The Year in Poetry 2019: Crossing Boundaries - Maryann De Julio The French Review, Volume 94, Number 1, October 2020, pp. 53-65 (Article) ...

The Year in Poetry 2019: Crossing Boundaries
   Maryann De Julio

   The French Review, Volume 94, Number 1, October 2020, pp. 53-65 (Article)

   Published by Johns Hopkins University Press
   DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/tfr.2020.0010

        For additional information about this article
        https://muse.jhu.edu/article/766986

[ Access provided at 13 Jul 2022 21:58 GMT with no institutional affiliation ]

THE FRENCH REVIEW, Vol. 94, No. 1, October 2020   Printed in U.S.A.

The Year in Poetry 2019:
Crossing Boundaries

    by Maryann De Julio

We lost Emmanuel Hocquard (1940–2019), Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932–
2019), and Antoine Emaz (1955–2019) last year, Hocquard in January, Bancquart
in February, and Emaz in March, but they leave their mark on French-language
poetry. Emaz’s Sans place was published, together with James Sacré’s Je s’en va, by
Éditions Méridianes, in their “Duo” collection, such that these two separate works
respond to the particular emotion and the individual reflection on crossing
boundaries invited by each. Bancquart had two collections published in 2019, one
by Gallimard, Terre énergumène et autres poèmes, which collects poems from
previous collections, Dans le feuilletage de la terre (1994), Verticale du secret (2007),
and Terre énergumène (2009), and adds a preface by Aude Préta-de Beaufort; and
one by Castor Astral, Toute minute est première, which also collects previous poems
from Terre énergumène and Verticale du secret, as well as from Avec la mort, quartier
d’orange entre les dents (2005), Violente vie (2012), Mots de passe (2014), Qui vient
de loin (2016), Tracé du vivant (2017), and Figures de la terre (2017), while adding
inédits, Tout derniers poèmes (2018). The preface by Claude Ber acknowledges
collaboration with Bancquart on Toute minute est première and the profound sad-
ness of its completion without her. The last line in the last previously unpublished
poem in the volume sums up the music and the mortality in crossing boundaries
that is inherently blissful in Bancquart’s writing: “Ah, serre-moi tant que tu peux,
musicien. Tu as rempli de caresses mon existence qui s’en va” (208).
    Hocquard’s poems are all about mapping distances and bridging difference
through translation, so it is fitting that we should find a good number of transla-
tions and bilingual anthologies published this year in 2019. Femmes poètes du
monde arabe by Maram al-Masri, who prepared the anthology and provided most
of the translations, is organized by country: Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi
Arabia, Bahrain, United Arab Emirates, Abu Dhabi, Qatar, Oman, Yemen, Jordan,
Palestine, Egypt, Sudan, Libya, Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, and Mauritania. The
anthology includes poems with traditional themes of love, freedom, war, and
peace, composed in accordance with formal poetic structures as well as more
modern ones that deconstruct any codified versification. Language is often heavily

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54                                                             FRENCH REVIEW 94.1

marked by the culture of place and the gender of the author, as, for example in “Je
suis le poème au toucher doux,” by the Lebanese poet Violette Abu Jalad: “Je suis
le poème bédouin / d’un charme malin / mes doigts brodés de séduction / Les
chansons dansent au rythme de mon corps / L’homme me méconnaît / descendante
de la sagesse / Je suis la femme poème / Je suis la coupe trompeuse / avec des ailes
de rébellion j’ai pu voler” (37–38). The image of the niqab appears in “Enfance,”
by Fatma Al-Shidi (Oman): “comme les oiseaux qui déchirent le niqab du vent”
(99); the tchador in “Mais l’horloge continue à tourner suspendue à ses aiguilles,”
by Nabilan Al-Zubaïr (Yemen): “Qu’est-ce qu’elle va faire l’obscurité dans les rues /
qui ne tournent pas vers le sud ou le nord / et qui n’enlève pas son tchador” (105);
and the oud instrument in “Le Maure,” by Nathalie Handal (Palestine): “Un oud,
un violon, une guitare” (126). But the anthology also includes poems that speak
to a current virtual reality that has infiltrated a mythic past. In “La paix virtuelle,”
the Syrian poet Nadia Menzali evokes the gaming nature of youth’s relation to war:
“ils sont très pris par un jeu / comme s’ils venaient de le découvrir / ses rôles sont
simples: / des poitrines nues / des armées / et des balles” (20). The Iraqi poet
Dumia Mihail rewrites the Orpheus myth in “Le regard d’Orphée,” rethinking
the power of the male gaze and recontextualizing the space of male and female
intimacy such that responsibility is shared and exchange is equal: “Et s’il ne l’avait
pas tuée de son regard? / S’ils étaient tous les deux dans la cuisine / à préparer un
café / ou à parler de la guerre qui ne finit pas” (59). In one of the last poems in the
anthology, “Texte ressemblant à mai,” by Mouna Ouafik (Morocco), we find the
sentiment that prevails throughout the collection, that voices be heard, difference
be recognized, and violence against self and other cease: “Un jour, je lirai mes textes
au Royal Albert Hall / Et un homme, au dernier rang, me regardera / Il ne comprend
pas l’arabe / n’a jamais entendu parler des Arabes / et ne fait pas de différences
entre eux / Mais il est présent dans le théâtre pour la nécessité existentielle dans
mon texte, dans mon rêve, et dans ma tête” (208–09).
     Interludes poétiques de Palestine is a bilingual Arabic-French anthology of 18
contemporary Palestinian poets, selected by Anas Alaili, with translations by
Mohammed El Amraoui (Samira Negrouche translated poems by Nathalie Handal,
from English, and Jean Migrenne translated poems, from English, by Fady Joudeh),
and images by the painter Vladimir Tamari. The anthology represents five years of
encounters with the French public, organized by the Institut culturel franco-
palestinien (2013–2017), and appears in the Bacchanales series (#61—Feb. 2019),
sponsored by the Maison de la poésie Rhône-Alpes.
     Though the political context for these poems is transformed into the simple
details of daily living, the poets do not permit us to forget the resistance and prayer
offered by those who survive. We overhear, and are distanced from, the voice of
“la dame qui est dans le tableau” (43) in “Les oranges fugueuses,” by Mohamed

