courbure de la terre par jonas fortier

  My reviews of French poetry books are always the most niche, but at least once a year I try to expand my horizons and practice my second language…so here we go with courbure de la terre par jonas fortier.

courbure de la terre essentially translates to “curvature of the earth.” The title feels appropriate not only because so many of the poems feature round elements, curves along the horizon, but because there’s something about the tone of the poems that also feels soft. fortier is not a writer of hard edges but of gentle invitations. The poet takes on a mode that feels like some early French symbolists, drawing inspiration from things like the moon or rain drops and finding the deeper significance that is sometimes unspeakable.

There’s a layer of irony to me making that statement, though. There’s a sequence of poems in which fortier reflects on writing directly and provides a list of the types of poet he is not, outlining both motivations and processes for writing. He’s not a poet that works in a factory in unimaginable conditions; he’s not the poet that stays up all night and kills himself at twenty three. These tropes of the depressive and the isolated don’t reflect him, so while there are some symbols that are resonant with classic poetry, he still distances himself from their tradition.

I appreciate the art of quiet poems. fortier has a real observational quality in his work, rendering clouds and rain drops into art. The poem sequences are often untitled, and it blurs the line between individual poems and sequences of connected pieces, but the section <<Le sommeil est le neveu de la mort>> contains a piece that feels representative of the precise quality of fortier’s style. The piece reads, in part, as follows:

cette peine-là
est de saison, brume
démanchée contre le ciel
il se met à pleuvoir de minuscules araignées
des étoiles comme nous mais mieux
des gouttelettes encore poudreuses
comme des briques muettes
des flèches d’averse
viennent crever dans nos bras faibles
et nous portons à nos lèvres
des souvenirs d’herbes (54)

The description has that touch of tenderness and devastation that characterizes what I often think about in terms of a “poetic mode.” I particularly appreciate the rain being described like tiny spiders, rendering the droplets somewhat creepy, but also as stars “like us but better.” The line breaks sometimes make the lines read ambiguously, but the poem goes on to describe the droplets like falling arrows or bricks and there’s a heaviness there that counterbalances the softness of the powdery rain drops.

The section <<Vérités permanentes>> has some of my favourite pieces, which extend fortier’s motifs about the sky and clouds. In one piece, the speaker identifies himself and another (<<nous>>) as parallel to clouds, carrying the names of their fathers and the clothes of their mothers and big beards that have grown over time and having bodies like grapes where you can’t see inside. The poem’s volta explores a new angle and fortier explores the future, made of houses with hard planks that speak as you step on them. He talks about the opening of the house, the opening of the future, letting the wind speak through open doors and windows. The poem ends on the idea of the moon guiding people to the house alongside thin, key-like trees. It reads better in French: <<d’arbres minces / comme des clés>> (62). The extended metaphor works beautifully and mimics fortier’s approach: you are being trained as a reader how to listen to space, how to hear messages from your environment. It’s hard to translate here but there’s also an aural quality to the work, where particular sounds echo with a slight difference: dures / dureté, de soi / ce soir, and so on. These give the poem a coherence that feels like it touches on something other-worldly. 

The collection also reflects a fair deal on language itself. The section <<Vérités permanentes>> opens with a reflection on grammar:

il y a un temps
grammatical
qu’on appelle
vérité permanente

je n’en avais jamais entendu parler
jusqu’à ce qu’un Bescherelle
me révèle son nom

c’est arrivé par surprise
comme la lettre d’un ami cher
après des années passées
dans la contemplation
d’un pays lointain

j’ai eu une émotion très positive
bien que si proche de la tristesse
en apprenant que la vérité
peut être temps présent (59)

There’s a nostalgia to the piece that resonated with me, namely the idea of learning grammar from a Bescherelle (French Immersion kids represent!). I like, too, the sense of revelation that studying grammar brings and the reality that opens up. I also appreciate the tenuousness of the border between positive emotions and sadness and the way those converge at moments of clarity.

