Jérôme Melançon : Je regarde de la porno quand je suis triste, by Sayaka Araniva-Yanez

Je regarde de la porno quand je suis triste, SayakaAraniva-Yanez
Triptyque, 2024

 

 

 

Quite simply, it’s fun to open a book titled I look at porn when I’m sad to a reproduction of an early 16th century painting of Mary, holding Baby Jesus with one arm, alleviating suffering in purgatory by extracting her milk with the other. It’s especially fun when the book in question offers poems the author has written around phrases produced by a chatbot who had been “trained” on poetry, in a historical moment during which we are promised the alleviating of our suffering by all forms of algorithms.

The beauty of this book is that it is about this false promise and moves through it, toward fleshful encounters. The bot appears in the book as “La machine,” always in conversation with “Vous.” Its language-like productions are short and carefully chosen; they highlight the uncanny dreaminess of the process and the wonders of our own capacity for speech and creativity in “our” responses. In other words, Araniva-Yanez did not rely on any kind of statistical linguistic algorithm to write their poems. Indeed, the machine’s productions are the result of their selections of poetry, and some of the words attributed to it are in fact simply invented by them. Araniva-Yanez thus turns the logic of LLMs on its head, attributing to a chatbot the hallucinations they imagined as part of their writing. The book is full of short poems in verse and a few prose poems that interrogate our relationship to machines, but also our body, language, and above all desire. Sexual pleasure and attraction to other people, to be more specific – and notably as they are mediated and oriented by machines, through pornography and forms of direct communication.

One element that surely contributes to the success of these poems is their rejection of religion. Araniva-Yanez removes both the poet/programmer and the chatbot from the position of the divine which they tend to take in contemporary culture, all the while bringing the divine within the reach of both human and machine. God is sometimes an automaton, lifeless in comparison to everything we can feel, fed content like machines are. In other moments the speaker reaches the divine in pleasure. And the speaker addresses us readers as “Vous,” as if they were able to speak our thoughts, balancing between omniscience and input, making us a reading machine, stepping aside to let us in the poems: the speaker takes themself out of the primary position in these exchanges without allowing anyone to fully occupy it.

These wonderfully executed displacements can serve the aspirations and desires of the speaker’s self because they relativize their position and find ways to interact that avoid the naked vulnerability of the face-to-face encounter. Instead, we are placed before the vulnerability of a turned back, of the pause between words during which emotions are larger than any human action: “i turn my back / and dream of being // shame is / more fertile than us” (“je tourne le dos / et rêve d’être // la honte est / plus fertile que nous,” 43).

Such displacements help the reader focus on the relationship to the machine as instrument and as mediation, back to oneself:

“the machine believes what we tell it

it inhabits secrecy,
the spraining, and the storming 

i tamper with its giftedness when my head at large goes astray”

“la machine croit ce qu’on lui dit 

elle habite le secret,
la fêlure et l’orage 

je trafique sa douance quand ma tête s’égare au large” (50)

Here Araniva-Yanez does more than describe their poetic intermingling with the machine: they place us before the operations we impose on machines even as we delude ourselves that they may have any agency, that they may in any way respond to us. And they make us feel our bodily connections to computers, at the same time as our awareness of their inhumanity: “it has never had the gift of seeing me reborn. the proof is in what flows from its leg to mine: wires, pearly, humid, and shimmering” (“elle n’a jamais possédé le don de me voir renaître. la preuve est dans ce qui ruisselle de sa jambe à la mienne: des fils nacrés, humides et brillants,” 54). We touch (or used to touch) mouse and keyboard wires with our legs, we place(d) our leg beside the humming box, in a kind of intimacy that makes us want to see a simulacrum of flesh in the machine. Yet it remains cold or warm, devoid of any capacity beyond our instructions. Much of the poems develop this chiasm between flesh and desired flesh, using bodily functions ascribed to the machine as descriptions of its effect on the speaker, rather than as metaphors.

