Pierre Alferi (April 10, 1963 – August. 16 2023)

Pierre Alferi died yesterday in Paris. Poet and editor. I first met Pierre at the Objectivist conference at Royaumont in 1989. He did a simultaneous trnaslation of my talk on Charles Reznikoff (later published as "Reznikoff's Nearness." (Pictured here with Karl Rakosi.) Pierre went on to edit, with Olivier Cadiot, in the mid-1990s, the literary sensation, Revue de littérature générale. His first book in English translation was published by Douglas Messerli's Sun & Moon Press: Narural Gaits, translated by Cole Swenson (and available as a pdf here).  He has a book forthcoming in December, also translated by Swenson, In the Street. Here is what I wrote for that:

Personification meets enigma in the ellipsis of phantomine. Pierre Alferi’s poems, in Cole Swensen’s translations are rapiers that cut to the quick of political obscenity and ethical necessity, as if the two are locked in a death embrace, until poetry do them part. “It’s here that we meet”—on this street, in these words, at that parting. 

Forthcoming in France, is his translation, with Anne Portugal, of Stacy Doris's Fledge, which follows up on their translation of Mue, both from his publisher, P.O.L. His most recent book in France is Divers chaos. 

The last time I saw Pierre as at NYU in 2014. 

See also:
Le Monde obituary

PIP (Messerli) page

Wiki English page 
& Wiki French