SOURCE: Mus, David. “Stances on Love.” Poetry 128, no. 3 (June 1976): 163-77.

In the following review, Mus provides a stylistic analysis of Dans le leurre du seuil, asserting that Bonnefoy's verse is grandiloquent and difficult for English-speaking readers.

“Je veux que la fréquentation d'un maître me rende à moi-même; toutes les fois que je sors de chez Poussin, je sais mieux qui je suis.” I would love to apply this mot of Cézanne's to my reading of Yves Bonnefoy's new book [Dans le leurre du seuil]. If only I knew more about myself, or about him for that matter, as I put it down … But the élan with which I enter the experience is broken page by page. I am put off, simply, by the grand language—by the persistent abstractions, the rarefied metaphorical cast, the lofty tone and the difficulty of knowing, in such staginess, what...