The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

DANIELLE COLLOBERT

profiles and mirror, I work
on the horizon
explore and don’t ever return from there
without knowing if I’ll dare the paradox:
to transform the scroll, the flame
the synthesis
no text will have me, I agree to it
convoke (at least your face)
without which I turn in slow motion too
fluid not to flow/ a drop

here (the fiction) the spine when
eyelashes softly writing material
tension will build the way your shoulder
vertically dazzled me I pursue
salt conquest sleep/ a few words:
I want to revise this sequence
us naked knees enlaced in a word
radically
—marilyn hacker

Danielle Collobert 1940–1978

rostrenen, france

C

ollobert’s family took part in the Resistance during World War II. Her

work, largely contained in her notebooks, details her commitment to

political activism and to her writing. She was associated with the

National Liberation Front in Algeria during that country’s war for independence.

Collobert moved to Paris at the age of nineteen. A translation of her notebooks

appeared in Zazil #1, and her poetry appeared in the journal Tripwire #2. She

committed suicide in 1978. Principal works: Cahiers, 1956–1978; Meurtre, 1964; Il

donc, 1976.