[sur les terrasses]
Buy Issue for $25 at JHUP- [sur les terrasses]*
sur les terrassesles Nues flânent parmi les fleurs publiquesun dimanche sur un bancl’amour est dans leur bouchecar elles nous veulent en ellesnégresses propicespurs chefs-d’oeuvre au crépusculeen larmes dans l’eau frêlevos lèvres contre le gelvos seins d’orageet l’orage nous pousse dans la boucheje vous donne toutje vous donne des rosiers [End Page 14]
- [on the terraces]
on the terracesthe Clouds loiter among the public flowersone Sunday on a benchlove is in their mouthssince they want us in thembenign negressespure masterpieces in the twilightin tears in the fragile wateryour lips against the frostyour stormy breastsand the storm rages into our mouthsI give you allI give you des rosiers1 [End Page 15]
Joël Des Rosiers, born in Haiti, is a poet and psychiatrist in Quebec, where he has lived since he was ten years old. His books of poems include Métropolis Opéra, Tribu (finalist of the Prix du Gouverneur general), Savanes (winner of Prix d’excellence de Laval), Vétiver, Caïques, and Gaïac. Winner of the Grand Prix of Montreal Book and the Grand Prix of International Poetry Festival, Vétiver has been translated into English by Hug Haelton and published in 2005 by Signature Editions in Winnipeg, and won the Governor General’s Award. In 2011, his literary publications garnered for him the Prix Athamase-David, Quebec’s most prestigious literary prize. His Théories Caraïbes, Poétique du déracinement, a critical monograph, was revised in 2009 and awarded the Prix de la Société des écrivains canadiens.
Carrol F. Coates, Professor Emeritus of French, Comparative Literature, and Linguistics at Binghamton University (SUNY), has published a number of translations of Caribbean and African literature, including General Sun, My Brother (Jacques Stephen Alexis) and Waiting for the Vote of the Wild Animals (Ahmadou Kourouma), both published in the series CARAF Books (University of Virginia Press), of which he is the former series editor. He teaches courses in nineteenth century French poetry, La Fontaine’s Fables, Haitian and African literature in French, and advanced grammar and stylistic analysis, and is currently researching the structuration of sound patterns and versification in the Russian fables of Ivan Andreyevich Krylov.
Footnotes
1. The poet puns on his own name: Des Rosiers = (some) rosebushes.
Joël Des Rosiers, born in Haiti, is a poet and psychiatrist in Quebec, where he has lived since he was ten years old. His books of poems include Métropolis Opéra, Tribu (finalist of the Prix du Gouverneur general), Savanes (winner of Prix d’excellence de Laval), Vétiver, Caïques, and Gaïac. Winner of the Grand Prix of Montreal Book and the Grand Prix of International Poetry Festival, Vétiver has been translated into English by Hug Haelton and published in 2005 by Signature Editions in Winnipeg, and won the Governor General’s Award. In 2011, his literary publications garnered for him the Prix Athamase-David, Quebec’s most prestigious literary prize. His Théories Caraïbes, Poétique du déracinement, a critical monograph, was revised in 2009 and awarded the Prix de la Société des écrivains canadiens.
Footnotes
* From Caïques, poèmes (Montréal: Triptyque, 2007). Translation and excerpt published here by permission of the author and publisher.
