Three Poems from Lointaines by Nicole Brossard

Cities with their name

in the distance Prague, the bridge the castle
the time on the clock tower
the clock tower in history
the Jewish cemetery at the corner
Skopje, Istanbul other alphabets
commerce of hours and spices like a river
red saffron pulsing with time

Villes avec leur nom

au loin Prague, le pont le château
l’heure dans l’horloge
l’horloge dans l’histoire
le cimetière juif au tournant
Skopje, Istanbul autres alphabets
commerce d’heures et d’épices comme rivière
rouge safran pulsant dans le temps

City with its name

a single neon howl
thousands of tokens and passers-by
spectators of circus and chance
flayed alive by passion
the desert so beautiful and so red
Las Vegas its dice and baize of bets
its Eiffel tower, its gondolas this sky of Venice
so blue so fake
edible petal displayed like the inverse of liberty
strip of future, marketing surveillance        

Ville avec son nom

un seul hurlement de néons
milliers de jetons et de passants
spectateurs de cirque et de hazard
écorchés vifs d’ardeur
dans le désert si beau si rouge
Las Vegas ses dés et tapis de paris
sa tour Eiffel, ses gondoles ce ciel de Venise
si blue si faux
pétale comestible déployé comme un envers de liberté
strip de futur, surveillance marchande

Cities really 

abysmal cities with their roots
from ages ago to present day
long knives and thin necks of little girls
saris on fire
cities without resumption of light
with their congeries of women and stone

Villes réellement

villes d’abîme avec leurs racines
de jadis au present
couteaux longs et cous fins de fillettes
incendies de saris
villes sans recommencement de lumière
avec leurs entassements de femmes et de cailloux

Nicole Brossard is a poet and novelist who was born in and lives in Montreal.  She has been in the vanguard of the dynamic Francophone Canadian feminist and avant-garde writing community for over four decades.   During this time, she founded the journal La Barre du Jour, was one of the co-founding members of the Union des écrivaines et écrivains québécois, participated in the Havana Cultural Congress (1968), piloted the Quebec dossier for the magazine Opus International, and was a member of the steering committee for the International Writers’ Meeting in 1975 (theme: women and writing).   For her writing, she has twice received the Grand Prix du festival international de poésie, as well as the Prix Athanase-David, the W. O. Mitchell Award, and the Molson Prize from the Canada Council.   Brossard has published thirty books, including Lointaines (2010), from which the current selection is drawn, Lumière fragment d’envers and Temps qui travaille les miroirs, both in 2015, as well as a translation of Ardour by Angela Carr (Coach House Books, 2015) and a book on translation, Et me voici soudain en train de refaire le monde. In 2019, she was awarded the Lifetime Recognition Award from The Griffin Trust For Excellence in Poetry.  

Sylvain Gallais is a native French speaker transplanted to the U.S. seventeen years ago.  He is an emeritus professor of Economics at Université Francois Rabelais (Tours, France) and of French in the School of International Letters and Culture at Arizona State University.  His co-authored book in economics is entitled France Encounters Globalization (2003).

Cynthia Hogue has nine collections of poetry, most recently Revenance, listed as one of the 2014 “Standout” books by the Academy of American Poets, and In June the Labyrinth (Red Hen Press, 2017), both from Red Hen Press.  Her co-translations (both with Sylvain Gallais) includes Fortino Sámano (The overflowing of the poem), from the French of Virginie Lalucq and Jean-Luc Nancy, which won the Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets in 2013, and Joan Darc, by Natalie Quintane. Hogue’s honors include two NEA Fellowships and the H.D. Fellowship at Yale University.  She is the inaugural Marshall Chair in Poetry Emerita Professor of English at Arizona State University.