Congratulations to UPenn English Professor Paul Hendrickson! Hendrickson's critically acclaimed biography of Ernest Hemingway and his beloved fishing boat, Pilar, will go up against other finalists at the NBCC Awards on March 8th, 2012.  

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I have so often dreamed of you

Robert Desnos

I have so often dreamed of you that you become unreal.

Is it still time enough to reach that living body and to kiss on that

      mouth the birth of the voice so dear to me?

I have so often dreamed of you that my arms used as they are to

      meet on my breast in embracing your shadow would perhaps not

      fit the contour of your body.

And, before the real appearance of what has haunted and ruled me

     for days and years, I might become only a shadow.

Oh the weighing of sentiment.

I have so often dreamed of you that there is probably no time now

     to waken. I sleep standing, my body exposed to all the

     appearances of life and love and you, who alone still matter to me,

     I could less easily touch your forehead and your lips than the

     first lips and the first forehead I might meet by chance.

I have so often dreamed of you, walked, spoken, slept with your

      phantom that perhaps I can be nothing any longer than a

      phantom among phantoms and a hundred times more shadow

      than the shadow which walks and will walk joyously over the

      sundial of your life.

Translated by Paul Auster

 

 

 

Penn Book Center presents a different poem in

this location each weekday. If there is an amazing

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