Quisite Moment

As Anne Portugal has said, her poetry breaks with elevated subjects as well as with the beauty of phrases. “Poetry is is a laboratory of languages. It is first and foremost physical.” Here, she truncates words to give rise to new rhythms, puzzlement, and sheer fun.

Anne Portugal's exercise in aphaeresis is itself "quisite"! Its inability, or perhaps refusal, at every turn to locate its verbal origin; the constant hollowing out by means of the sidelined asterisks; the sexy aloofness of the object of the speaker's affection; all establish provocative resistances to what otherwise seeks to be sequenced, numerically ordered, we might even say "omantic". 

— Andrew Zawacki

Anne Portugal was born in Angers, in 1949. She lives and teaches in Paris. She is also the model of a famous “Poets’ Calendar.”

Her first collection, La licence qu'on appelle autrement parrhésie, was published in the collective volume, Cahier de poésie 3 (Gallimard, 1980). Since then Anne Portugal has published with P.O.L.: Les commodités d'une banquette (1985), De quoi faire un mur (1987), Le plus simple appareil (1992) — which has been translated into English by Norma Cole: Nude (Kelsey St. Press, 2001) —, Dans la reproduction en deux parties égales des plantes et des animaux (1999) and définitif bob (2002). The last mentioned is forthcoming in Burning Deck’s “Série d’Ecriture,” translated by Jennifer Moxley.

Rosmarie Waldrop’s recent poetry books are Curves to the Apple, Blindsight (both New Directions), and Love, Like Pronouns (Omnidawn). University of Alabama Press published her collected essays, Dissonance (if you are interested).