Amour flou.
Roy, G. Ross
Paul Savoie's first book, Salamandre, a quite considerable
volume of rhymed poems, free verse, and prose poems, appeared twenty
years ago. It was a sophisticated collection, opening with a prose poem
to an unnamed person in which he says, "en moi il existe un univers
inexprimable . . . ce meme univers existe en toi . . . nos deux univers
s'absorbent sans se consommer." Much of Savoie's
subsequent work has been an amplification of this theme. Several books
have followed, two of them in English, in which the poet writes a good
deal more hesitantly.
Amour flou is divided into six sections, each named and bearing a
relationship to the whole. The first three ("pierre,"
"glyphes," and "fossiles") bear witness to the
poet's continuing interest--fascination almost--with geology as
well as with outer space. This vocabulary is, though, just a means to
the poet's end: Amour flou is an extended sequence of love poems.
The quality of rocks suggests a timeless coexistence with physical love,
which possesses "la force du menhir / pour qu'enfin germe,
foliace, le desir, / racine donnee au jour / en geometrie
d'amour." The act of love may also be an act of violence, as
we see in the same poem: "la pepite et l'artere, / la veine
fendue, / la morsure et la dechirure, // l'acte de violence / pour
enfin cerner / le noyau."
Elsewhere love is a transfiguration; after a lyric description of the
act of love, the poet says: "le roc s'effrite / je
m'accroche aux pierres, aux poudres fertiles / de ma chute."
The passage ends, "un son moite / comme la pierre / bercee de
detritus." Not all love is unremitting; it may even assume a
perverse element: "je suis ton echo morne, / taciturne, / encastre
d'ombres, / loin des colonnes embrasees / de ta joie." By the
conclusion of the poem the volcanic eruptions (the poet's term)
will have laid there "crevasses et crateres de l'etre / mers
de tran-quillite / et cette fusee / que nos coeurs habitent."
In addition to geological imagery, Savoie often uses the vocabulary
of botany. Here the poet conjures up the forces of life; the word suc
(juice, essence) appears several times, although it may also mean a
volcanic cone. It is to the representation of space, both interior and
exterior, however, that the poet turns more frequently. Geometric images
abound, as in the following:
j'etais etendu de tout mon long, soumis a la meme geometrie de
sommeil que toi
. . . .
la pointe de ton pied et de ton doigt me rive a tous tes triangles le
convexe et l'ovale, l'ellipse et le cercle
. . . .
je fais l'amour avec toi dans une confusion de signes et de
formes
There are other such terms used both geometrically and symbolically
throughout Amour flou, although they do not necessarily lead to a
resolution, because, as Savoie writes, "aucune equation n'est
possible." This, of course, brings the reader back to the
"geometry of love" mentioned above. The writer and his love
are "le debut et la fin"; elsewhere they are "deux eres /
deux infinis." Savoie's sequence of poems combines sometimes
startling and usually apposite word groups, which is the stuff of good
poetry.
G. Ross Roy University of South Carolina
