Life in the Singular: Selected Poems, 1993–1999

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

Life in the Singular is a collection of beautiful poetry written by a
well-known Montreal writer and masterfully translated by a sensitive
translator. Beausoleil’s contemplative poems retrace for readers the
poet’s path through a series of mental landscapes, beginning with a
painful absence and concluding in relative serenity as the poet allows
“the fragrances of desertion / to wither and wane.” In the end,
there is a recognition that “life is exactly what it is / solitary /
encumbered in its failures / tender and beautiful in its future
plans.”

Language is one of Beausoleil’s preoccupations, and an indispensable
tool for the poet as well: “language has a hundred voices.” The
preoccupation with language has both Québécois and personal
undertones: “can one come alive again / in a language humiliated?”

Life in the Singular is a contemplation of the self and its secrets. It
is also, as the translator Daniel Sloate affirms on the back cover, a
contemplation of the Other. Beausoleil’s poetry deserves a wide
audience.