m-Talá
by Chus Pato, transl. Erín Moure
Ottawa: BuschekBooks, 2009, ISBN 978-1-894543-54-5, 105 pp., $17 paper.

In discussing a work by the Galician writer Chus Pato, particularly in a Canadian context, it is incumbent on the reviewer to begin with the writing of Erín Moure, Pato's authorized Canadian translator.

Moure's writing career may be divided into three periods. The first began with Empire, York St. by House of Anansi in 1979, establishing her long-standing relationship with that publisher. Furious, another Anansi publication--this one from 1988--announced with a crash of cymbals that lyricism, at least for Moure, was dead. She had entered the postmodern and the language of poetry (or the poetry of language, depending on one's perspective). Canadian poetry would never be the same. She won the Governor General's Award that year. The third phase, the one she is currently in, was precipitated by her discovery of the Galician-Portuguese language. It, and her translations of the work of Chus Pato (and that of Québécoise poet Nicole Brossard), have established her as one of the preeminent postmodern translators. This book was jointly released in Canada by Buschek and in England by Shearsman Books, furthering Moure's (and Pato's) already considerable international reputation.

m-Talá is introduced by Moure with an essay titled "Translating Chus Pato" in which she provides a concise history of Galicia and Galician writing. During the course of this fascinating excursion, Moure writes that "Chus Pato's m-Talá marked, in 2000, a further rupture, an invitation across a boundary. It is considered a turning point in Galician poetry . . . In m-Talá, Pato refuses to maintain the illusion that the lyric 'I' is the personal voice of the poet. She refuses the singularity of poetic voice altogether, taking on voices till she is these voices. . . . She plays with every code imaginable: gender coding, positioning of the spectator, positioning of the poet, the identity of the author, in ways that we are more used to seeing in theatre or visual art." (9-10)

Prior to the first poem, the reader encounters an inscription by belén feliú, a Galician writer: "our history: incised into granite from which dreams are made." It is this that Pato responds to in her first, untitled, poem:

The waters: what an architecture to house civilization, sister! Babel is time and Aphrodite. I craved a Ganges of words; how terrible these tresses are, whose sole clasp is my hand and sole emblem, the wind! It's like waking from a dream, of the body, of words (13)

Of course, most of us will not know how this poem reads or sounds in the original language, as the number of Galician-Portuguese speakers is very small, and so we rely on Moure's translation to entice us--and entice us she does. There is that loping alliteration "civilization, sister." And the images that are evoked more by the way the words rub against each other than by any concrete image.

Pato frequently engages in the transvestitism of language--genre-crossing. In "the disappearance of Dora, part two" (34), a conversation takes place between Agape and Mephisto concerning the "death" or "disappearance" of Dora. The following snippet will illustrate the general tenor of this conversation:

MEPHISTO: alienated beings?
AGAPE: absolutely
MEPHISTO: one-dimensional?
AGAPE: no, no, even worse!
MEPHISTO: without attributes?
AGAPE: not even that
MEPHISTO: amnesiac?
AGAPE: It has nothing to do with beings lacking memory, no such category can even describe the horror, Dora Diamant's horror, that's where metaphor comes in, Dora talked of an anaemic civilization, in which the day is much like days in the camps, similar in its effect on people but different in terms of hope, in terms of beliefs about materiality, the materiality of bodies (36)

Poetry here takes a death-defying leap into the play of things--a danse macabre as poetry sheds itself of its majestic robe to don the costume of the trapeze artist.

Where Moure (and Pato) are, a feminist narrative is not far behind. It is much more easily delivered to men if it is couched in humour. Such is the case in "access to the head dangling by its hair or the memoirs of Doctor Roberta Dehmen (never sent anywhere) Tiger-Shulamith, mutant, metacorporeal Selenite" (55). Again written in the form of a play, the poem begins:

(part two)

DR. DEHMEN-MUTANT, MERMAID CHORUS: it's not that I feel I'm just starting; as far my artistic ability goes, I biologically precede the point when I engendered myself
DR. DEHMEN-MUTANT, CHORUS OF GORGONAS: I become the woman who saw no one in my clinic, yet the entire species is waiting for me there. I'm writing of a time when I was not a poet, that other time, in my head.

The gorgon with which we are familiar is not only a vicious female monster such as Medusa but also, in ancient religious doctrine, a protective deity. The mermaid, similar to the siren, enchants men with her voice and beauty, luring them to their death. So here we have a physician, Dr. Roberta Dehmen-Mutant, who, while being a protector also is a destroyer. Is it because the doctor is female and, as such, a mutant--a "men" mutant (is this a sideways glance at Simone de Beauvoir's or Luce Irigaray's "other")? The use of the word "engendered" is interesting and apropos of contemporary feminist discourse where gender is something imposed by society as opposed to something into which we are born.

The footnote at the end of the previous poem is Moure at her self-deprecating best: "note: the author assumes no responsibility for opinions dished out by the various voices in this text or in any other published under her name." (62) Following in this example, the opinions expressed in this review are not necessarily those of the writer--unless you like them.

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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