This was the beginning of a body of work that has been pursued on various levels. First, the writing of poetry itself, which represents both the principal area of research and the force directing all the other kinds of writing. A dozen works have appeared, including the masterwork Dans le leurre du seuil (In the Lure of the Threshold) (1975) and the recent Les Planches courbes (The Curved Planks) (2001). Next, a philosophical reflection on the act of writing, which has been pursued in a vast number of essays and interviews, collected in such volumes as L’Improbable (1959), Un Rêve fait à Mantoue (1967), Le Nuage rouge (1977), La Vérité de parole (1988), Entretiens sur la poésie (1990), Sous l’horizon du langage (2002). This reflection is based on a consideration of some of the great works of poetry and of painting, the latter viewed by Bonnefoy as another form of poetry. Bonnefoy has done studies not only of Nerval, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud, but also of Shakespeare and Leopardi, as well as of painters of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. He has written on Poussin, Delacroix, Giacometti, without mentioning the many contemporary artists with whom he has published a number of illustrated versions of his works. Bonnefoy’s inquiries into the nature of poetry led to his election to the Collège de France in 1981. He has translated a number of poets, including Donne, Keats, Leopardi, Yeats, and above all Shakespeare, a dozen of whose plays Bonnefoy has translated into French, with a critical essay accompanying each translation. He is the editor of the Dictionnaire des mythologies (1981; English translation: University of Chicago Press, 1991). Bonnefoy has also written a number of prose-poems that he calls récits en rêve , or dream-narratives, that seek the origin of poetry in the unconscious and imagine existence from a non-conceptual perspective. Of similar importance and nature is the autobiographical work, L’Arrière-pays (The Hinterland) (1972). Bonnefoy is presently at work on an essay on Goya. His current poetic projects involve a consideration of the relation of poetry to theater.

Publications
Du mouvement et de l1immobilité de Douve, 1953
Hier régnant désert, 1958
Pierre écrite, 1964
Dans le leurre du seuil, 1975
Ce qui fut sans lumière, 1987
Début et fin de la neige, 1991
La vie errante, 1993
Les planches courbes, Mercure de France, 2001 (tous au Mercure de France et dans la collection Poésie-Gallimard)
Keats et Leopardi, Mercure de France, 2000.
Le coeur-espace 1945, 1961, Farrago, 2001


Prose
L1Improbable, Mercure de France, 1959
Arthur Rimbaud, Le Seuil, 1961
Un rêve fait à Mantoue, Mercure de France, 1967
Rome, 1630, Flammarion, 1970
L1Arrière-pays, Skira, 1972 (Gallimard, 1998)
Le Nuage rouge, Mercure de France, 1977
Entretiens sur la poésie, Mercure de France, 1981
Récits en rêve, Mercure de France, 1987. Aussi en Poésie-Gallimard, sous le titre Rue Traversière.
La vérité de parole, Mercure de France, 1988
Alberto Giacometti, biographie d1une oeuvre, Flammarion, 1991
Dessin, couleur et lumière, Mercure de France, 1995.
Théâtre et poésie: Shakespeare et Yeats, Mercure de France, 1998
Destins et lieux de l1image, Le Seuil, 1999
La Communauté des traducteurs, Press. Univ. de Strasbourg, 2000
L1enseignement et l1exemple de Leopardi, William Blake, 2001
Le théâtre des enfants, récits, William Blake et Cie
André Breton à l1avant de soi, essai, Farrago
Remarques sur le regard, essais, Calmann-Lévy, 2002
Sous l1horizon du langage, essais, Mercure de France, 2002.
Le nom du roi d1Asiné, essai, Virgile, 2003.
Nombreuses traductions de Shakespeare (Hamlet, Macbeth, Le roi Lear, Roméo et Juliette, Jules César, Le Conte d1hiver, la Tempête, Antoine etCléopâtre, Othello, Comme il vous plaira, etc.) et de poèmes de Yeats.
Edition du Dictionnaire des mythologies et des religions des sociétéstraditionnelles et du monde antique (Flammarion, 1981)