I can’t pretend that I understood the nuances of each of the poems in this collection. I do feel that the tone read as tender and a little tragic, but reflective and appreciative of the world. I flagged one of the early poems in the collection because I felt I didn’t have the vocabulary to really delve in. As I translated it a little more, the imagery stood out more dramatically: it was about kids “chained to strollers” watching birds and knowing that life is invented by the spirits of our dead, who have become <<essaims d’abeilles>> (24)—that is, swarms of bees. The poem took on a new philosophic intensity and then becomes a reflection on time reflected in the northern hemisphere collapsing like wet butter on the sidewalk. 

Another piece I revisited reinforced the idea of the poet as a wanderer. I’m tempted to put him alongside Baudelaire as a flanneur, but I’ll resist easy categorization. Essentially, there’s a poem about wandering but then clinging to certain phenomena, including the increasingly strange—like urine accumulating in ant nests (37). There’s an endless searching and a turning up of the speaker’s eyes to the stars…but we’d call them eggs (37). It’s an odd line to end on, a bit of cheekiness that I feel undermines the self-seriousness of the wandering poet’s approach.

Returning to the section <<Le sommeil est le neveu de la mort>>, there’s a piece that ties these elements together. There’s a roundness to the piece, the observational quality, and the sense of wandering and searching that fortier highlights. The poem has a simplicity to it: it lists different types of droplets—respiration, cuts and injuries, brilliant drops (52). The poet rolls like a dice all while marching on, ready to scale mountains and appreciating the thyme growing at the side of the sidewalk.

I admit I’m not the perfect audience for this book; I appreciate the language, but am not apt enough to appreciate its nuances and possibilities. The poems felt tender and beautiful and quiet, with flashes of the philosophical, which I tend to enjoy. It’s a nice collection and if you’re a reader of French, I’d love to hear you extend the conversation.

Happy reading!

Mornings Without Mii by Mayumi Inaba

  If you’ve ever had a pet, you’ve probably felt gratitude for how they’ve been there for you during any number of significant moments in your life. The memories we form alongside our pets have a special place in us, so it makes sense that Mayumi Inaba grounds her memoir Mornings Without Mii in memories of her cat. It is her life, but through the lens of a beloved pet.

The book is a quiet, meditative reflection on Inaba’s life that reads like an episodic novel. Each section is also punctuated with a poem that parallels her experiences with her cat Mii. The account of finding Mii is heartrending; she finds the cat hanging on a school fence and rescues her from her vulnerable state. She brings the cat to trust her and they have a clear special bond and they ultimately go on walks together.

There’s a sequence that I thought had a really interesting framing. Inaba talks about the dissolution of her marriage. The relationship is clearly coming to an end but it’s anchored in their relationship with the cat. Inaba is trying to find a home but the leases all have specifications against cats. In the end, she finds a place where she can move with her cat to write, but her husband cannot make the move with her. She then reflects on her choice and sees that choosing her cat was a way of making the harder choice to let her marriage end.

As the book progresses, Inaba recounts a few significant neighbours in her life around their interactions with Mii. There’s one memorable sequence in which she remembers Mii running away and the panic of trying to find her—and then finding her with a neighbour and having to reclaim the cat. There’s also a great part where she hires a cat sitter who takes a lot of effort to personalize Mii’s care.

I think that the last third of the book is probably the most powerful; we witness Mii’s declining health and eventual death. For years, Mii declines such that her digestive system no longer functions. We then see a tenderness in Inaba as she tends to Mii, making it a routine to squeeze her bladder to help her urinate and to manually push feces through her system. They have evening walk routines and Inaba it’s clear how deeply she cares for her cat. It’s tragic watching her realize that there is nothing to be done for Mii; I think most pet owners will recognize that feeling—you know it might be time, but can’t bring yourself to do it. Inaba also recollects the memories for which Mii was her ongoing companion and, despite the book being fewer than 200 pages, it feels like an earned tragic walk down memory lane.

