Beatitudes

by Herménégilde Chiasson, Jo-Anne Elder (Translator)

For Herménégilde Chiasson, every work of art is both a cry and a prayer. Beatitudes reflects this perspective by connecting everyday events — people losing their keys or their cellphone signals — to the universal. Sighs, silences, and human utterances all become part of an ongoing incantation that ranges from the personal to the textual, from the local to the cosmopolitan. In this postmodern "sermon on the mount," Chiasson has created a tour de force at once compassionate and complex, thoughtful and illuminating. A meditation on what it means to be human, Chiasson writes from a deep sense of melancholy. Exploring the common bonds of humanity, he creates a tonal montage that probes our notions of who we are and who we might become. Beginning in mid-sentence and ending not with a period but a comma, Beatitudes is Herménégilde Chiasson's most important work to date, with beautiful lines that continue to echo long after they have been read. It will be released simultaneoulsy in French by Editions Prise de Parole.

120 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

Herménégilde Chiasson is one of Canada's most accomplished writer-artists. He is the author of more than 20 books of poetry, over 30 plays, and several collections of essays. A multi-disciplinary artist, he has received numerous awards for his work, including the Governor General’s Award for poetry, the Molson Prize, le prix France-Acadie, le Grand prix de la francophonie canadienne, the prestigious Chevalier de l'ordre des Arts et des Lettres, and the Prix littéraire Antonine-Maillet-Acadie Vie. From 2003 to 2009, he served as Lieutenant Governor of New Brunswick.

Jo-Anne Elder has translated many of Chiasson’s works of poetry, including Beatitudes and Conversations and, in collaboration with Fred Cogswell, Climates. She and Fred Cogswell also edited and translated Unfinished Dreams: Contemporary Poetry of Acadie.

Reviews

[Keith Weaver · Rating 5 out of 5]

From Hermenegilde Chiasson, supremely accomplished and widely admired, comes this wonderful little book, in which hundreds of strengths, traits, tendencies, shortcomings, failings, faults, are captured as images selected from the full range of the human condition, each introduced by the beatitude formula “those who…”.

From these hugely varied images here is a selection, each one of which, like an extravert kitten, asked me to take it home:

- those who make new lives between fresh sheets
- those who feed animals and make sure each one receives a fair portion
- those who put on their glasses and contentedly watch the world take shape again, impeccably meaningful and immensely seductive, like the sun on the sea when it plays with water that was once so blue, covering it with a thin golden film on which all believe they might find their best halo,
- those who become impatient with the slow progress of absurd procedures, mindless statements, and the maniacal will of men to control everything with a rigid set of regulations and guidelines that have existed since the beginning of time, that are set out in stone as hard as their heads, penetrated only by ignorance and neglect,
- those who cut bread they have baked themselves,
- those who make sure there is water in every glass, a linen on the table, and food for everyone,
- those who thank you for simply being alive, for sharing and breathing the same air, for the gifts that you bring, for something they have glimpsed and felt, like an unforgettable gift, a disaster that radiates unending wave of heat towards them, a new vision that questions and changes everything, that fills them with a giddy complicity, a desire they won’t explain and that blankets them in gratitude,

A book to return to.

[Julie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful & thoughtful poetry by a New Brunswick poet