[Yves Bonnefoy's] is a poetry that refuses to close its eyes to those experiences of loss that identify temporal existence. Death, absence, nothingness, ruin, dispersion and errancy are events that his poems uncover in the common realities of a drifting cloud, a bird's cry,… and the reflected light of a setting sun. To the myopia which keeps us from seeing and understanding the lessons of the past, this poetry gives corrective vision, reminding us that time is fatal, death ever-present and exile inescapable.

The major concern of poetry, Yves Bonnefoy writes, is to "name what has been lost."… Poetry, he suggests, must meditate on death and loss. The poet cannot plunge into the dreamy waters of a transcendental reality in order to escape mortality. Such a poet, a seeker of essences, fears loss. Whenever confronted by le néant (nothingness), he is compelled to disguise its reality through...