poetry and sound poetry
Introducing poetic texts, which speak for
themselves, is always a little paradoxical, even if the
language, any language, is never immediate. Maybe we should, as
when we talk about music, start from another language, from
another form of communication which does not share the same
substrate as poetry… But we certainly expect a reasonable
word here, a product of the mind, a semantic content that
neither music nor images would give us. It is not about
repeating what poetry says: it would be both useless and
destructive. Neither comment, nor paraphrase, neither
explanation, nor analysis. Everyone can do it and undo it for
himself or herself, as much as she or he wants. It may be, on
the contrary, to clear the ground, to clear away received ideas,
to demolish ready-made thoughts, the ready-to-use, the
pre-digested, the near that keeps us away and locks us in. Let
poetry speak for itself, without speech, without chatter,
without mask.
Because poetry is a shout, it is not reduced to
writing and diction, which it also needs, but proliferates in
the labyrinth of the mind that produces or receives it. Because
it is a whisper, it requires deep listening and an agile voice.
Because it is silence, it receives all the words and all the
sounds.
Poetry is not just text, it is above all sound, and in this,
close to music. If it exacerbates the abstraction of language,
it is to renew it, to give words a wild, untamed life. Not
repeating the pure convention of words, their narrowness and
their «common sense», this is to broaden the
horizon, add ambiguity and paradox, it is to want words to be
the creator of meaning and not simply to carry other people's
suitcases. To think about the sound as much as, or before, the
meaning. To combine sounds, recreate them, transform them.
Because words and text are above all sound and it is this sound
that carries meaning.
Words cannot be thought of as just
prefabricated objects that can only be used according to their
manual. If they are carriers of history and if they are charged
with memory, they are also capable of renewing their potential
for meaning, their plurality of worlds, to give birth to fertile
lands and abundant waters. And then from their assembly are to
be born sound volutes generating images as well as rhythms and
resonances.
Poetic cloning, this exercise which consists in reproducing a
poem in another language, always has a taste of the artificial:
the translation cannot account for the profusion of the poetic
verb in all its aspects, voluntary or involuntary, and can only
give an approximation. Because it is not above all an abstract
meaning, but first of all a manade of words wandering on their
paths, it must be internalized in order to extract from it its
distillate and nourish another troop of words in the chosen
tongue, with the distances and the abysses which separate the
two languages.
Weaving bridges, as fragile as any canvas,
between a territory and its paths, and another landscape and its
routes, is the only possibility that does not extinguish poetic
verve.
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From the side menu, access to the poems and sound poems.
