The Major Verbs

Pierre Nepveu is unique among French Quebec poets for having forged a voice at once unadorned, sensuous, and adventurous, and this new collection is a masterwork consisting of three sequences. The first focuses on an immigrant night cleaner glimpsed on a subway; the second, a riff on a group of stones on a table; and the final sequence concerns the poet’s parents and their deaths. The book closes with a long meditative poem written in the American southwest. In the original French, this colle…