Francis Ponge (1899-1988), born in Montpellier of old Huguenot stock, spent his early childhood in Avignon. At age ten, his family moved to Normandy, and a decade later he took up his writing career in Paris where he remained almost unknown until the publication of a volume of prose poems, Le parti pris des choses, in 1942. This, and his many subsequent publications, led to a steadily growing reputation both at home and abroad. He is now recognized as one of the finest French poets of his time and, according to the novelist Julien Gracq, "one of the surest to survive."