Poetry. Translated from the French by Lee Fahnestock. Francis Ponge's VEGETATION is a short grouping of pieces originally published in his book Le Parti Pris des Choses in 1942. Interested in the "copulation of things and words," Ponge aimed to bring a materiality of language to surface. Lee Fahnestock is a critic and translator who has contributed to a new version of Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and completed a later work of Ponge's in translation, "The Making of the Pre."