Some Objects Stay with Us

This series of poems, published in the original French and in a companion volume in English, Some Objects Stay with Us (Or the Other Way Round), employs seemingly straightforward procedures. The poet describes the "objects" he is contemplating, with a sharp eye for the beauties of rustic craftsmanship in France, North Africa and the United States. Nuances of color do not escape him, nor does the way in which these objects were made. Their value comes from the pleasure of looking at them or from handling them or drinking or eating from them—their original purpose.

"For cooking or for the dead, for cool water and for nothing," he writes. But the eyes predominate: "The pleasure that comes / From looking at it for a long time is not less / Than when your gaze runs over / Quattrocento paintings." The history of the objects adds to their value. "Objects from all over that say / Man used them, then lost them / On the way to the dead ends and blind alleys of the world." Sometimes it's his personal history: his mother's battledore, her battou in the Vendée patois he inserts in the French, and his father's straight razor send the poet back to his childhood on the farm. And throughout, we see the way time wears things down, and the recurring presence of death. The value of the object is not questioned, however; what is often questioned is the poem. It is an object, too, but what is its use? (David Ball).