called the aphoristic technique. In wider literature, it can range from the concise notebook to prose poetry.

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