As I mentioned, the tone of the book is a quiet, meditative one. There’s a directness and simplicity in the language that serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it gives the text an accessible quality and presents these nostalgic moments as matters-of-fact. On the other hand, the text’s elliptical quality gives it a weightiness, a mysteriousness. The poems at the end of the chapters are a nice touch; because the relationship with her cat develops alongside her writing career, the pairings have a formal purpose.

Of the poems, one about the loss of Mii and the mornings without her stands out as a highlight. The poem starts with the line “The night split split and never closed” (171). In the latter part of the poem, there’s a series of lines that I think encapsulate grief and loss beautifully:

“Your time in your body receded like the tide
leaving it empty
The dawn sunrise

A single unmoving point in a world on the move
The newspaper came   but there was nothing in it I

    wanted to read.” (171)

I think the line about there not being anything of the note in the newspaper is so true to life. Losing a pet creates a numbness where nothing else feels like it matters. And the fact that this comes at the end of a book about the loss feels like a nice parallel: words get to matter again as Inaba processes the loss of her beloved cat.

The book navigates difficult feelings: there’s a tension between the deep love you have for a pet, but the frustrations of caring for an ailing pet. There’s the grief and regret and doubt of doing what is best for your beloved animal companions. The book is pretty sweet, but at the same time offers its fair share of heartbreak.

If you’re looking for a bit of tenderness or if you’re processing your own pet grief, this book may well be for you. It seems inappropriate to end this review with my usual “happy reading” so instead, I’ll just request that you comment pictures of your little animal pals.

Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company that Unlocked the Power of Play by Keza MacDonald

  Some of my fondest video game memories are with the Super NIntendo Entertainment System: from Contra 3 to Super Mario RPG to Earthbound, the system had so many memorable experiences. With that in mind, I thought I would check out Keza MacDonald’s Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company that Unlocked the Power of Play. In all honesty, I expected the book to be more focused on the SNES, but the book is more of a retrospective of some of Nintendo’s landmark franchises across times and consoles, including Donkey Kong, Super Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Pokemon, Kirby, Wii Sports, Animal Crossing, Super Smash Bros, and Splatoon.

Towards the end of the book, MacDonald makes a comment about the book being more descriptive than analytical, which I think is accurate. I would have appreciated some more exploration of the significance of particular games or analysis of their core themes. In the conversation about Animal Crossing, MacDonald does discuss the historical factors that made the game explode. It had been a franchise that faced a lot of skepticism and only really made a name for itself when Covid hit and the cozy game industry exploded, allowing people to connect even when in isolation. More historical and cultural commentary on the games would help me to connect with the overall narrative for what Nintendo is accomplishing as a company.

One thing I will say is that the book does prove inspiring for some of the franchises I’m less familiar with. The discussion of Metroid makes me want to revisit the series in more depth and the history of Kirby’s genesis is a lighthearted and joyful experience. MacDonald focuses mainly on NIntendo-driven franchises and acknowledges that there were so many innovative and interesting games (including Earthbound) that got no mention; there are a series of brief descriptions of some landmark games made by third parties and I’d love to delve more into some of those.

Super Nintendo: The Game-Changing Company that Unlocked the Power of Play essentially presents a thesis that Nintendo as a company has continuously been an innovator and that fun always comes first. They run themselves like a toy company rather than a games company and have continued to grow by allowing ideas to flourish. MacDonald does, however, express some skepticism about the ongoing success of the company. Essentially, the concern is that Nintendo will commit too much to extant franchises without pushing the boundaries. There is an element of risk that they need to lean into in order to stay relevant.

MacDonald’s book is a casual read that is a nice stroll through memory lane with some insight into why Nintendo has been successful. It’s a fun, if light, experience that makes me want to go back to the good old days of waking up at 7 a.m. on the weekend to play a game I’d rented before having to return it.

Happy reading!