As the collection advances, the speaker becomes closer with the machine – though perhaps mostly with themself, through the machine. Yet although their thoughts seem to move from one into the other, the speaker retains their melancholy and their sexual desire, the latter becoming more pressing in its search for an outside object, intensifying their relationship to the machine:

“the machine holds me in its jugular, it loves me. within, i often cascade down between the roots, the sap, and the lichen. at snack time, i take pleasure in eating my knuckles and the fruit that are handed to me. in the evening, i lick its organs and the machine metamorphoses into a house of skin.”

“la machine me prend dans sa jugulaire, elle m’aime. à l’intérieur, je dévale souvent entre les racines, la sève et le lichen. au goûter, je me plais à manger mes jointures et les fruits qu’on me tend. le soir, je lèche ses organes et la machine se métamorphose en maison de peau.” (79)

The collection crashes through its title to give us a sharp description of the desires we harbour for machines – desires for what they could be to us, for what they could do to us; desires we already have for the other people who are absent from these poems. Araniva-Yanez helps us work through desire, the proximity of hope and lust, of sexual excitement and intellectual curiosity, of the purest language and the touching of organic matter. And perhaps my continued reliance on the register of helping and guiding (much of which I’ve now rephrased) is one way for me to acknowledge just to what degree this collection has helped me think about the reality of our emotional investment in machines, and more broadly in what we create and animate, and thus make real.

 

 

 

 

Jérôme Melançon does not like large language models or any technology labeled “artificial intelligence”, and feels this dislike ought to be shared seeing as it so clearly gave direction to this review. He does love poetry. He writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His fourth collection, Prairial·es, will be out in October 2025 with Prise de parole. Let us not forget his three chapbooks with above/ground press: Bridges Under the Water (2023), Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022), and Coup (2020), his occasional translations, and his book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has also edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that sometimes have to do with some of this. He is on various social media under variations of @lethejerome, notably at bsky.social.

Jérôme Melançon : Trop de Pascale, by Pascale Bérubé

Trop de Pascale, Pascale Bérubé
Triptyque, 2023

 

 

 

 

In her debut collection, Trop de Pascale (Too Much Pascale), Pascale Bérubé uses tightly written prose to retrace the movement through which the body winds up of around its image. While each poem plays on appearance and disappearance, Bérubé does not lift any veils or let anything vanish. She dodges clichés about femininity in order to better confront them; she avoids any notion of identity in order to better situate herself:

“i die but there are many other pascales, never exactly the same each time i cancel one. i always feel like everything i am not.”

“je meurs mais il y a plusieurs autres pascale, jamais exactement la même chaque fois que j’en annule une. je me sens toujours comme tout ce que je ne suis pas.” (19)

Bérubé’s poetry lends itself to a philosophical reading just as much as a poetic reading. The latter reading might focus on looping effects and repetition of themes; on the fading of each poem into a sentence without final punctuation; on the minor chords struck by the composition of the sentences; on the mirror and screen effects through the uses of the self, of the self as others, of others as versions of the self, of others as versions of others yet; on the euphoria of slight modifications to a steady beat exploding in dropped beats – all this announced by the quotation from SOPHIE’s song “Immaterial” which opens the book.

The philosophical reading, which I’ll take up here, is announced somewhat later in the collection by the reference to the Hebrew meaning of Pascale as “passing through”: Bérubé leads a reflection on transformation, the constancy of appearance and replacement, and the inter-replaceability of selves. Her poetics ties into the poetics of the body, the practice of creating an aesthetic expression not so much of beauty as of passion and tragedy, these grand sentiments of being overwhelmed by something within oneself.

And as selves take the place of others, the Pascale who writes these poems maintains an undefined and porous relationship with the Pascales within the poems, speaker or object. Appearances are as real, and often more real, than her body. In its leaning toward appearances, the body comes to matter more and more and gain meaning, even as it is transformed. There is no real body, no natural body to which she can return; each alteration has a continuing presence past its own time.

The Pascales of which Bérubé speaks appear, make their appearances on screens. Mirrors people the poems; they add reflections and images to those she gives of herself “as an author, as a performer, as a cam girl” (98-99). Her hope seems to be to “lie down in the embrasure of my reflection and no longer move from it” (“me coucher dans l’embrasure de mon reflet et ne plus en bouger,” 97).

