Wings Folded in Cracks: Selected Poems

More than the macroscopic of the surreal, Jean-Pierre Vallotton explores the microscopic of hyperreality. In fact, if there is one single element that stands out in this complex poetry, it is precisely the absence of anything obvious. Yet his idiosyncratic poetic structure never disrupts its symbolic density. Behind the irregularity of forms, there is recurrence, tempo, permanency of pursuit. Where other poets of his generation developed strategies of deconstruction, Vallotton invented a brave new mosaic with the parameters left behind by traditionalism, modernism and postmodernism. If William Wordsworth, Oscar Wilde, T.S. Eliot are considered decadent, then so is Jean-Pierre Vallotton a decadent, however, the sort of decadent that will be viewed as being great in years to come. His neo-baroque poetry stands at the crossroads of whatever styles, forms, and contents led to this spot.