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Poetry

Anagrammatic Sestina

By Jacques Jouet
Translated from French by Rachel Galvin
Oulipo member Jacques Jouet pushes the boundaries of the sestina in this experimental poem.

At the end of the furrow, words staple
the page, lashing agile lines. None are spared. 
The choice is made: it imbricates, recaps
white porcelain, tin, polishes carets,
better yet, china clay. Rhyming words, ternes
bearing sludge with vestiges of tinsel,

grown gloomy, kiss-crazed by a queen’s intels
caressing your collar like worn petals,
your anagram arrives—this time it’s “treens”—
in place, on the fingertips of padres.
A doctored line, but baited with caster:
to catch and serve a salad with capers.

This one’s beauty spot is made of black crapes,
but smelling of resinous log, elints,
like the other’s pale eyes, hollowed-out crates,
and the poem shows the skull’s tempest (plates
shift within pate) ejecting seaweed spread.
The meaning that’s reflected there enters,

broke, with no clincher. It is no nester.
Form has its reasons, and for a parsec
I will uphold this, though my nerves be rasped.
The line uncoils along coves and inlets,
serene—voice, paper, color, smooth as pelt.
A rush of dull hemoglobin reacts.

If permutation of final traces
ferrets out ideas that are tenser,
spawns some innovative shade of pastel
(lyric vocab), suddenly a spacer
also appears. The line tries to enlist
readers who feel as vapid as ad reps,

enthralled, recruited by syntax not parsed,
non sequiturs. But a mermaid caters
not to fresh water. She will not listen
to unrhymed rhymes’ nebbish bid to renest.
Unsalted, they’d be weak as tea, pacers
and bellwethers no more, at their palest. 

After you had read the pleats in the drapes,
I, haunted, sought to scrape thoughts not recast,
squeezed, or resent by a voice now silent.

English French (Original)

At the end of the furrow, words staple
the page, lashing agile lines. None are spared. 
The choice is made: it imbricates, recaps
white porcelain, tin, polishes carets,
better yet, china clay. Rhyming words, ternes
bearing sludge with vestiges of tinsel,

grown gloomy, kiss-crazed by a queen’s intels
caressing your collar like worn petals,
your anagram arrives—this time it’s “treens”—
in place, on the fingertips of padres.
A doctored line, but baited with caster:
to catch and serve a salad with capers.

This one’s beauty spot is made of black crapes,
but smelling of resinous log, elints,
like the other’s pale eyes, hollowed-out crates,
and the poem shows the skull’s tempest (plates
shift within pate) ejecting seaweed spread.
The meaning that’s reflected there enters,

broke, with no clincher. It is no nester.
Form has its reasons, and for a parsec
I will uphold this, though my nerves be rasped.
The line uncoils along coves and inlets,
serene—voice, paper, color, smooth as pelt.
A rush of dull hemoglobin reacts.

If permutation of final traces
ferrets out ideas that are tenser,
spawns some innovative shade of pastel
(lyric vocab), suddenly a spacer
also appears. The line tries to enlist
readers who feel as vapid as ad reps,

enthralled, recruited by syntax not parsed,
non sequiturs. But a mermaid caters
not to fresh water. She will not listen
to unrhymed rhymes’ nebbish bid to renest.
Unsalted, they’d be weak as tea, pacers
and bellwethers no more, at their palest. 

After you had read the pleats in the drapes,
I, haunted, sought to scrape thoughts not recast,
squeezed, or resent by a voice now silent.

Sextine avec anagrammes

Tout au bout du sillon, les mots, ce sont des ancres
arrimant au papier les vers les plus agiles.
Leur choix m’est imposé, chevauchement d’étains
sur un vaisselier blanc que parfait la céruse
ou mieux le kaolin. Mots-rimes, émeris,
hors du sable vaseux où vit la néréis,

rendus obscurs et fous des baisers de vos reines
qui vous flattent le col comme à de vieilles carnes,
votre anagramme vient — cette fois la merise —
au rang déterminé, en bout d’aile des aigles, 
un vers maquillé, mais de parfaite césure :
les soupirs de la fée ou les cris de la sainte.

De celle-ci le grain de peau est satiné,
avant que de sentir, du bûcher, la résine,
de l’autre, le regard est blanc, l’orbite creuse,
et le poème dit la tempête des crânes
qui le plus loin possible éjectent les algies.
Les significations qui s’y verraient mirées

n’auraient pas raison de conclure à leur misère.
La forme a sa raison, j’y tiens et j’y tenais,
et j’y tiendrai, et m’y chauffais, comme y gelais.
Le vers, au bout d’un temps, se déroule serein
par la voix, le papier, les planches, les écrans.
L’hémoglobine sourd des extrêmes curées.

Si la permutation des finales écrues
obligeant à sortir l’idée de sa remise
engendre quelque sorte inédite de nacres
(mot reconnu de la « poésie »), les ténias
moins attendus sont là, aussi. Le vers serine
le sens à son lecteur qui se sent de la glaise,

mobile, ensorcelé, embauché pour les liages,
déductions, coq-à-l’âne ou détours. L’eau sucrée
n’est pas de l’océan où nage la sirène,
et si sel il y a, ces rimes non rimées
en perdront leur saveur trop douce de tisane
et leurs arrière-goûts de petits bonbons rances.

Après que tu cernas le dessin du lisage,
étant hanté j’entais les pensées non reçues
sur nul mot réémis par la voix qui s’insère.

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