For Orchestra and Solo Poet

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

For Orchestra and Solo Poet is a book for music lovers, instrument
lovers. It has melody, it has harmony. The people in it “are happy
thanks to music; it feeds and cradles them.” While the poet has no
other instruments but words, musicians seem to be “veritable
creators.”

In orchestral music Martel hears a coming together of different voices
that frees humanity from “its various hells,” pessimism, and
hopelessness, and allows us “to leap into ecstasy.” But his book is
not about escaping; rather, it is about the consolation that we can
capture in a thousand concert halls or on innumerable CDs at the end of
the millennium.

The poetry is beautifully rendered into thoughtful English by D.J.
Jones; melodious English, I should say, knowing well the importance of
French vowel sounds, and understanding the difficulties this translation
must have meant.