The Year in Poetry 2019                                                              55

Aldirawi, because she comes to us as a subject in a painting, whose title, we suspect,
is the poem’s: “Mon Dieu, Dieu des oranges fugueuses / laisse-moi le temps de rire /
une fois ou deux fois / entre cette guerre / et la guerre / qui suivra sous peu” (43).
Distance is directly evoked in “Une fois Paris,” the English-language poem (with
French translation) by Nathalie Handal: “Home is farther than us - / orange
blossoms, olives and coffee” (98). But poetry turns distance into language that we
can understand: “Inshallah, you say, à bientôt. / Inshallah, I say, yes, the land speaks
Arabic” (100). Another English language poem (with French translation), “Twice
a River,” by Fady Joudeh, attends to those who have been displaced as he attempts,
with unexpected line breaks, to cure us of our inability to recognize difference
in others as our own: “Don’t believe the sound of the sea / in a seashell believe the
sea / the endless trope and don’t say / Much about another’s language / learn to love
it / While observing silence / for the dead and the living in it” (144).
     Every year the Printemps des Poètes, launched in 1999 by Jack Lang, Emmanuel
Hoog, and André Velter to promote poetry, especially through the voice of contem-
porary poets, works with a publisher to put out an anthology linked to the theme
of its festival. In 2019, Castor Astral published the anthology Pour avoir vu un soir
la beauté passer: 62 poètes d’aujourd’hui (Nauleau). We find a number of previously
unpublished poems in the anthology from authors such as Marie-Claire Bancquart,
Nicole Brossard, Antoine Emaz, Guy Goffette, Jean-Michel Maulpoix, Bernard
Noël, Jacques Roubaud, James Sacré, and Jean-Luc Steinmetz. Emblematic of the
year 2019’s theme, “beauty,” chosen to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Le
Printemps des poètes, Nicole Brossard’s poem, “Le titre est ailleurs,” names beauty
as the poet’s experience of the creative impulse: “la beauté est avant la réalité / ses
collisions de mots concrets / l’inimaginable soudain / du poème déversé dans le
temps” (47).
     Other publications by Castor Astral in 2019 include the bilingual anthology
Poésie néerlandaise contemporaine, with a preface by Victor Schiferli; Daniel Biga’s
Il n’y a que la vie, anthologie personnelle, 1962–2017, with a preface by François
Heusbourg; Jean-Luc Steinmetz’s 28 ares de vivre, with pen and ink drawings by
Pierre Zanzucchi; and Thomas Vinau’s C’est un beau jour pour ne pas mourir. Poésie
néerlandaise contemporaine presents a varied selection of poems from writers
alive today. Anneke Brassinga (born 1948) and Benno Barnard (born 1954), first
published in the 1980s, are essayists and translators, as well as poets. Brassinga has
translated Proust and Nabokov, among others, and Barnard has translated W.H.
Auden. Tsead Bruinja (born 1974) is the current national poet of the Netherlands.
Among the younger poets, the anthology features Radna Fabias (born 1983), Lieke
Marsman (born 1990), Simone Atangana Bekono (born 1991), and Marieka Lucas
Rijneveld (born 1991), all of whom address questions of gender and sexual identity,
and the current political situation. Biga’s personal anthology, Il n’y a que la vie,

