SOURCE: “Back to the Novice He Once Was.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 3,321 (21 October 1965): 941.

In the following review, Char's Commune présence is considered and praised for the way Char “regroups the poems in a coherent whole so that we can see their underlying unity.”

All but a few of the poems in this selection have appeared before, but even for those already familiar with the poetry of René Char it will look like a new book. He has chosen them mainly from eight volumes published since 1934, though he has also included the final text of one complete poem (“Lettera Amorosa”, first printed in 1953) and a sprinkling of poems from a new volume, not yet published but presumably in preparation, Retour Amont. The poems are grouped in eight sections, not by the books in which they first appeared but according to their themes and moods. M. Char's most characteristic...