French poet and publisher, born on 6 March 1924 in Castres (Tarn), died in 2013.
Life
At the Liberation, Gaston Puel met Joë Bousquet, André Breton and René Char, with whom he corresponded. He took part in the activities of the Surrealist group from 1947, then drew away from it in 1950 while remaining on good terms with Breton.
As much a typographer as a poet, he set up his own printing workshop and in 1961 founded the Éditions de La Fenêtre ardente. There he published Pierre Albert-Birot, Joë Bousquet, René Char, Pierre-André Benoit, Jean Grenier, Pierre Gabriel and Jean Malrieu, and launched a collection of artists’ books with contributions from Jean Arp, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Jean Dubuffet, Raoul Ubac and Staritsky.
In 1971, at the University of Maryland in the United States, he led two seminars, one devoted to René Char, the other to Claude Simon.
The work
Gaston Puel is the author of some thirty collections of poems and several essays, including a study of Lucien Becker published in 1962 in Seghers’ “Poètes d’aujourd’hui” series. His poetry received the Prix Max-Jacob. Part of his archive is held at the Bibliothèque littéraire Jacques Doucet in Paris.