56                                                             FRENCH REVIEW 94.1

samples his poetry “migrante et migratoire, qui accueille tous les mots, toutes les
langues et nationalités, toutes les idées contradictories” (10). Like Biga, Steinmetz
equates poetry with living: “Tout ce que promènent les caprices du chemin / se
recueille dans l’orbe d’un œil / ou le rectangle d’une page” (19). In 28 ares de vivre,
which gives the volume its title, he plays on the word “ares” (homonym for “art”)
to allude to the poet’s inability to distinguish between life’s adventure and the
expression of it. In Legs, 86 stanzas written in octosyllabic verse, homage to
François Villon’s Testament, which closes the volume, Steinmetz bequeaths the
reader his own personal myth. Vinau’s C’est un beau jour pour ne pas mourir
consists of 365 poems, to be read one a day, written between 2009 and 2019, notably
on his blog, . Vinau’s poems capture the immediate,
incorporating fragments from the everyday, and fresh, precise observation into
his poetic practice, as in the poem “Brautigan,” homage to the American poet and
novelist: “Aujourd’hui par hasard / j’ai marché un peu dans la paix / pendant que
le matin me caressait les poils des bras / j’ai marché longtemps / dans ce poème /
où Richard me tenait la main” (29).
     La petite anthologie de la poésie française, by Jean-Joseph Julaud, organizes its
selection of poems by theme, including themes of love, tenderness, desire, passion,
humor, nostalgia, and romanticism, from poets that range in chronology from
Marie de France (1154–1189) to Cécile Coulon, born in Clermont-Ferrand in
1990. Particularly useful is the section “Cent poètes de naguère et d’aujourd’hui,”
which entices us to become acquainted with poetry from those we may have over-
looked or forgotten: “N’oubliez pas Ariane Dreyfus, née en 1958, qui aime garder
dans l’oreille la référence au phrasé ‘naturel’, à ne pas confondre avec la correction
grammaticale” (244).
     In Quel avenir pour la cavalerie? Une histoire naturelle du vers français, Jacques
Réda uses a military trope to trace the history of linguistic and geographical shift
in the evolution of French prosody. He uses the rhythm of the French poetic line
to demonstrate the harmonics of oscillation between order and disorder, balance,
and chaos. Citing verse throughout to make his argument (La Fontaine, Racine,
Voltaire, Rimbaud, Mallarmé, Claudel, Valéry, Cendrars, Reverdy, and Denis Roche,
for example), he uses Apollinaire (Polish), Heredia (Cuban), Moréas (Greek),
Milosz (Lithuanian), Senghor (Senegalese), Verhaeren and Maeterlinck (Flemish),
Tzara and Voronca (Rumanian), Schéhadé (Lebanese), Lubin (Armenian), and
Césaire (West Indian) to call attention to the enriched tonalities of French verse,
all attributed by Réda to the various linguistic origins of these poets, though familiar
with French. Looking to the future, Réda predicts a français polyglotte, result of
economic, climatic, and political immigration, whose verse is undetermined.
     Réda’s linguistic acrobatics in Éloge du champignon, with drawings by Philippe
Hélénon, recalls the possibilities of French verse whose history Réda has chronicled

The Year in Poetry 2019                                                              57

in Quel avenir pour la cavalerie? A delightful and playful riff on the word
champignon, Éloge du champignon uses rhyme and inflection to tell a story:

    En automne, Lisette allait
                    aux champignons,
    Par prudence, toujours avec
                    deux compagnons.
    Un seul sans doute aurait bousculé
                    son chignon.
    Mais d’un autre, il pouvait redouter
                    quelque gnon. (17)

