How to get to Bâtiment Copernic, Université Paris Est Marne-la-Vallée > 2nd floor, room 88

Short instructions below. Long instructions “RER 101” here.

To come to the Université Paris Est Marne-La-Vallée, take the RER A4 line to the station “Noisy Champs.” You will have to purchase a special ticket Paris – Noisy Champs (you can do so in any metro station). In Paris you can board the RER A at the following train stations: Charles de Gaulle Etoile, Auber, Châtelet Les Halles, Gare de Lyon, Nation. See map of the line here.

*Châtelet Les Halles - Noisy Champs : approx. 25'.
*Gare de Lyon - Noisy Champs : approx 20'.
*Nation - Noisy Champs : approx 18'

Please board one of the front cars of the train: when you get off at Noisy Champs, you will be close to the exit leading to the University. Walk to the escalators. As you go up the escalators from the platform, take the exit located on your right. You want exit #3 "bd Newton" (see pic.)  Here’s a map of the campus.

Take Exit 3 turn right at top of elevators

As you leave the RER station, turn left, go straight. You will see the La Poste building. At the crossroads, turn right onto the avenue Ampère. 

Crossroads & beg. of Av. Ampère

Copernic bldg. / U.Paris Est MLV

Once on the avenue Ampère, you will see Piotr Kowalski's large metallic sculpture a.k.a. “the axis of the earth”. Walk to the roundabout where the structure is erected. Then make a left on boulevard Descartes. The Copernic building will be on your right. 


With Google Street View:
1. From RER Station to crossroads

View Noisy Champs RER A Station, Bd Ampère in a larger map


2. Walk past La Poste to crossroads

View Noisy Champs RER A Station, Bd Ampère in a larger map


3. At crossroads make a right

View Noisy Champs RER A Station, Bd Ampère in a larger map


4. Go straight

View Noisy Champs RER A Station, Bd Ampère in a larger map

5. Make a left at "axe de la terre" roundabout

View Noisy Champs RER A Station, Bd Ampère in a larger map 


6. Take second street on your left

View Noisy Champs RER A Station, Bd Ampère in a larger map


7. The Copernic building of the Université will be on your right.

View Noisy Champs RER A Station, Bd Ampère in a larger map



Inside Copernic...
Enter the bldg. Make a left and walk past the "Accueil".

Walk to left rear end of bldg

Walk to the rear end of the bldg, past the auditorium Maurice Gross and make a left. Walk down the corridor (see pic.) to the elevators.

Hallway leading to elevators

There are several elevators which will take you to the 2nd floor. Congratulations, you've made it! Once you exit the elevator, make a left. Room 88 will be down the hall, signs will be posted.

View Larger Map

Cole Swensen's Book of Essays *Noise that Stays Noise*

More information by clicking on cover below

Below, table of contents of Cole Swensen's book of essays

"Swensen reminds us that the old fashioned approach to extraneous (non-lyrical) data invading the text is called research." Ron Silliman on Cole Swensen's Ours/ Le Nôtre

On April 14, 2009, Ron Silliman wrote a review / essay on Cole Swensen's Ours and, more generally, on her work in relation to conceptual writing & American (& French) poetics. The essay addresses many of the issues Poets & Critics has been concerned with over the past three years.

Here's the beginning of the essay. The entire essay can be read on Ron Silliman's blog, by clicking on the icon below.

 “All conceptual writing is allegorical writing” argue Rob Fitterman & Vanessa Place in Notes on Conceptualisms, a fascinating little book with painfully small type. At the core of Cole Swensen’s Ours, published last year by the University of California Press, is the allegory of the garden, French gardens to be exact, and especially the work of André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), the “father,” to use Swensen’s term for it, “of the French formal garden.” Le Nôtre’s work most famously includes Versailles, as well as Chantilly, Saint-Cloud, Sceaux, Vaux-le-Vicomte & the Tuileries, where he himself was born, the son & grandson of royal gardeners. Le Nôtre, of course, means ours in French, but this isn’t the most important dimension of the pun tucked into the book’s title. Rather it is the logic of the garden, or of a certain type of garden, & the logic of the poem, our art. Or of a certain type of poem, the sort that Cole Swensen might be called upon to write. And beyond that, possession (or at least possessiveness) of the earth itself, such as royalty might imagine to be their “divine right.”

