from Let (2024) [“Let”]
Translated from the French by Marcella Durand
after The Tennis Court Oath by John Ashbery
USOPEN
between form that
offers and a haunting tide, of return
in the crescent evening a dreaded face responds
within a bilious light: the island must continue its uplift via new bark
aspirin neutered
inside gin six perfumes of the night
out of the back storeroom the idea of death loves
peanuts and detritus, the manufacture of scissors a genuine difference
find light longer
infiltrate the inferno come with me
what about holding my breath, an exchange, sucker
that hides an odor of narcissus, under the house this opening in your hand
you see you listen
letter of dry grasses the book a trap
in glass splinters of light gleam a photography
existence in powder behind you, lonely young’un to die parallel like that
everything a mess,
strange, full of what someone said of
emotion just like so many speckled seeds to meet
the next day’s engine for which we brought the paper judge and he believed
honey flash chain
station ephemera the fuzz the depot
from there to name nobody formaldehyde quintet
the infected royalties report of the night and sewer leaving the entity
near the polished
side of sun turned to a face so forget
night and day you kept to the earth not from nor of
as my contribution I offer all somber flowers however not without green
Translator’s Note
Olivier Brossard’s new book from P.O.L. is titled Let, a term used in tennis when a point has been interrupted, and also a lovingly mischievous gesture toward John Ashbery’s The Tennis Court Oath, which Brossard translated into French in 2015. The excerpt I have translated here is from the section “USOPEN,” which was written in a constraint of 15/30/40/60 characters per line, mirroring the scoring system in tennis. However, that is the overt constraint. The covert constraint is the references to The Tennis Court Oath, Ashbery’s great work that may be the most masterful interruption of points ever. These references are often so subtle as to be a single word, “storeroom,” or a slightly odd combination of words, “paper judge,” or even a suspicion, a shadow passing through the tone of the line. In keeping with Brossard’s beautifully obfuscated process of reference, I have occasionally translated a word back to its original, but often not—sometimes I will only think of Ashbery just enough so as not to interrupt Brossard’s own points. Brossard’s work is mysterious and powerful enough on its own: it is a complicated encomium held within new form, a remembrance of Ashbery’s lyric experiment that carries poetic innovation onward.
Olivier Brossard is a member of the Double Change collective and director of the North American poetry collection of Joca Seria. He is a professor of US Literature at the Université Gustave Eiffel, where he co-directs the Poets & Critics research programme. He published his first book of poems, Let, with P.O.L in May 2024.
Marcella Durand’s next book, A Winter Triangle, is forthcoming from Fordham University Press in Fall 2025 and the recipient of the 2024 Poetic Justice Institute Prize. Other books include To husband is to tender; The Prospect; The Garden of M./Le Jardin de M., translated by Olivier Brossard; and her translation of Michele Metail’s Earth’s Horizons/Les Horizons du sol, (Black Square Editions, 2020). She is the co-editor with Jennifer Firestone of Other Influences: The Untold History of Avant-Garde Feminist Poetry (MIT Press, 2024) and the 2021 recipient of the C.D. Wright Award in Poetry from the Foundation of Contemporary Art.
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