know how to live
If it occurred to us to propose the Radio odes of Jean-Paul Daoust like poetry of circumstance, it would be necessary well to be advised that it is with the conviction of its high behavior. So, nothing negative for the poet in subjecting his poetry to the vagaries of everyday life, to the fortunes and misfortunes of all comers. The emotional charge conveyed by these poems is of concern to the recipient. In this case, the listeners of a radio channel.
The editor indicates that Jean-Paul Daoust has a “lovely pen”. I’m not sure it’s really flattering, but whoever feels what he wants, enters these texts with an open heart, a free spirit.
It is preferable to refer to the very beautiful poem of presentation retained by the author: “I survived the apocalypse of childhood / By building me a blue arch / Made of words and silence / That poetry governs / On the stormy sea of chaos / Populated by voracious sirens / So I’m taking you with me / Into this bazaar of images / Worthy of all the souks. »
The immense underlying sadness that induces these odes imposes itself, reviving the saving alcohol, the slightest kindness distilled over the meetings, on the lookout for the slightest testimony of affection.
“The body, this fabulous radar / To capture the incredible possibilities of living” extends its word in testimony to this effervescence of sensations. To the point of anguish sometimes: “Depression / This word that bares us / This 911 that does not answer / What is there in this word that is hiding? / A whole childhood? / Bereavement ? / And what else? »
In fact, the fundamental question of this work lies in one line: “Does the real exist more when it is written? » At the very least, it is possible to exorcise its misdeeds, as in « Ode pu capable! sustaining the cry of impatience at the needles of COVID, at the obsession that images of the disease propel into the soul. Here is the true meaning of things, which does not bother with formulas, which only seeks to place the gaze in the direction of a certain human truth.
Living together
By opening the book, one fears a little that the immense work of Normand de Bellefeuille does not obstruct the texts of Laurent Theillet, that there is prejudice there. And then, wonderful meeting, the texts of the second hold the road perfectly, supporting the deep and serious tone of the project. We are in the presence of a perfectly balanced binary work, which is both rare and fortunate.
Two men look at their lives, invited to the most exact lucidity, as cruel as it is uncertain. What is at stake are “our two bodies / our high dust”, as Theillet puts it so beautifully. Bellefeuille considers that “this book / in its own way / is a draped herbarium / in a few sentences / of pure rout”.
“I recently learned / that the poem / is to think aside // the poem is to know / finally / to return the night / to the night // because finally / we can only resist / and grow old / for a long time “, further specifies Bellefeuille. It’s no small thing that these men are now considering the gradual end of the time allotted to him.
Bellefeuille describes his quest as follows: “I would like a poem / which is sometimes the cry / and / which contains the whole night”, while Theillet replies: “To take everything / in itself / like a sea / the inside / the outside / ebb and flow. On the left page, the texts of Bellefeuille, on the right, those of Theillet.
A magnificent book whose texts we would like to quote and quote again, so great is the success of this friendly and relevant exchange with regard to what a personal work can be. “Because it happens / that even silence / screams / and this is called / a little lightly no doubt / poem” (N. de B.), whereas opposite: “Living is always / / above the poem // to write / is to stand / barely / below life” (LT) Neither of the two authors renounces his own style, his broken, scratched voice, stubbornly hoping.
live back
In her new collection, Élise Turcotte does not spare us the theme of the seasons, nor does she spare us the poem-lists of her “I remember”. To inhabit the book is to amass the dross of the past, she seems to want to tell us, in the imprecision of what can be saved from obsolescence.
Let’s say that Élise Turcotte’s new collection is not her clearest, her most accessible. It seems that the idea of the collection, namely to save what we can from what immolates itself in the passage of time, forced him to complicate things a little to render in depth the state of disarray whose book wants to testify.
Jamming can also reach the intimate, as in his poem “Me too”: “My curled up past / in the shape of the wolf / on my balcony. / Valiant wolf wolf. / In the theater, I was the other, and I was two, and five, / and sentences. The one who crushes with her crazy hands / the great body that hurts us. It remains beautiful, superbly written, but it leaks, no doubt about it. Just like the beginning of the following poem: “On November 6, a Monday, / the agile comet is extinguished / by the cheeks. We must sometimes admit our perplexity in the face of certain poetic proposals.
Here again, if Élise Turcotte occasionally challenges us at the heart of some of her poems, we must remember that it is the whole of the collection that is formidable. The subject manages to testify to this confusion that wins the soul when you feel that everything is falling apart, or that everything is reborn with the worn-out image of spring.
They are also sometimes hard-hitting texts that get to the heart of the matter: “I had the hope that when I woke up / the missing child / would shake off the snow around him. / I read the newspaper, another / shooting. / I read the newspaper, 300 drowned. […] I hear the sirens. / The year will be fire, / will be ice, coffin. / When I return. “Besides that, one wonders about the relevance of the confidences which seem out of place: “At three o’clock in the afternoon, / I have already applied to my face / my night cream. »
However, it is through the strong impression of this hope mixed with despair that the revelation of this collection is created in us. It is the poet’s infinitely talented breath that succeeds in propelling him to implacable heights.