Bishop, Michael

English

LittéRéalité (E-Journal - York University)

has herself been given at times to dwell upon existential problem morethan her residual vision but real resurgent sense of primordial grace.Gazing upon what is, respecting 'reality', is so often our individual and col-lective mode of being and leads almost fatally to feelings of void(edness)and confusion. Writing, however, for Han, remains that means of main-taining our deep ontic flow, of generating a more cosmic meditative gath-ering of self and other, of treading some real chemin d'etoiles amidst theambient darkness. Ne pensant arien thus articulates a dialectics of conceiv-able fragility and dispersal, marvel and energy - an energy that dictates ourprofusely ever upsurging "desire to live". The final poem, possibly in partan ekphrastic reflection on Marchetti's terminal encre, wonders why weallow to develop within our consciousness the less-than-perfect when, Iread, the very feasibility of creative flow is a denial of imperfection.Fran<;:oise Han's work is one of the most important feminine poeticoeuvres of the last forty years in France and merits our greater criticalattention.Jean-Michel Maulpoix. Chutes de pluie fine. Paris: Mercure de France,2002.185 pages. 15,50 Euros. ISBN 2-7152-2317-X.IT 11 he poetic voice of Je;m-Michel Maufpoix ;, among" the m",t ill,-tinctive and lyrically, ethically urgent of the past twenty or moreyears. It has tended to move towards a free-flowing yet intenselyarticulated prose manner, as here, one that spontaneously establishes itsrhythms, the music of its annotations, what Reverdy termed that personal"discipline" constantly surging forth, visceral yet informed by a justesse thatobeys no aesthetic outside of its own intuitive self-assembly. Chutes de pluiefine is something of a travel diary. "Le reel est toute ma pensee", Maulpoixwrites (13), thereby seemingly distancing himself from those "excarnating"aspects of poets such as Baudelaire, Mallarme and Rimbaud who, yet, havefrequently preoccupied his critical mind. If what he has termed, afterMallarme, un instinct de ciel continues to hover above this and other volumes,it engenders no escapism: life itself is a baroque, difficult but nearly sufficientact and place ofart; the experiences it affords, the poet merely gathers, "put[s]together" (13), collages into reciprocated offerings: "ce sont la mes histoiresd'amour: chutes ou poussees de fievre a la pointe de la plume" (49).Of course, Baudelaire and Rimbaud -like Van Gogh, quoted liminal-ly - never cease to embrace a world they were not excessively fond of andComptes rendus .:. 69thus sought to flee via differing tactics of transcendence; and Mallarme,too, must be read not only in the light of a dream of pure poetry but, too,in that light flooding his very early Sa fOsse est creusee, his Easter eggs andloisirs de la poste, his extraordinary TOmbeau pourAnatole and, ofcourse, therealised "failure" of Un coup de des. Maulpoix is explicit: "Always somewherein the universe" (53). He is -like us all- "ce point instable et vibratoire surlequel toute alterite vient jouer sa musique" (36), and if he - like us all-can experience doubt, self-derision, inadequacy and a persistent inadequa-tion of language to the lived, equally can he - perhaps unlike us all, but,unpretentiously (: we are beyond poetic prophetism), fOr us all, should wecare to want (cf. Bonnefoy) - respect his deeper feelings of urgency, perti-nence, ontological splendour (and what he has recently called responsibili-ty to that strange splendour of being and possible doing). This is a geopo-etics - inevitably centered in self as the sole source of all feasibility of beingand doing - less developed than lived. Language is thus used to realise andconfirm a visceral, sensual and affective relation to what is, in principle allthat is, which it can so easily intellectually deny. "Je n'ai jamais eu d'autresprojets que d'habiter cette terre", he writes, " Les mots ne m'en separerontplus" (96).A writer that must be read.Pascal Commere. Boucheres. Paris: Obsidiane, 2003. 111 pages. 14 euros.ISBN 2-911914-60-0.IAII nthoc ofa wid, tang' ofwtiting' ovet th, pa'" twtnty y,m - ftomLes Commis (1982), Chevaux (1987), Dijou (1989) to Lointaineapproche des troupeaux aveto le soir (1995), lIessies, lanternes, autresbetes cornues (2000) and La Grand' soifd'Andre Frenaud (2001) - PascalCommere is a poet, a very fine one, moreover, close to the Burgundian earthhe lives and breathes, close too to an intimate, vigorous and intricate lan-guage capable, without sentimentality, preferring irony or compassion ordiscreet yet in-the-face questioning, of speaking this ordinary yet intenselivedness.Agricultural, rural life, its softnesses, its hard-edged realities, its fasci-nating "banalities" and its unrealised - unrealisable? - dreams: these areCommere's major preoccupations here, lived in the heart of contemporary"peasant" France with its deontology of production and economic survivalguaranteed to terrify even the most hardened beef-eater. Boucheres bears70 .:. LitteRealite

Jean-Michel Maulpoix, Chutes de pluie fine

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Jean-Michel Maulpoix, Chutes de pluie fine

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