Museum of Bone and Water

by Nicole Brossard, Robert Majzels (Translation), Erín Moure (Translation)

Nicole Brossard's fiction and poetry have been lauded as equal parts experimental and sensual, and Museum of Bone and Water continues this tradition. Drawing from Virginia Woolf and Jorge Luis Borges, this collection of poems investigates intimate bodily realms to probe questions of who we are and what we desire. Positing the body as a museum, the poems illuminate the human condition by way of fingers, lips, and organs, finding meaning in them as one might a painting. With writing that is lyrical yet grounded in reality, Brossard's poems have the capacity to speed the breath and quicken the heart, and make for a luxurious reminder that poetry can be as much a physical pleasure as a spiritual one.

Genres: Poetry, Lesbian, LGBT, Canada, Fiction, France, Queer

128 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Born in Montreal (Quebec), poet, novelist and essayist Nicole Brossard published her first book in 1965. In 1965 she cofounded the influential literary magazine La Barre du Jour and in 1976 she codirected the film Some American Femnists. She has published eight novels including Picture Theory, Mauve Desert, Baroque at Dawn, an essay "The Aerial Letter" and many books of poetry including Daydream Mechanics, Lovhers, Typhon dru, Installations, Musee de l'os et de l'eau. She has won the Governor General award twice for her poetry (1974, 1984) and Le Grand Prix de Poesie de la Foundation les Forges in 1989 and 1999. Le Prix Athanase-David, which is for a lifetime of literary acheivement, was attributed to her in 1991. That same year she received the The Harbourfront Festival Prize. In 1994, she was made a member of L'Academie des Lettres du Quebec. Her work has been widely translated and anthologized. Mauve Desert and Baroque at Dawn have been translated into Spanish. In 1998 she published a bilingual edition of an autofiction essay titled She would be the first sentence of my new novel/Elle serait la premiere phrase de mon prochain roman(1998). In 1989, a book of her poetry in translation, Installations, was released, translated by Erin Moure and Robert Majzels. Nicole Brossard lives in Montreal.

Reviews

[M.W.P.M. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Museum of Bone and Water is divided into seven parts: "Museum of Bone and Water", "Theatre: Speed of Water", "Figure of the Slave (Carnation)", "Typhoon Thrum", "Palm Trees", "The Throat of Lee Miller", and "The Silence of the Hibiscus"...

from "Museum of Bone and Water"...

cold luminous November morning
I count my words
the bone that will not counter time

from the other side of silence
the art of peoples ad of bones entangled

my answer never differs
water a way of hiding pain

- pg. 4

* * *

my joy in fiction engages every subject
suppose I've a body a skeleton sexed
a touch away from intimate words and self-portrait

in Dresden a morning of soot and frost
I cross the black and the white of three postcards

the ruined facade of the women's church
unimaginable gust of wind at my back

- pg. 14

from "Theatre: Speed of Water"...

water idea of water caressed
we often repeat
the same signs while touching
the depths of thought
skin laughing saline

- pg. 27

* * *

the horizon draws from us
its colour and the breadth of dream
the world must reply
to the face we offer
unfathomable mouth

- pg. 33

from "Figure of the Slave (Carnation)"...

all night long the light will have changed
everywhere the bridges hemmed in blue
how to hold back the water
reality without pacing myself in its midst

I slide my hand until dawn

- pg. 43

* * *

in nature we've cut up
the world and answers
exposed the slave to all kinds of pain
to the reproduction of the small silences of death

of gold the slave's laugh created the worst of confusions

- pg. 52

from "Typhoon Thrum"...

and it takes flight whitecaps typhoon thrum
like an elbow in the night
ray of mores
the world is swiftly dark

- pg. 57

* * *

tonight if you lean your face close
and civilization stretches out
at the end of your arms, tonight
if in full flight you catch my image
say it was from afar
like a die in the night

- pg. 61

from "Palm Trees"...

because of the body the present
every day
landscapes at that place in my eyes
where women and other women touch
memory and pleasure

because of hands
of the line of time that runs through our hair
most of us dedicate our poems
like to girls
capable of tongues and future

amid mirrors and screens
a way to approach silence
palm trees Dublin or Key West
and other images where the rain seems infinite
a care for water that feels good
as life because of the body seeks
conversation others say culture here

- The Present Is Not a Book, pg. 69

* * *

I can't seem to erase
the idea that faced with time
leaf or child
time repeats tempest
or labyrinth
no one dreams of resisting

of life we'll say any old thing in short
to save tine quick-
cut: confusion of flash fool furious
sleep time of screens
real time of tête-à-tête and intimate talk
side-by-side spoken clearly
snippet of sincerity

- The Eyes of Woolf and Borges, pg. 73

* * *

I know it by the number of libraries
accidents of speech
life in its ardour flames flinches
proof in hand
hard drive
autobiography of bone in series

- Key West Poems, pg. 79

* * *

time free-falling in my arms,
I await night the midpoint of midnight
life stretches out palm tree silence
unrecognizable
in the folds of representation
I speak intimate in the open air

noise of lips of water soft
time slips between births and given names
on our cheeks the sleek idea of solitude
so alive we would have caressed it and tomorrow
upright like a new album amid mores
and the sudden sound of a book: it falls

- Analysis of a Sound in the Middle of the Night, pg. 89

from "The Throat of Lee Miller"...

/each time une phrase
opens with an I
she must be really young

and as we translate her
we must avoid saying never or in my view

I remember the throat of Lee Miller
one June day in Paris

- pg. 99

* * *

/I often move to the same spot
a woman in love
to capture shade at the same hour

and as we translate
I breathe

the throat of Lee Miller perfection
of the image as I draw near

- pg. 101

from "The Silence of the Hibiscus"...

the soul of people I've long searched for it
in the blind spots of pleasure
and a few promises sunflowers spun
toward a better definition of pain
the soul of people occasionally I drew it
trace of great shadow play expectancy of life

- pg. 109

* * *

at the seashore and beneath the palms. The days.
Tomrorrow extends our brief story. We
breathe at the heart of a punctuation that revives
a generation here, a river, a war. Over there
the young and beautiful collections of colts, nintendo,
syringes.
Logos, loco, forgotten lectrice.
Tonight the woman. Tonight someone.
Then there'll be just one bed
for the war and the river

- pg. 113

[charlotte]

based on the blurb on the back, this collection was more cerebral than i expected. for all the bones and water, the poems weren’t as grounded in flesh and sensual reality as i would have liked. admittedly beautiful, but not quite what i hoped.

[Sofia · Rating 2 out of 5]

An occasionally successful experiment rather than something written with heart and soul, but I wouldn't not recommend it.

[Víctor Bermúdez · Rating 4 out of 5]

l'eau l'idée de l'eau caressée
nous répétons souvent
les mêmes signes en touchant
le fond des pensées
peau riante saline

[nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

as the world is swiftly dark
and night turns me avid
from everywhere so much brushes up
that the tongue with its salt
pierces one by one the words
with silence, typhoon thrum

typhoon thrum is one of my all-time favourite poems--because i'm a bad and inconsistent poetry reader, i had no idea this was the collection it was from until now. anyway: 5 adoring stars of unconditional love♥

and the rest of the collection was also lovely, of course.

fullness of flesh I always fear
to lose sight of a single day
of life in stable time
the loving timbre of your voice
abyss that clings to the vocal chords