Esprit de Corps: Quebec Poetry of the Late Twentieth Century in Translation

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French Studies at the University
of Guelph. She is the author of Courts métrages et instantanés and La
Soupe.

This collection of poems by over 40 Quebec poets is meant to acquaint
the anglophone reader with the Quebec poetry scene in the last decades
of the 20th century. Desire, loneliness, suffering, existential angst,
and esprit de corps are among the recurring themes. Esprit de corps
represents togetherness and solace found in solidarity, maybe even in a
collective spirit. When the world, says Anne Hébert, is “melting like
/ a city of cloth / let the heart’s fierce resemblance to its homeland
/ be fulfilled.” But esprit de corps also reflects a consciousness of
the body in a confusingly fragmented society. “I am physically
accustomed to existence,” states Nicole Brossard, and Denise Desautels
adds, “I write in the present.” In a poem called “Hollywood,”
Jean-Paul Daoust, gay dandy of Quebec poetry, writes: “I write in the
snow / words of love that freeze / Words of solitude, pallid and stale /
The winter pursues me right to the bones of my soul.”

The loosely chronological order of the presentation gives readers an
opportunity to trace the movement from modernity to postmodernity. Among
the translators are Philip Stratford and poets D.G. Jones and Daniel
Sloate.