Cole Swensen's rich "Ours" in French: Le Nôtre, éditions José Corti, 2013

original American edition

From The University of California Press website: 

These poems are about gardens, particularly the seventeenth-century French baroque gardens designed by the father of the form, André Le Nôtre. While the poems focus on such examples as Versailles, which Le Nôtre created for Louis XIV, they also explore the garden as metaphor. Using the imagery of the garden, Cole Swensen considers everything from human society to the formal structure of poetry. She looks in particular at the concept of public versus private property, asking who actually owns a garden? A gentle irony accompanies the question because in French, the phrase "le nôtre" means "ours." Whereas all of Le Nôtre's gardens were designed and built for the aristocracy, today most are public parks. Swensen probes the two senses of "le nôtre" to discover where they intersect, overlap, or blur.

From the éditions José Corti website:

Cole SWENSEN | Le nôtre

éditions Corti, 2013

Traduit de l'anglais par Maïtreyi & Nicolas Pesquès

Troisième livre de poésie de Cole Swensen chez Corti, Le nôtre conclut ce que l'on pourrait appeler sa trilogie française (après « Si riche heure », 2007, qui traverse notre 15ème siècle en s'appuyant sur l'iconographie des Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, et après « L’Âge de verre », 2010, qui considère l'histoire du verre et de la fenêtre à la lumière de l'oeuvre de Bonnard et de quelques autres).
Le livre évoque la personne, l'œuvre et l'époque d'André Le Nôtre (1613-1700), l'inventeur du jardin à la française. C'est une déambulation attentive parmi les espaces créés de toutes pièces par notre célèbre jardinier dont les services furent très recherchés à la Cour des Grands du 17ème siècle. Et si, curieusement, tous ces espaces furent composés pour le plus grand plaisir d'une classe dominante, ils sont de nos jours presque tous devenus des jardins publics, d'où l'ironie du nom de notre héros et du titre de ce livre.
Revisitant ses principaux jardins (Vaux le Vicomte, Chantilly, Saint-Cloud, Versailles, le Luxembourg etc.) Cole Swensen en profite pour faire coulisser l'histoire et la géométrie, tailler ses vers au cordeau, ouvrir et biaiser les perspectives. Elle y affûte le charme et l'aigu de sa prosodie. Résolument contemporaine, son écriture chevauche rigueur constructive et éclats morcelés, sa tranchante élégance restant en phase avec le Grand Siècle qu'elle traverse. Cole Swensen ne manque pas d'interroger à sa façon les raisons et conséquences de ce qui fut à l'origine de l'invention du paysage, qui reste, aujourd'hui encore, profondément attachée à nos manières de regarder le monde. La fabrication de la perspective, le choix des masses et des couleurs : le monde est ainsi modelé et chacun peut alors se l'approprier comme une création domestique.

Cole Swensen in La Baule @ écrivains en bord de mer festival, July 2013

Reading, with Vincent Broqua:

   

 On Creative Writing, with François Bon, Thalia Field & Laura Kasischke - interviewed by Bernard Martin:

30.5.12 Lecture / reading Suzanne Doppelt & Cole Swensen Part 1, galerie éof, Paris

Cole Swensen and Suzanne Doppelt read for double change on the occasion of the publication of their books Gravesend and La plus grande aberration.

Cole Swensen: Difference and/or the Lack of It / De la différence et/ou de son absence : quelques réflexions sur la littérature contemporaine en France et aux États-unis.

De la différence et/ou de son absence : quelques réflexions sur la littérature contemporaine en France et aux États-unis.

Cliquez sur l'image pour accéder au texte intégral. For English version scroll down.

Please click on image to access full text.