      Chemins faisant, poèmes 1974–2014, by Philippe Denis, with a preface by John
E. Jackson, contains, coincidentally, a series of brief texts, Mushrooms, dated 5
Sept.–20 Nov., with many gaps between dates, which essentially recalls a poem by
Sylvia Plath, Mushrooms, and Denis’s efforts at its translation. Foraging for
mushrooms, “bon pied, bon oeil ... par les ravines et les chemins creux” (153),
resembles Denis’s early poetic practice: a flair for sensing what is not always where
it is expected, naming what may prove fatal. Poems in the manner of Francis Ponge
(Les papillons), or dedicated to André du Bouchet (Cahiers d’ombre), and to
Jacques Dupin (Exergues) recognize poets who have influenced Denis’s voice, as
does Denis’s naming those whom he has translated, notably Emily Dickinson.
      Jean-Pierre Verheggen, especially known for his collaboration with Christian
Prigent and Jean-Luc Steinmetz on the avant-garde journal TXT in the 1970s, has
two previously published works, Gisella (2004) and L’idiot du vieil-âge (2006), now
reedited by Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, accompanied by an interview with Éric
Clémens. Gisella consists of eight discrete parts, plus an initial text whose title
“La Djissparition” evokes the death of Verheggen’s wife, 1950s Italian cinema
star Gisella Fusani, whom he affectionately called “Djiss.” In the invented word
“Djissparition,” combination of “Djiss” and “Disparition,” we recognize the poet’s
antics and his love of languages. For Verheggen, each section is a “chant” for Gisella,
a love letter, interspersed with photographs, an expression of the poet’s grief and
passion unbound. In L’idiot du vieil-âge, Verheggen tells us that “Il faut de l’idiotie”
(261), which for him is “une façon de se dissimuler par rapport à ce qu’on peut
attendre de quelqu’un” (261). Doubling down on the notion, he shows us, inanity
can also be something joyful: “L’imbécillité avec deux ailes! C’est incroyable qu’on
lui ait mis deux ailes: elle peut s’envoler!” (261).
      In his interview with Clémens, Verheggen talks about growing up with standard
French and a patois: “J’ai vécu paysan, comme on dit souvent, avec une double
langue entre le wallon et la scolarité” (256). Les poètes du nord, edited, presented,
and annotated by Patrice Locmant, makes available a lost conference given by

58                                                                 FRENCH REVIEW 94.1

Paul Verlaine, along with a poem, and two previously unpublished letters, which
make similar claims for poets and artists in late nineteenth-century France.
Verlaine defends the regional idiosyncrasies of the patois from France’s northern
provinces “contre l’unité factice, forcée, contre l’absorption par le préjugé jacobin
et monarchique de toutes les forces intellectuelles et morales françaises” (25). In
the reappropriation of provincial dialect, Verlaine rediscovers linguistic and
aesthetic material that will influence the images, color, and musicality of his verse.
Verlaine especially praises the poetry of Marceline Desbordes-Valmore, compatriot
from Douai, whose poems he read at Le Procope, in Paris, 29 March 1894, on the
occasion of his conference for the Société Rosati de France, one of the literary
circles that supported regionalism against the growing centralization of the arts
in France.
     Esther Tellermann, author of the collection of essays Nous ne sommes jamais
assez poète (2014), has published Un versant l’autre, which continues her dialogue
with language and ancient texts where material world and subjective word are
fragments of something greater. There is music—murmur and song—in Teller-
mann’s often cryptic verse, just as architecture, painting, sculpture, theatre, and
dance leave their trace in the work. Un versant l’autre can be read as four cycles
of texts, with only an entirely blank page and, then, a change in verb tense,
emphasized by adverb and conjunction, to mark their separation. The first cycle
confronts physical extinction and moral exhaustion with resilience: “Mais
revinrent l’air / avec le tranchant / de l’arête / monts que grise / la mémoire / quand
plis ont révélé / l’autre bord / sel a transmis / la transparence” (18). The second is
elegiac in tone with various exclamations of “ô” throughout: “Faudra-t-il /
enfermer vos os dans / des vasques de marbre? / Puis fondre l’or / ceindre l’espace /
dans les parois? / Peindre / ce qui reste de l’âme? / Ô rejoindre / l’île / où je te laisse /
au bord?” (75). The third affirms the poet’s role: “Là je chercherai / ta parole / un
lac qui attend entre / plusieurs bords / composerai ta / palette /sombre /déferai ta
rumeur / j’inventerai / le fil / qui te prolonge /au-delà / une page ouverte / des
encore / et des pluies” (97). And the last cycle reaffirms the poet’s work in solidarity
with others: “Vous serez / à nouveau / avec vous j’invente / des ravages des / fumées
sur les / crépuscules / des pieds cerclés / d’anneaux / nous recommencerons /
déplierons / des rubans de symboles” (140). Tellermann suggests a mythic world
long gone in war-torn cities of Syria and Lebanon, once inhabited by river-gods
Oronte (9) and Alphée (21), and the constant violent and necessary regeneration
of language and our physical world. “Écume,” image that closes Un versant l’autre,
evokes the possibility of memory and survival, and the transitory beauty of their
expression.
     In Le baiser du temps, Aksinia Mihaylova’s second book of poetry written
directly in French, which won the Prix Max Jacob (2020), the Bulgarian poet and
translator features the female body to respond to global and personal concerns