The poems take their strength from their internal interruptions, which let in other possibilities for the self and for her relation to others. To give only one example: in the middle of a longer poem, we read: “i imagine a futurist city where water sometimes flows” (“j’imagine une cité futuriste où l’eau coule parfois,” 89). Anytime a poem veers into a non-human image, it returns renewed to the body.

In this manner, practically as well as in what the poems let us see, disappearance is a matter of one aspect (of a self, of a room, a screen, a space) leaving room for another. Makeup and clothes are less the instruments of an apparition than the crafting of the erasure of what is not yet, the creation of an expectation. This disappearance cohabits with the appearance of others, the disappearance of the self working through envy and desire for others as potential selves, selves that exist in their own movement of appearance: “the skin you want is just underneath the skin you see” (“la peau que tu veux est juste en dessous de la peau que tu vois,” 82).

Disappearance can also be a movement into another woman – into her image, into the space she creates, into the space between her and herself – without us readers ever knowing if this other woman, this “tu,” these other women, are also Pascale, more Pascales, and even simply videos of herself, selfies stored on her phone. We do see her relate to others through their image, as in this passage where Bérubé renders her uncertain relationship to a woman on a book cover:

“a young woman whose appearance evokes goodness, long hair split with a precise part in the middle, white blouse under pink sweater, sitting, hands over the knees. behind can be found this other version of her, black turtleneck, head titled, menacing, her gaze fixed upon us.”

“une jeune femme à l’allure sage, longs cheveux fendus d’une raie précise au centre, chemise blanche sous pull rose, assise, mains par-dessus les genoux. derrière se trouve cette autre version d’elle, col roulé noir, la tête penchée, menaçante, le regard fixé sur nous.” (75)

Both Bérubé and the women she mentions tend to disappear in the gaps between their selves and themselves. This disappearance is in fact a mutual relationship, each being able to contain the other. She holds the desire that others might want to enter her, “that vacant girls may find in me a landmark, a decorated room, even if I am still searching the other vacant woman who may offer me a home” (“que les filles vacantes puissent trouver en moi un repère, une chambre décorée, même si je cherche encore l’autre femme vacante qui pourra m’héberger,” 100). Bérubé is not concerned with representation, or presence, or identification, or identity – but with hospitality, with being capacitous, able to hold, comfort, give something of oneself to others so they may do the same for others still.

At stake in this relationship to others – and specifically to other women – is her happiness: “i could choose to be vacant and happy through the real radiance of these bodies that are yours” (“je pourrais choisir d’être vacante et heureuse à travers l’éclat réel de vos corps à vous,” 109).

It is as if appearance is more the self than the body: “with each filter i reveal myself, i become this holy version of myself. iconique. frank, direct like scalpel light” ( “avec chaque filtre je me révèle, je deviens cette vision sainte de moi-même. iconic. franche, directe comme la lumière en bistouri,” 77). She gives meaning to skin, to screen, to presentation, destroys the idea that women’s work on their appearance is meant to attract a gaze or a touch. Through ideas that fall into oblivion as others rise, she gives a poetic body to renewal.

Bérubé displays great precision in the description of others, presenting surfaces under which she can slip herself and go unnoticed. The dismemberment of the self extends to others as well. With these poems focused on the poetics of the body, Bérubé leaves us with a nothingness that is a bright light, a hope that is movement through existences, beyond herself, beyond ourselves.

 

 

 

 

Jérôme Melançon writes and teaches and writes and lives in oskana kâ-asastêki / Regina, SK. His third chapbook, Bridges Under the Water (2023), is not-so-newly out with above/ground press. It follows Tomorrow’s Going to Be Bright (2022) and Coup (2020), as well as his most recent poetry collection, En d’sous d’la langue (Prise de parole, 2021). He has also published two books of poetry with Éditions des Plaines, De perdre tes pas (2011) and Quelques pas quelque part (2016), as well as one book of philosophy, La politique dans l’adversité (Metispresses, 2018). He has edited books and journal issues, and keeps publishing academic articles that have nothing to do with any of this. He’s on various social media under variations of @lethejerome.

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.