So white
is the caper flower
opening at dawn
its flexible stem
climbing the rock cliff
I am so stubborn
I haul myself into the open air
persist
from my shoulder
the sky hangs
like a weary bag
*
Shoes off
clumsily we walk
over the heavy
rigorous
gravel of every day
and yet
all these wheat stalks
the bitter ripe lemon tree
the smoked spice of the open sea
beckon
*
A crowd in jubilation
high transparent grass
that moves to the side then rights itself
it's the multiple aerial
thirst rising
toward the necessary water
to the side
on a hollow staircase
I fill my bone spoon
with some paltry rain
*
Now comes the hour
when dust drifts down
alighting noiselessly
on the dark roofs
acrid
like wool
like lichen
*
But the cliff
endures
looms
never weary
of keeping space
at bay
at the foot of this wall
a wonder
it still stands
the immense breeder
of waves
*
Spotted with chalk
with fruit with rust
a big apron tossed
over this stone stomach
it's to its slope
its steep folds
that today my tears
severe in the clear night
one by one
return
from Gravel
José-Flore Tappy
translated from the French by John Taylor
Click here to read the Special Feature: John Taylor on José-Flore Tappy.
José-Flore Tappy's subtle lyricism affects the overall impression given by these short simple poems that are ultimately quite complex. Her verse is structured around studied effects of rhythm, assonance, and consonance, as well as around syntactic ruptures that contribute to the oft-acute emotions that she invokes. Whenever I asked the poet questions about semantic nuances in such and such a line during my work on this translation, she would reply precisely but also sometimes add, while underlining similar vowels or consonants, that her "search for sounds" was as important as her search for meaning. She encouraged me to take liberties with sense—and I have taken a few. Semantic resonance—a mainstay of French poetry of this kind—and even some semantic double-layering—note the numerous enjambments—are carefully arranged in her poetry; but it is also true that sound moves the poems along as much as do line breaks, truncated word order, and tantalizingly postponed meaning. I am not sure which comes first, the sound or the semantics, in her initial drafts, but both interact effectively by the end of her labors. An equilibrium is reached, and this goal and notion are central to her poetry for other reasons as well. Given the differences between French and English in this regard, I have tried to give an impression of Tappy's music by paying special attention to alliteration.
José-Flore Tappy was born in Lausanne in 1954. She is the author of five volumes of poetry and has won two prestigious Swiss literary awards: the Ramuz Prize for Errer mortelle and the Schiller Prize for Hangars. She works as an editor and scholar at the Centre de Recherches sur les Lettres Romandes at the University of Lausanne. In John Taylor's translations, her poetry has appeared in the Antioch Review, the International Literary Quarterly, and Carte Blanche.
John Taylor (b. 1952) is an American writer, critic, and translator. He is the author of twelve collections of stories, short prose, and poetry. As a polyglot literary critic, he has long been a bridge between European literature and English-speaking countries. He translates Modern Greek, Italian, and especially French literature. His most recent translations include books by Philippe Jaccottet, Jacques Dupin, Pierre-Albert Jourdan, Louis Calaferte, José-Flore Tappy, Pierre Chappuis, Catherine Colomb, Pierre Voélin, and Georges Perros. In 2013, he was awarded the Raiziss-de Palchi Translation Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for his project to translate the poetry of the Italian poet Lorenzo Calogero—a book published as An Orchid Shining in the Hand: Selected Poems 1932–1960 (Chelsea Editions, 2015). His most recent translations are three books by Franca Mancinelli, The Little Book of Passage (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2018), At an Hour’s Sleep from Here (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2019) and The Butterfly Cemetery (The Bitter Oleander Press, 2022), José-Flore Tappy’s Trás-os-Montes (The MadHat Press, 2021), as well as Philippe Jaccottet’s A Calm Fire and Other Travel Writings (Seagull Books, 2019), Patches of Sunlight, or of Shadow (Seagull Books, 2020), and Ponge, Pastures, Prairies (Black Square Editions, 2020).
