Seven long years after the promising I’m not who you thinkAnne Martine Parent returns to us with an accomplished collection, handling surprising and kaleidoscopic images.
Over time, the poet has learned to weave tightly, even if she sometimes does not “touch anything for fear of breaking secrets”. It’s that between the house of dust and the sand of the beach, “we build the horizon by crawling”, but in a movement called chance.
She writes with an obvious pleasure, that of childhood no doubt, which allows her to emerge with her own style. The book uses a starting “we”, which includes anyone who can identify with it, and which returns to itself during a summer that is too long and a sun that is too heavy.
“July continues to descend/into the infinity of my belly”
Inevitably, the laughter of childhood evoked will be betrayed by life which is nothing but metamorphosis. Desires and anger mingle, dreams grow thinner. “I” is ultimately a woman who will know scars and regrets.
This personal pronoun also knows how to be voluntary since, after all, it is a question of telling stories before disappearing, of walking to forget disappearances. The body then becomes a sea of tranquillity. There is like a contract made with death. Blow, suffer and be reborn until more thirsty. Come what may.
Anne Martine Parent’s verses twirl and burst, arise and take flight again. Deep and light at the same time, they know how to drag us into the whirlwind of a lifetime in constant movement. Before the dreams are scattered.
The horizon by chance
Anne Martine Parent
The People
112 pages