The Year in Poetry 2019                                                              59

similar to Tellermann’s. Genèse, three-part prologue to the three sections of Le
baiser du temps: Ombres noyées, Le pleur des femmes, and Le tisonnier des voyelles,
begins with the body whose source is resolutely female from time immemorial:
“Il émerge / des eaux utérines, / pousse un sanglot, / la première gorgée d’air /
ressuscite la mémoire / de vies précédentes” (9). Mihaylova believes that in poetry,
“il faut rendre au monde le sens du verbe biblique,” and that the poet must make
the reader feel the energy put into the poem’s making . For Mihaylova, “l’homme est un pays / dont les
frontières sont versatiles” (79), so we must fill our relations with love and discover
our own inner landscapes: “Si tu continues à explorer les plaies / dans ce rectangle
brillant / que tu nommes ta patrie, / tu resteras à jamais une émigrée / pour les
paysages au fond de toi” (79).
     Anna Ayanoglou was born and raised in Paris. She spent three years in Estonia
and Lithuania, and she now lives in Brussels where she hosts a radio program
dedicated to international poetry, with poems read in their original language and
in translation. Le fil des traversées is her first collection of poetry. Like Mihaylova,
Ayanoglou explores different landscapes, crossing borders and boundaries. She
tells a carefully organized love story—prologue, epilogue, and two interludes
(intermède) of two and four poems each—occurring in foreign places, especially
the Baltics (Vilnius, Riga, Valga, and Valka, for example), with those whom she
has forged deep connections. Ayanoglou can speak their language but with a
different accent and in a different rhythm: “Au retour, le sourire du chauffeur /
face à ton russe incontinent / Des cahots dans la langue – l’ivresse / ou bien la nuit,
tu t’ébrouais dedans” (13).
     In Complainte du mangeur solitaire, Julien Syrac uses a poetic form whose
origins can be traced to medieval times to have us accompany him on the pere-
grinations of the poet in a consumer society. Seeking community in an urban
setting, or just the dream of romance, a nice dinner with his girlfriend, the image
of the everyman poet contrasts sharply with what Syrac’s evocative title cannot
help but bring to mind, Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Les rêveries du promeneur solitaire.
Whereas Rousseau takes sustenance from his solitary wanderings in nature, Syrac’s
complaint equates solitude with loneliness and reduced economic circumstances.
Tercets, inspired, Syrac tells us, by Dante’s Divine Comedy, are written in six-
syllable lines, without Dante’s terza rima, providing a rhythm of fits and starts for
the contemporary poet: “Le mangeur solitaire: / moi, debout, attablé - / nomade
sédentaire” (11).
     Tahar Ben Jelloun begins Douleur et lumière du monde with the long and
doleful poem La soif du mal, written in response to the horrific event that occurred
on the night of 16 Dec. 2018 in Imlil, a village in the Haut Atlas, in the province
of Al Haouz, near Marrakech, where two Scandinavian tourists, Maren Ueland,
28-year-old Norwegian, and Louisa Vesterager Jespersen, 24-year-old Dane,

60                                                            FRENCH REVIEW 94.1

camping in the mountains, had their throats cut by a band of terrorists: “Ils sortent
d’un livre qu’ils se sont approprié sans avoir appris à lire / Qu’importe le savoir la
science et le rire” (11). The tone set, Ben Jelloun writes “Poèmes peintures,” 90
short, bloc-like poems (plus the longer “Des mots qui réparent,” poem 91), in
which he tries to find the right words to color our world: “Certains mots / Sont
doués de vie / Ils tombent / Dans un pot de couleurs / Vives et agitées / Ils sortent
habillés / Quand la solitude suinte / Sur les murs / Alors ils deviennent / Une pluie
solaire” (32). What counts for Ben Jelloun is our dignity and our freedom. In a
separate section, Les statues, Ben Jelloun writes a long poem in response to the
image of a grieving Algerian mother, “la Madone musulmane,” as named by the
international press: “Madone sculptée dans la peur / Elle pleure son enfant disparu”
(119). The final section, Questions et évidence, puts the world on trial, and con-
cludes with “Beauté amère,” numbered into six parts reminiscent of wise proverbs:
“Vivre: habiter la lumière de l’enfance / Résister: ne jamais s’habituer à la douleur
du monde” (139).
     Like Tellermann, Christophe Langlois believes in regeneration, not necessarily
a regeneration of language and our physical world, but rather an ontological
regeneration. In Seconde innocence, which won the Prix International de Poésie
Francophone Yvan Goll 2019, Langlois’s poem “Je reviens” probes doubt and poses
the question: “Je reviens mais est-ce / Que tu reviendras aussi? / Est-ce que tu
voudras / Une deuxième vie? / Une nouvelle chance?” (74). Langlois encourages a
kind of poetic listening in which we seek out the voice in a poem rather than its
meaning: “C’était une voix et non des mots” (105). The concluding poem, “Tomber
de haut,” suggests that the poet believes in transcendence rather than language
per se: “Le poème cherche en tous sens de tous côtés / Quelle architecture le
contient” (115).
     In Bon pour accord, Claire Rengade writes a series of poems that resemble
interior monologues addressed to a lover. Boundaries between the mental or
spiritual and the corporal are eliminated, as are distinctions between self and other,
though the grammar of subject, object, and possessive pronoun allows us to discern
desire and consummation in these erotically charged texts: “tu peux me penser et
ne pas me dire / mais il faut me penser sinon je n’existe pas / anticipe-moi / je suis
dans ta bouche avant de dire / prends la phrase où elle est / reviens sur moi / qu’est-
ce qu’on écoute?”
     Register ranges from the eloquent to the technical: “recitativo / ensemble c’est /
chacun sa voix pas trop fort / comme ça on entendra bien ce qui se passe autour /
très près du texte qui est sur une note quand même / la musique.” What is intensely
private (“je te paraphe au caillou près”) is also universal (“le corps de tout le
monde / parle la même langue”). In Notes, at the end of the volume, Rengade tells
us that capitalization and periods were intentionally left out in this unpaginated
work, which contributes to the fluidity of our reading, but makes it harder for us

