Wow. Devastating.

Later: I included thoughts on both this one and Gerald Murnane's Border Districts in a two-part review, available at these two links:

https://walkingthewire.substack.com/the-call-of-the-voice-the-cry-of
https://walkingthewire.substack.com/the-call-of-the-voice-the-cry-of-05f ( )

Searing and yet placid. There's an ill adjusted peace on display, a rounded resignation. I found myself aware that I didn't read Cancer Ward until last month because for 15 years people I cared about were dealing with the illness and I had to maintain a distance.

That is not an act of severing but instead a downcast pivot. Roubaud's poetry made me wary initially. I didn't wish to be the victim of backshadowing. Such precaution was unnecessary. These verses are artful and human. Cornel West is correct we can't lose ourselves in abstractions of death we must confront corpses, out denigrating corporeality. I felt Roubaud's pain but couldn't imagine it. I do wish he would abandon instant coffee. ( )

Very few books go this deeply into the imaginative space of grief which such eloquence. Roubaud (and in this case, a translation by Waldrop) has made his way to the underworld, and he too looked back. But he brings what he lost with him to the page. ( )

I am not exactly enamored with Roubaud's poetry, but I am certainly taken by his wife, her life and work, her journal and pictures, realizing that it must have been hard to lose a woman like that and to deal with the loss on a daily basis. I am attempting to read his poems more as a journal instead of fine poetry, which in my opinion, the poetry is not. I do love the photographs at the back of the book, and only wish she could have lived longer in order to produce more work and perhaps find the happiness that eluded her.

I quit reading this mediocrity about half way and just skimmed the rest. The book did not ring authentic for me, though I do feel bad for all those involved in the life of Alix who lost her finally in the end so totally. But that doesn't make this a book worth finishing, it actually makes it worse. ( )

Quels mots restent-ils quand tout a été perdu ? Jacques Roubaud hurle l'absence alors qu'en lui règne la désolation. "Vacillant du doute de tout", le souvenir s'obscurcit. Dans une demeure où tout semble s'immobiliser, même "cette photographie, ta dernière", Roubaud arpente la théologie de l'inexistence. "sale vie, sale vie mélangée à la mort", cette mort "hirsute", qui stoppe l'écoulement des vers comme le disait Dante. Sa femme a disparu, jusqu'à ce qu'il n'en reste rien. "Disparaissant, tu n'as pas été mise ailleurs, tu t'es diluée dans ce minime espace, tu t'es enfouie dans ce minime espace, il t'a absorbée." Il ne reste rien. "Les autres traces, venues des autres sens, ne sont qu'en moi. Quand je trébuche dessus, j'étouffe." Chant terrible qui nous rappelle que de la mort ne surgit que le noir, "quelque chose noir". La mort de nos proches "ne cesse de s'accomplir de s'achever." Et dans cette description clinique de ce que la mort fait aux vivants, incrédules, de ce qu'elle leur laisse, cette nonvie où il ne nous reste rien. ( )