A Test of Solitude

by Emmanuel Hocquard, Rosmarie Waldrop (translator)

Poetry. Translated from the French by Rosmarie Waldrop. "Emmulating Wittgenstein, who repaired to an isolated cabin in Norway to write and reflect, Hocquard takes up his own test of solitude on a farm not far from Bordeaux. What he writes there are unconventional sonnets that arrive at their stipulated line-count by an ingenious variety of means. They record with deceptive simplicity daily accounts and experiences. At the same time, an inquiry is being conducted, a test of solitude that is also a test of poetry"--Steve Evans.

Genres: Poetry, France

72 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1998

About the author

Emmanuel Hocquard (born in 1940 in Cannes) was a French poet who grew up in Tangier, Morocco. He served as the editor of the small press Orange Export Ltd., and, with Claude Royet-Journoud, edited two anthologies of new American poets, 21+1: Poètes américains ď aujourďhui (with a corresponding English volume, 21+1 American Poets Today) and 49+1. In 1989, Hocquard founded and directed "Un bureau sur l'Atlantique", an association fostering relations between French and American poets.

Besides poetry, he has written essays, a novel, and translated American and Portuguese poets including Charles Reznikoff, Michael Palmer, Paul Auster, Benjamin Hollander, Antonio Cisneros, and Fernando Pessoa. With the artist Alexandre Delay, he made a video film, Le Voyage à Reykjavik.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emmanuel...)

Reviews

[John Hyland · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have carried this book around with me for quite a while now. I picked it up at an anniversary event for Burning Deck in Providence a long time ago. I do not remember why I picked it up, though it may have simply been the title, which, for me, I imagine, sounded, felt, like some wonderful splitting of the difference between Keats and Zukofsky. And, actually, as I think on it now, that impression may not be too far off: “This is to say I construct a solitude,” a solitude in—a solitude that is—language, that is that unending arc of the poetic address that is in so many ways the legacy of the sonnet, of the love address. In that line I see Williams—“This is just to say,” and in the next poem we are told: “In the parking lot of the Architecture School, not/a single car”—I hear Z.—to “construct” a life in language—and I bend toward Keats’s solitude.

But, then, too, other things, other concerns, and wonderful tendencies inform these taunt delicate lines. I think of Thoreau, for instance.

As noted in my note on Elizabeth Marie Young’s sonnets, I have handed some of Hocquard’s sonnets to my “Introduction to Creative Writing” class, in hope that they will begin to develop a wondrous sense of the solitude that is language itself.

[Jemma · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Viviane I love you” is a list and not a sentence.”68.

“ I write that in order to write this. What is written is so twice over.
What you read, is it two?
Between two there is a field whose form turns
Between us.
This hole is boundless…
...
Grammar and fiction are one.”71.

[Charles-Étienne Groleau · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is DA STUFF (I'm weird, don't talk to me, and if you do, just know you're not talking to the LIBRAIRE me)

[Zoe Tuck]

“Viviane is Viviane.”