The Year in Poetry 2019                                                                61

to determine where one text ends and the next begins, adding to the general
impression of dissolution, but also harmony, throughout.
     La jonction, by Martin Rueff, takes its title from the district in Geneva where
the Arve river and the Rhône meet. Rueff is a specialist on Jean-Jacques Rousseau,
and writes on Michel Deguy, Baudelaire, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Michel Foucault,
Cesare Pavese, and Jean Starobinski, among others. Equally active as a translator,
notably of Italo Calvino, Rueff also co-edits the journal Po&Sie. La jonction, which
collects L’amer fait peau neuve, “une rêverie concertée sur le bleu et les bleus” (9),
and L’enrouement d’Actéon (Noms de chiens), with the long, and title text, La
jonction, placed between them, is a vessel for Rueff ’s erudition and his talents as a
translator and poet.
     For Rueff, “écrire de la poésie a affaire avec la traduction” (France Culture, 6
Sept. 2019), and, in fact, parts of La jonction approximate translations of Italian
lines Rueff includes in the text: “Trattenerti, volessi anche, non posso / tu vois j’écris
la Jonction pendant que nous flottons” (79). Elsewhere, he invokes Ovid’s Meta-
morphoses to explain further: “come due canali, due lingue, / due corpi / in nova fert
animus mutates dicere formas / qui convergent visages happés, / rejoints conjoints
disjoints / tu vois j’écris en deux langues / le poème de la Jonction / et des fleuves
limistrophes / qui courent côte à côte / et jouent à touche-touche / sous le grand préau /
du soir au matin / sur les marelles mues / en sens inverse / ce n’est pas ici / la même
route qui monte et qui / descend” (78). L’enrouement d’Actéon reinvents the myth of
the hunter Actéon, transformed into a stag, devoured by his own hounds, after
having gazed upon the beautiful Diane bathing. In poems for Diane, Echo, the
hunter, and the stag, as well as for the many named hounds, Rueff recreates their
persona, the transformed Actéon, hunter, now hunted: “Les monts chéris d’Actéon /
retentissent alors de sa plainte / il s’agenouille et tourne de tous côtés / une gueule
muette” (192). At once contemporary and classic, poetry and prose, Rueff ’s work
continually crosses boundaries: “La jonction est la logique unifiante / des séparés /
et / réciproquement / ce qui sépare ce qui s’unit” (80). In passing, Rueff pays tribute
to Emaz, Venaille, Welles, Philip Glass (Philippe Glace), Turner, Millais, Poussin,
Muybridge, Artaud, Caillois, Valéry, Descartes, Laforgue, and others. Sometimes,
he cites their work directly, as is the case with Gertrude Stein and Francis Ponge,
or quotes from the poet in an epigraph, as with William Carlos Williams.
     In Idéogrammes acryliques, Cécile Mainardi explains that her poems were
initially inspired by Guillaume Apollinaire’s “Idéogrammes lyriques,” but that her
subsequent treatment of them was more aligned with the treatment of acrylic
fibers, that is, manufactured as a filament, then cut and spun, with the capacity to
mimic properties of other fibers. Also worth keeping in mind, “acrylique” is the
anagram for “âc(re)” + “lyrique.” Though now titled “Idéogrammes acryliques,”
Mainardi tells us:

62                                                              FRENCH REVIEW 94.1

     Le lyrique n’en est pas
     pour autant évacué. Il lui
     reste la plupart de ses lettres,
     et le parfum d’une dyslexie
     volontaire. Il se mélange
     à de l’âcreté. Un lyrisme
     âcre qui propose sa figuration
     mentale et ses spéculations
     optiques à la place de
              son chant.

