Thursday, July 2, 2020

Jérôme Melançon : Formes subtiles de la fuite, by Virginie Savard


Formes subtiles de la fuite, Virginie Savard
Triptyque, 2020



Sadness and fear create two interwoven trajectories in Virginie Savard’s Formes subtiles de la fuite (Subtle Forms of Flight). These emotions dominate the book, not directly or as themes, but as they shape the atmosphere. They are ways to relate to the past and to the future, ways to lack adherence to the present: “My expiration date nears softly” (“Ma date d’expiration approche doucement,” 30); “time is slow seen from underneath” (“le temps est long vu d’en dessous,” 33).

From a precarious stance in a slippery present, fears block off any vision of the future, materializing in hopelessness: “All the oracles defenestrated themselves / before announcing what’s coming” (“Tous les oracles se sont défenestrés / avant d’annoncer ce qui vient,” 33). Sadness emerges from a haunting past, as in the children’s room that was redecorated by the parents, leaving little material anchoring for memories.

Fleeing from past and future, without anywhere to land, creates a gap between an unstable interior (the body, the apartment) and a shapeless exterior. On one side of the gap, DNA stretches like the present into repetition and its encoded death. On the other side, baths are taken in blankets, fireworks are confused with gunshots, and sleeping during a fire makes vigilance toward the immediate environment meaningless.

This distance and experience of interstices carry through concrete space. We know where we are - Hochelaga, Montreal, the green line on the metro, the bus, an apartment. But we do not get a strong feel for what it is to be there - the places are locations, not subjects in themselves:

l’idée de Montréal est plus grande                  the idea of Montreal is bigger
que Montréal                                                   than Montreal
la distance                                                        the distance
entre chez moi et où j’habite                           between my home and where I live
est plus vaste que l’horaire des trains (49)      is wider than the trains’ schedule

Connections are then only possible within small, confined spaces, where presence is not in question - with appliances, which make for new images, and with one person on the bus, where the tiredness of the cliché carries together the fatigue and the encounter that encounters it. If in this book connections are not impossible, they are definitely prone to vanishing quickly, as in a poem full of enjambements that begins with “my hair clings/to the wind of the metro” (“mes cheveux s’accrochent/au vent du métro,” 47).

This clinging to, hanging onto volatility indicates in a few surges of violence a desire that’s greater than sadness and fear. There’s for instance sparse use of fire throughout the book, and relying on its symbolic meaning without expanding on it allows for direct verses that circumvent usual images. Burning and moving on can be found within the same image: “now I must/go on in flames and to something else” (“maintenant il faut/passer au feu et à autre chose,” 51). And what is usually a solemn, orderly task of destroying someone shows the disorganization that is unavoidable in any meaningful transformation: “I light/my own pyre/in a vast disorder” (“j’allume/mon propre bûcher/en un vaste désordre,” 82).

Transformative violence also surges in images of riot and revolution, showing the shaping of the softness that is displayed in the poems into a hardened weapon :

je trône dans un fauteuil démodé                   I sit in glory in an outmoded armchair
en tricotant des briques                                  while knitting bricks
pour la révolution (30)                                   for the revolution

et je jetterai des poèmes                                 and I will throw poems
dans les vitrines des boutiques (85)               into shop windows

The emotional atmosphere and the isolation of the short verses on pages that seem too big for the poems allow for a glimpse into the loneliness of another. Savard creates this access without drama, without grand gestures, without unveiling herself - with modesty and precision. It’s loneliness we see, and not her. And she is aware of the limits of this exercise, writing with the least possible amount of significant hope to reach and adhere to the present:

liste non exhaustive des raisons de parler                non exhaustive list of reasons to speak

m’assurer que ma voix existe encore                       make sure my voice still exists
meubler le temps                                                      furnish time
m’assurer que j’existe encore                                   make sure I still exist

quelqu’un pourrait entendre (70)                             someone could hear




Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in Regina, SK. He is the author of two books of poetry, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016) with Éditions des Plaines, one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018), and has a bilingual chapbook forthcoming with above/ground press, Coup.