Pierre Jean Jouve
Voice
From that abyss into which everything plunges - nature, anguish, the beatitude of sex and the fear of death, desire which annihilates itself - there comes a murmur, a whisper. The voice rises, carrying the number of its words in clusters of pain. And this man formerly bestial who represses his shameful needs and thrusts away with his hand draped and stinking death, this solitary man becomes a rock of the word. The ill humour of the seasons, the bitterness of goodbyes, sound and fury, the threat of worlds, and the infinite disappointment of unclothed kisses: the word seizes the whole of nature, composes itself, moves away from everything true in order to hang suspended. A sound that once conceived lasts forever, a magic opera, a song that has gone awry. The ignorant give the name of poetry to this bitter and marvellous groan.
Translated by Michael Bullock
Page(s) 21
magazine list
- Features
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- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
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- Atlas
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- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
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- Dream Catcher
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- French Literary Review, The
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- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
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- Magma
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- Matter
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- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
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- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
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- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
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- Poetry Salzburg Review
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- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
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- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The