Idéogrammes acryliques is composed of ninety rectangle-shaped texts, with an
occasional line drawing superimposed over the text (skater, dancer, gymnast,
martial arts figure, male/female couple, camera, reel of film, loud speaker, etc.).
The drawing informs our reading, now both literal and visual. Mainardi
experiments with language and how metamorphosis of phoneme, lexicon, syntax,
and grammar may turn into a poem. She invents nomenclature to articulate
the processes she puts language through in order to express her experience. She
borrows from other media, and other linguistic systems, in her search for expres-
sion: “les sphrases ne seraient / pas des antiphrases ni des / phrases en négatif mais /
des phrases frappées par / un sens privatif comme / c’est par exemple le cas / en
italien dans le mot / “s-vestirsi” se dés- habiller / des phrases ainsi capables / d’être
traversées par cer- / tains mots qui n’y sont pas / immédiatement lisibles” (21).
“Dix situations très subjectives de cataprose” closes Idéogrammes acryliques.
“Cataprose” is a term invented by Mainardi: “Il désigne- / rait une manière d’écrire
telle / que la production d’un pre- / mier énoncé (plutôt en prose) / se répercute
conséquemment / dans une série d’autres énon- / cés (plutôt en vers).”
     Like Mainardi, Sophie Loizeau experiments with language in Les loups, using
wolves as a motif to give voice to our primitive origins and fantasms: “je m’assouvis
du chant qu’ils font / ils chantent quelque chose: ce que c’est / composite où voix
d’enfants et vieilles voix / disent cela tout en chantant / hurlent d’aucun pense et
sûrement que c’est / un bouquet de voix coupées” (10).
     Loizeau uses animal species and natural sites, which she names Les contrées, to
move between conscious and unconscious forces, known and unknown worlds.
Sioux tribal practices, with breaks in rhythm and syntax, conjure forth rituals of
purification and commemoration, recalling progeny and ancestor, collective
dreams, fears, and impulses. Brackets, used in punctuation, function as protection
for the narrator, or record second thoughts, left unsaid: “pour une femme / cette
vérité du sauvage je me risque / à la vivre dans des bosquets / et l’ [insécurité] que
je sens n’est pas / le fait des bêtes” (15). The variety of typeface and size—bold

The Year in Poetry 2019                                                              63

and italics—opens the margins of the text to a plurality of voices, animal and human.
Presence is intimate and palpable.
     Raw and intense, Eugène Savitzkaya tells us in his 2019 preface to Les couleurs
de boucherie (previously published in 1980): “Ce livre a été écrit en chantant
comme les loups, la tête, le thorax et le ventre parcourus de souffles énergétiques,
dans un halètement saccadé, l’expiration étant chaque fois le temps fort de la
respiration” (7). Savitzkaya’s writing is fearless, a torrent of words and images that
makes every sensation immediate. He does not so much use “les loups” as a motif,
but rather takes on their attributes.
     In an interview, Lilian Giraudon tells us that the title of her book, Le travail de
la viande, is a provocation: “Le poète travaille dans la langue et ça se mange [...] ce
n’est pas un travail très propre [ça saigne] on peut trancher dedans.” For Giraudon,
the poet works on “des carcasses,” as in le travail de la viande, whose structure is
articulated in seven parts: “La fille aux mains coupées”; “Mouvement des acces-
soires”; “Oreste pesticide”; “Fonction Meyerhold”; “Cadavre Reverdy”; “L’activité
du poème n’est pas incessante”; “B7: un attentat attentive.”
     Le carnaval des poètes is a topsy-turvy world in which Serge Pey invokes a vast
array of poets and artists through 468 pages of stanzas, organized and numbered
into 265 poems. Pey tells us from many different angles what a poem is and what
a poet does: “un poète / sur une table de boucher / opère des poèmes” (89). But in
the end, poetry is elusive: “Les lignes de départ / et les lignes d’arrivée / du poème /
ne sont jamais à l’endroit / où elles se trouvent” (468). Ludic in nature, carnivals
involve masquerade, processions, music, dancing, but their excess is prelude to
deprivation and judgment: “La poésie à coups de marteau / enfonce des clowns sur
une croix” (468).
     In Le chant du monde dans la poésie française contemporaine, Michel Collot
observes that in the last decades of the twentieth century, many poets felt the need
to strengthen their ties to the world and to their readers, implementing, he tells us,
what Édouard Glissant names a “poétique de la relation” (12). Collot’s project is
to trace the main stages and the various tendencies that he sees in French poetry
since 1960, especially highlighting those trends since the 1980s towards a renewed
lyricism and a greater openness to the world. We see these tendencies in those
poets mentioned above whose crossing many different boundaries exhibits vigorous
commitment to poetic invention and community.

