Full Description
A penetrating and encompassing English-language translation from the celebrated French poet touching on death, domesticity, nature, language itself, and—always—the body.
French literary icon Marie-Claire Bancquart (1932-2019) is known for an uncanny inhabitation of the concrete, finding whole worlds, even afterlives, in daily instances and spaces. "If I could seize a little nothing / a bit of nothing," she muses, "all things would come to me / those that dance / in its cloth." The tiniest moments can be acts of utterance, defiance, communion, and immortality. Yet death does indeed appear in the everyday, though it's more than a fact of existence. It is fiction as well, small cunning stories we create so we're not merely waiting for it: "one sets / close by / the pot of orange flowers / the here and now / to block the view."
Here, the infinitesimal has no end; the smaller life gets, the deeper and more carefully Bancquart has us pause to notice its offerings. Though for her "the body" is the surest, most trustworthy way of knowing, the mystery of language is often referenced, and reverenced. And translator Jody Gladding, an award-winning poet herself, beautifully carries forward Bancquart's lifetime of distinctive work. Every Minute Is First is lean, lucid yet philosophical poetry, reflecting visceral life and experiential thought, walking in the dark with a light, lighting words—or alighting on them—in their own incandescent power to make the long-lived journey meaningful.
Contents
Preface
Other
In
On the Brink of Life
Yes, the Interval
Earth
Out of Scale
Forward
Falters, Wears Out
Grass Between the Lips
Alone
This Dark Tree
Red-Hot
In the woods leaves
If we speak in fables, it's just
After having followed the formidable path, I will be
I hang my life
What is this face
What drives you
Black the water
The throat awakens full of dirt
When evening comes
Cut the round loaf, villager
Hearing
September, eleven o'clock in the morning, without you
Replanting the hellebore
I desire you in our time
Worried about
Twenty or thirty centuries ago
It's sad
Scent of linden trees
At day's end things join up
Under the curses of birds
—What did you say? Lost empires
Writing
Little breaths, the moments of our lives
Our presence
Our lungs breathe
The decorum of words
The patient in the recovery room
The poor stone I'm holding
Very dark matter
At that time, to represent an absurdity or strong emotion
Yes, heavy, the blood
The mirror retains
Into my spinal column
To be traversed
Tremble
As for me, I inhabited a large bird
How many trees in the course of this journey XXX
That trembling
I'm endlessly obsessed with one desire
Briefly
Each thing according to
On window panes, curtains, books, camp the invisible
. . . At the border of the inexorable
No, I will not swallow
If I could seize a little nothing
Yes, I sank
I came back to life. Oh, monorail world, transport me
Don't descend
There are bruised words
Strange, the objects in certain categories
You know what it means
Can we
Inhale the strong odor of the streets
We don't want
Against my cheek
"See you shortly, in the unknown"
To the heights of incandescence
When do you want to divorce yourself
When I think of you, I transform into tree-lined paths
I don't believe in heaven
To approach a word
Every minute is first, when the garden
As though
Return the love of the least things
For the music of stones
—And nevertheless I pressed against your face my own
You've got a run in your peritoneum
Sitting in the park
Collect a seed
We're always holding the end of the world, no matter where
A very ripe apricot gets smashed
Pain: explosion, spasms
What have you done, if not
I'm writing a letter to I don't know whom
In my body there's
Holes in the bark
Every morning I form
Don't wake me sleeper
Small noise, rain
Following the edge of an island
. . . But so far off, so unrealized, the peace I'm seeking
New world
End-of-life accompanist
It's possible/impossible
With your chagrin, you meant to stay alone
It's as if there were an earth above
. . . But what if it were absurd, our turmoil
Sick
Then a scene imposes itself upon you, impossibly banal: a man
She doesn't have a name
How I searched for you, life
Why this feeling of exile
A very large white pigeon
These are my "Sorrows" I'm writing
So soft, the gray of the sky sometimes occupied by white
Nevertheless love
As if the earth
In a little while, I will no longer be, you will no longer be
Notes
