1: Daisy
Some flab in the blõnde in Quebec like here
the Holstein ferrous with dainty red daubs
chocolate white eye flower dress
plumping up Daisy my pinup girl
a bout with trying to curl my tongue under your teat
the heart is no longer whisked away by mousse
puffy with images for your layabout eyes
you have to face up to the facts.
2: Normandy
A box had raised the morale of the times
of the sister of the troops to distill into bags
a milk of makeup cotton under the eye
of the connoisseurs in boondocks Normandy
and whose tricked tedium the apple pink cows
or blues of the hard tack candy sucked each time in the spirit
of the pioneers would drool away as soon as I drew in
everything except to face the facts.
3: Bernice
To get a rise to this level we ride the fly
off the handle hitched by its poise to the biplane's belly
we feel hiked up by wings to the bull's-eye
of the desert of Bernice (the around-the-cow trip is largely
a snore) grazes black lakes the abyss
the wreck (one eye or two nostrils
kestrel) blown out poses as a victim at last on the
landing strip of the nose: got to face up to the facts.
4: Aleppo
By a ton of bricks a bump in the road I also hit on the eye
of the left horn I'd like to prick the secret
I guess of Daisy's age each time
I bring it up (my whole youth was sawed off
reckoning rings in the o of the poles of pines of Aleppo)
each time I'd like the man of the woods
we sometimes play to yank her horn to read there
in vain—you have to look things in the face.
5: Guillaume
If we take up Pythagoras in order to make music
light years after the echo of the movement of planets
extinct all in all our bells it's full of hot air
I join Guillaume among the autumn crocuses
at the stage of the universe poisoning coat colors
flower there my eyes are like that flower
Ben & Jerried left behind we follow the fly's flit over the field
silent you have to face things roundabout.
6: Alexandra
(When the dirty dozen re-tread across the field
of the poem on their knees the war waltz wears out
the company plastic-sealed as a yellow badge
my angel who beats his wings & that we loop you
to the mini ear metes out the same butterfly
effect from a desire to jumble the numbers
we open the hope of renovating the world
—in vain you have to face up to the facts.)
7: Cindy
Next up with her mouth Cindy turns minty a wisp
of feeling breaks at the cry from the clover between her lips
the sound barrier we saw divvy the paddy field from the meadow
cedes to this barbarism of the sound of the rotating
of the earth beneath the grinders we dig
the hell out of hear that the taste of crickets revived
as poppies lunges up to plunge there too
then sponges you you have to face the facts.
8: Semantika
In the same vein we tunnel the space from the muzzle
to the trough sinking toward the surface of the other
side of the globe of her frenzied eyes right up to the tongue
of cousin Semantika (little white rose literally
drinking from one of the arms of the Brahmaputra)
first we think miracle telepathy and then we crackle
a mental match at the flickers of evidence
that confirm: you have to face up to the facts.
The Cow
Sébastien Smirou
translated from the French by Andrew Zawacki
Subtitled "bestiaire," with a pencil sketch by François Matton of an unfinished beast on its cover, Beau voir features chapters that each address a different animal: lion, giraffe, chamois, cow, cat, turtle, glowworm, dodo. One may hear the title as an echo of mirabile visu, "wonderful to behold," with the reading experience figured like a day spent wandering an unusual zoo: the animals are hardly in captivity, few zoos feature glowworms (or, for that matter, cats), and the dodo is extinct. On the other hand, "beau voir" is also a set expression, indicating doubt: "oh yeah? I'd like to see that," or, more cynically, "uh-huh, we'll see about that." Poised between exhibition and exhibitionism, between inventory and invention, Beau voir is a kids' book for grownups, those featherless bipeds who live behind figurative bars but are sometimes freed by rhyme, or nonsense, a run-on sentence, a pun or sing-along. One might keep in mind that bête is not only a noun for "creature"; it's also an adjective meaning "silly," even "stupid." Similarly, "La vache," the book's fourth chapter, refers to cows—but "vache," the adjective, means "nasty," while "la vache!" is an exclamation of surprise: Holy cow! Like its predecessor Mon Laurent, Smirou's Beau voir is divided into eight chapters, each containing as many poems, with each poem comprising an octave of lines. Moreover, the last line, or a portion of it, is repeated in every poem within a section, verbatim or with variegated reiterations. All eight octets of "The giraffe," for instance, conclude, "si tu vois ce que je veux dire" ("if you see what I mean"), a phrase that highlights Smirou's impish wish to marry seeing and saying. That the title Beau voir contains eight letters is no contingent detail—I am calling the translation See About.
Sébastien Smirou is the author of three poetry volumes from P.O.L.—Un temps pour s'étreindre (2011), Beau voir (2008), and Mon Laurent (2003). He founded éditions rup&rud, whose chapbook series has been reprinted by Éditions de l'Attente as rup&rud: l'intégrale, 1999-2004 (2009). The recipient of numerous awards, including a Bourse de découverte from the Centre national du Livre and a fellowship from the Conseil Régional d'Île de France, he participated in the Mission Stendhal sponsored by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. He has translated several American poets into French. A psychoanalyst, Smirou has contributed essays to psychoanalytical texts, canonical and contemporary alike, including Sándor Ferenczi's Un petit homme-coq (2012) and Franck Médioni's Albert Ayler: Témoignages sur un holy ghost (2010). He authored the preface to a new Freud translation, Le petit Hans (2011), and translated Antonino Ferro's Rêveries from the Italian, which just appeared in 2012. Smirou co-directs the journal LIGNE 13.
Andrew Zawacki is the author of the poetry books Videotape (Counterpath, 2013), Petals of Zero Petals of One (Talisman, 2009), Anabranch (Wesleyan, 2004), and By Reason of Breakings (Georgia, 2002). His recent chapbooks include Roche limit (tir aux pigeons, 2010) and Georgia (Katalanché / Scary Topiary, 2013). His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Nation, and elsewhere, and he has published three books in France: Georgia and Carnet Bartleby, translated by Sika Fakambi, and Par Raison de brisants, translated by Antoine Cazé—a finalist for Le Prix Nelly Sachs. Zawacki's translation of Sébastien Smirou, My Lorenzo, is out from Burning Deck (2012). A former fellow of the Slovenian Writers' Association, Zawacki edited Afterwards: Slovenian Writing 1945-1995 (White Pine, 1999) and edited and co-translated Aleš Debeljak's Without Anesthesia: New and Selected Poems (Persea, 2011). He is coeditor of Verse, The Verse Book of Interviews (Wave, 2005), and Gustaf Sobin's Collected Poems (Talisman, 2005).