Kent State University (OH)

                                   Works Cited
Alaili, Anas, éd. Interludes poétiques de Palestine. Temps des cerises, 2019.
Al-Masri, Maram. Femmes poètes du monde arabe. Temps des cerises, 2019.

64                                                               FRENCH REVIEW 94.1

Ayanoglou, Anna. Le fil des traversées. Gallimard, 2019.
Bancquart, Marie-Claire. Terre énergumène et autres poèmes. Gallimard, 2019.
         . Toute minute est première. Castor Astral, 2019.
Baqué, Joël. Ruche. Éric Pesty, 2019.
Barnaud, Jean-Marie. Sous l’imperturbable clarté. Gallimard, 2019.
Ben Jelloun, Tahar. Douleur et lumière du monde. Gallimard, 2019.
Beurard-Valdoye. Flache d’Europe aimants garde-fous. Flammarion, 2019.
Biga, Daniel. Il n’y a que la vie, poèmes 1962–2017. Castor Astral, 2019.
Calas, Anne. Déesses de corrida. Flammarion, 2019.
Cheng, François. Enfin le royaume. Gallimard, 2019.
Collot, Michel. Le chant du monde dans la poésie française contemporaine. Corti, 2019.
Denis, Philippe. Chemins faisant. Bruit du temps, 2019.
Emaz, Antoine, et James Sacré. Sans place et Je s’en va. Méridianes, 2019.
Gatti, Armand. Comme battements d’ailes. Gallimard, 2019.
Giraudon, Liliane. Le travail de la viande. P.O.L, 2019.
Julaud, Jean-Joseph. La petite anthologie de la poésie française. First, 2019.
Langlois, Christophe. Seconde innocence. Gallimard, 2019.
Loizeau, Sophie. Les loups. Corti, 2019.
Mainardi, Cécile. Idéogrammes acryliques. Flammarion, 2019.
Michel, Jean-Paul. Défends-toi, beauté violente! précédé de Le plus réel est le hasard, et
     ce feu. Gallimard, 2019.
Mihaylova, Aksinia. Le baiser du temps. Gallimard, 2019.
Nauleau, Sophie, éd. Pour avoir vu un soir la beauté passer: 62 poètes d’aujourd’hui.
     Castor Astral, 2019.
Paulin, Etienne. Là. Gallimard, 2019.
Pey, Serge. Le carnaval des poètes. Flammarion, 2019.
Réda, Jacques. Quel avenir pour la cavalerie? Une histoire naturelle du vers français.
     Buchet/Chastel, 2019.
Réda, Jacques, et Philippe Hélénon. Éloge du champignon. Fata Morgana, 2019.
Rengade, Claire. Bon pour accord. Boucherie littéraire, 2019.
Roubaud, Jacques. Reverdie. L’Usage, 2019.
         . Tridents. Nous, 2019.
Rueff, Martin. La jonction. Nous, 2019.
Savitzkaya, Eugène. Les couleurs de boucherie. Flammarion, 2019.
Schiferli, Victor, éd. Poésie néerlandaise contemporaine. Castor Astral, 2019.
Steinmetz, Jean-Luc. 28 ares de vivre. Castor Astral, 2019.
Syrac, Julien. Complainte du mangeur solitaire. Gallimard, 2019.
Tarkos, Christophe. Le petit bidon et autres textes, préface de Nathalie Quintane. P.O.L,
     2019.
Tellermann, Esther. Nous ne sommes jamais assez poète. Lettre volée, 2014.
         . Un versant l’autre. Flammarion, 2019.

The Year in Poetry 2019                                                            65

Titus-Carmel, Gérard. Horizon d’attente. Tarabuste, 2019.
Verheggen, Jean-Pierre. Gisella suivi de L’idiot du vieil-âge. Communauté française de
    Belgique, 2019.
Veinstein, Alain. À n’en plus finir. Seuil, 2019.
Verlaine, Paul. Les poètes du nord. Gallimard, 2019.
Vinau, Thomas. C’est un beau jour pour ne pas mourir. Castor Astral, 2019.