Day Has No Equal But the Night

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

This collection of poems, written between 1961 and 1989, is replete with
meditations on nature, solitude, war, love, aging, and the creative
process. “To write a poem,” writes Hébert at the beginning of the
volume, “is to try to bring light to something hidden. Something like
detecting an underground spring through the earth’s silence.” The
poems themselves are concerned with transformations: blood changes into
China ink, stars take on the color of soot, “willows lean over and
over / until some go under / and drown.” Translator Lola Lemire
Tostevin, a Toronto poet, novelist, and critic, has succeeded in
capturing the marvelous fluidity of this great poet.