Mobility of Light: The Poetry of Nicole Brossard
by Louise H. Forsyth
Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2009, ISBN 978-1-55458-047-7, 115 pp., $18.95 paper.

Wilfrid Laurier University Press continues its stellar Laurier Poetry Series with this much anticipated volume. They could not have picked a better person than Louise H. Forsyth as its author, Forsyth having edited the definitive work on Brossard, Essays on her Work (Guernica Editions, 2005).

The preparation of this volume must have been a daunting task. As expressed by Neil Besner, the general editor, the criteria for inclusion in this series are "to ask a critic (sometimes herself a poet) to select thirty-five poems from across a poet's career; write an engaging, accessible introduction; and have the poet write an afterword" (ix). Brossard, equally accomplished in both the novel and essay forms, has written over thirty books, with her first poetry collection, Aube ˆ la maison, appearing in 1965.To select just thirty-five poems out of a fifty-year career would have taxed anyone's editorial talents enormously. Forsyth has done an amazing job.

One of the pleasures of this collection is to see the original French alongside the English translation. A bilingual poetry edition is an uncommon occurrence in Canada even though Canada supposedly has two official languages. But with the government's starvation of small presses (which has only gotten worse in recent years, particularly with the Vancouver Olympics having been funded on the backs of artistic organizations), it is only the large universities that can afford the additional expense--and even they are having a hard time of it.

Speaking of translation, Brossard has had some of Canada's most talented poets approach her work in recognition of her stature as a Québécoise, feminist and lesbian poet. Those who have brought their talents to translating these poems include Barbara Godard, Fred Wah, Robert Majzels and Erin Moure. To translate Brossard is not an easy task. In her writing on feminist and lesbian issues, Brossard also explored the French language which, because it is gendered, she could exploit to her advantage.

Forsyth begins her introduction with these words:

Nicole Brossard magically calls forth secrets from words and launches these words with the mobility of light into the minds and bodies of her readers. From the start of her illustrious career as a bold experimental writer, a focus on the power of language has determined the many trajectories of her art. (xiii)

An example: when Brossard began to explore feminist issues in her writing, the silent 'e' which denotes the feminine ending in French became far less silent, "the mute e declared to be mutating into subjectivity, agency, and solidarity through speech and writing" (xviii), as she wrote in Le Barre du Jour, the feminist journal which she co-founded, stating that "a grammar that has as a rule: the masculine prevails over the feminine must be transgressed." When Brossard began to explore lesbian issues, translator Barbara Godard was given no choice but to search for appropriate English equivalents to the loaded terms Brossard employed, resulting in the book published by Guernica under the title Lovhers.

Of course, we cannot forget the poems themselves, many of which have been translated here for the first time. Brossard launched her career with the untitled poem that opens this selection and which appeared as the first poem in Brossard's first collection Season Dawning (Aube àla saison), the first lines of which are "On strands of light / I am hanging poetry / like garlands" (3). She hasn't stopped. Her garlands continue to adorn the Canadian poetic landscape.

Brossard is the Webern of Canadian letters. If poetry is the art of concision, then she should be adorned in stiletto heels and a herringbone corset, bearing a whip in one hand, as her poems are placed in bondage (she does the same with her novels). Take another untitled poem, this one from Echo Budges Beautiful (L'écho bouge beau) from 1968:

listen quite peacefully the crust cracking
the crust imbued with oil and with soap you
nails teeth skull murmuring their
echo cost what may
                              the sonorous shadow invading you (9)

That's it--five lines to incorporate what Forsyth calls the performative of poetry, five lines to capture the essence of a still life, a perfect portrait of the events of time the time being "now." Notice the lack of punctuation, described by Brossard in her afterword as a "disturbing rustle" (105). Brossard despises sentences, finding them boring. Thus, her penchant is for poetry rather than the novel. Even in her novels, she eschews punctuation as much as possible.

Brossard was one of the first Québécois/e writers to use the prose poem form. An example is another untitled poem from the 1980 Amantes (Lovhers):

according to the years of reality, imagine going from city to city to recite the smooth versions that slip into each body instigating the unfolding, the excitation: everywhere women kept watch in the only way plausible: beautiful and serious in their energy from spiral to spiral (31)

The last line of this poem is an example of Brossard's playfulness with words. In French, it reads "JE N'ARRæTE PAS DE LIRE" (30) with the play on 'de lire'; Godard translating it as "I DON'T STOP READING / DELIRING" (31).

Forsyth has been extremely judicious in her selection of poems in Mobility of Light. They capture all the characteristics for which Brossard has become known. This is an excellent representative sample of fifty years of Brossard--a daunting task rendered exquisitely.

John Herbert Cunningham is a Winnipeg writer. He reviews poetry in Canada for Malahat Review, Arc, Antigonish Review, Fiddlehead and The Danforth Review, in the U.S. for Quarterly Conversations, Rain Taxi, Rattle, Big Bridge and Galatea Revisits, and in Australia for Jacket.

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