Entangled - Papers! - Notes - Claude Mouchard

The words quoted [here] are precisely the ones I don’t need to realize. If they stay in my memory, it is by radiating — wounding, irresorbable — an excess of reality.

It’s rather all of the rest of language and thought that seems to me affected by a lack of reality. And it is in relation to those words — cited as inclusions — that I try to realize, to create sentences that realize, and realize themselves. Or rather it is a whole volume that should then, around these quoted words, take form, and hold .— fragile, but real. This volume should be made of sentences that move in relation to one another, balance each other and suspend each other reciprocally.

Some actually should be whispered, hardly audible, others should be felt in one blow — yes, like a vibrating blow —, even while remaining obstinately, as sentences, unfoldable (so as to deliver, if one wishes, a whole content).

And this volume, finally, would not be exactly closed. At least it should leave the impression that other sentences could still come there to play with those that are written and printed.

Entangled — Papers! — Notes is a bilingual edition of selected poetry by Claude Mouchard. It includes the original French texts along with English translations, and has a preface by Michel Deguy and an Introduction by Mary Shaw. It is the first ever presentation of Mouchard’s work in English.