The Yale Anthology of Twentieth-Century French Poetry

DOMINIQUE FOURCADE

so thoroughly that it takes the place of, that it absorbs the train whose last cars
follow the curve of the tracks. And disappear. Cook is alone in the countryside.
He reaches a cli√ where a plane is to pick him up flying low without landing.
A friend is carrying his luggage, the airplane looms up. Hands seize his posses-
sions, and then let them drop into the ocean. Cook is heartbroken.
Finally one day he takes o√, he sees the springs and the mountains, the
willows and the rivers, the washerwomen on the riverbanks.
—If only I were light, he thinks.
In the rainbow where he registers he abandons his luggage. And gets on board.
—marilyn hacker

Dominique Fourcade 1938–

paris, france

A

poet and art critic, Fourcade began publishing his poetry in 1961. He

wrote steadily until 1970, at which point he fell silent for thirteen years.

When he took it up again, he adopted an entirely di√erent mode. His

work published after 1983 relies on wordplay and neologisms and is simulta-

neously philosophical and process-oriented. He wrote on Matisse (Écrits et propos

sur l’art) and was the Commissaire de l’Exposition Henri Matisse, 1904–1917, at

the Centre Georges Pompidou. Principal works: Épreuves du pouvoir, 1961; Nous

du service des cygnes, 1970; Le Ciel pas d’angle, 1983; Rose-déclic, 1984; Son blanc du

un, 1986; Xbo, 1988; Outrance utterance et autres élégies, 1990; Décisions ocres, 1992;

Il, 1994; Le Sujet monotype, 1997; Est-ce que je peux placer un mot? 2001.

Ensembles

ensembles here, spacious: thus
grouped at the edge of the meadow that opens to the left of the courtyard an ash
between two willows standing against one another (but not leaning on each
other) very slender di√erent breath di√erent lightness greens not the same
silvers now and then touch their tips