part 4. 1946–1966: the death of andré breton, the beginning of l’éphémère
Pataphysical College (dedicated to the Science of Imaginary Solutions,
following the principles of Alfred Jarry). OULIPO formulated its textual
work as the dialogic and flexible structure of endless combinations of
form and vocabulary, multiplying possibilities ad infinitum. The poem is
protean, always potentially capable of changing shape. It is less a ques-
tion of the author-poet speaking than of language playing itself out.
Self-imposed formal constraints were the high wire on which the Ouli-
pians performed: the most famous narrative example, La Disparition, by
Georges Perec, was written without the single most essential vowel in the
French language—the letter e. Oulipians called such experiments Cre-
ative, not Created. Jacques Roubaud, Michelle Grandgaud, and many
others included in this anthology have engaged in Oulipian experiments.∞
Francis Ponge, author of a long text entitled La Fabrique du pré (The
Making of the Pré), was fascinated by the precision and materiality of
language. He creates what he calls objeu (a combination of objet and jeu,
the French words for ‘‘object’’ and ‘‘game’’), in which the poet stresses the
visuality of words, taking, as he says, the side of things (Le Parti-pris des
choses).≤ Ponge’s Proêmes follows in the tradition of the prose poem but
moves beyond it, exploring its process and form—his ‘‘Mûres’’ (Black-
berries) plays on the blackness of dots (the periods at the ends of sen-
tences), which the poet describes as ‘‘ripe... .’’ Here, ripeness is all. Ponge
is a classic French precision painter—in words. In the United States, the
approach closest to his was probably that of the Objectivists flourishing in
the 1930s, chief among them George Oppen, Louis Zukofsky, and Charles
Rezniko√, and more recently, the New York School, including Frank
O’Hara and James Schuyler, who focused on ‘‘Das Ding an Sich,’’ the
Thing in Itself, or things as they are.≥
Jean Follain also took the side of things. Follain’s Objets (1955) ex-
pressed the poetry of still life, as had Reverdy’s short prose poems of 1915–
1917 (often composed with the paintings of Juan Gris in mind) and Max
Jacob’s Cornet à dés (The Dice Cup) of the same period. The still life as
poem-object had in fact been made concrete in André Breton’s ‘‘poèmes-
objets’’ well before Ponge’s objeu. One sees in this poetic lineage the
tradition of French still-life painting, as exemplified by Matisse, Braque,
and other masters.
Yves Bonnefoy’s poems in Pierre écrite (1964) also work as still lifes,
inscribing themselves on the Written Stone of the title. Bonnefoy, a trans-
lator as well as a poet, translates Shakespeare into French. He is also an art
historian gifted with an extraordinary analytic power, moving gracefully
and e√ortlessly from the baroque to the present. A classic contemporary,
he writes with extensive knowledge and a no less passionate curiosity.
In 1966, two years after the publication of Pierre écrite, Michel Deguy