End of the world, it is also question in the most recent collection of Jean-Marc Desgent, A few wild children. There is no need to repeat the list of cataclysms, natural or not, which currently threaten life on earth. In this poignant collection, the poet has ingested them all, from the universal to the personal. He is looking for a forest to inhabit in order to survive the disaster.
Posted at 3:30 p.m.
Jean-Marc Desgent is this sniffer dog who searches under dead leaves, turns over stones, visits morgues and cemeteries, churches and ruins. He constantly searches, explores every corner, describes and denounces. He is the one who could have walked “in ecstasy, but he found nothing there”, except a sky announcing “disasters and flowing blood”.
Nihilism? In the sense of moral skepticism, certainly. This quest, however, extends those of his recent books strange fruits and Misery and dialogue of beastswhere the poet shows himself fascinated by the animal, vegetable and organic realities which will survive the deleterious human actions.
One could also speak, in a biblical sense with regard to the numerous religious references, of a post-testament so much the stunning evocative force of the poems names a new apocalypse.
Whoever does not find part or all of his amazed gaze on the world launches the first prayer to the poet. Jean-Marc Desgent does not need to write it as such. We sense him with him: only a few wild children and “house god” deer will survive. His poetry made of “radical thought” allows us to glimpse them with a certain delight.
A few wild children
Jean-Marc Desgent
Bush poets
104 pages