In Praise of Defeat - Abdellatif Laâbi (Archipelago Books)

Today's book of poetry:
In Praise of Defeat.  Abellatif Laâbi.  Translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith.  Archipelago Books.  Brooklyn, New York.  2016.

There are many joys associated with doing Today's book of poetry but there is also a little pain, we are constantly rediscovering and confirming our vast ignorance.  Until Abdellatif Laâbi's In Praise of Defeat landed on our desk we had never heard of the major francophone voice of Moroccan poetry.

In Praise of Defeat brings together work from fifteen or more of Abdellatif Laâbi's books of poetry. Was it T.S. Eliot or Ezra Pound who wrote about "perfecting the language of the tribe?"  I think it was Pound.  Well he wasn't alone.  Moroccan exile Laâbi has perfected a certain sort of precision in bringing us from his childhood in Fez to his forced exile in modern Paris.

Talisman's Eye

everything dies

patched-up brain down in crypts

                                                        dies

         logos of cities

                                                        dies

reason dies

                       crushed by wrinkles

with no help from hands

brain with its gray cells

                                         dies

night approaches with so much telling

                                                          of rosaries

for the break of a new day

as the sphinxes say

                                when none is possible

they themselves having grown old

wearing of their alliance

                                        with the wind

now

I seek a language

                                  for my tribe

that is not a hybrid

let cyclones of argan trees

                                      come join my fingers

collar of wasps

                             around my throat of clay

my awful lucidity

like a mirror

                              rusty with memories

that are the butt of History

now I know what power inhabits me

peoples run through my language

while flaming night

                                  constructs silence

with hammer blows

                                 I compose lullabies

my awful lucidity

that ruffles my voice

                                 to the caravans' cadence

my awful lucidity

that carves me out an ear

                                    as wide as the desert

now

                    I need to vomit up

                                                       layers of narcotics

and steaming manure

                                      words of reason pale as herb tea

and throw away books that taught me pride

here I am

                        present

night-hairy

                       bristling with wasps

with that perfume of the muscles

that camel's boniness

ready to bound down the road

                                             yelping

look and see if my breasts

                                            are not bursting with maledictions

but leave me a few blood vessels

just a few nerves

                              nothing but a finger

and I shall outline on my parchment

a new cosmogony

                               its elements in perfect harmony

hear the clash of languages

                                               in my mouth

the thirst for new births

hear the swish of sweat

                                         at my underarms

the ripple of my biceps

driven by my inner fauna

                                             springing from caves

pen bloodied

                           my head against every wall

my breath at the gallop

spewing planets

                                in its eruptions

here I am

                 torrential in full flood

working my crannies

craters overlooked in my incandescence

I Atlas

              striped by the sun

                                            of diurnal tribes

gathering up in my descents and ravines

the impatient foam of a future

ask the vultures what my venom tastes like

ruggedness of my grip

                                       iron grid of my maledictions

accuser I am

                            building a kingdom

                                                             of insubordination

do not seek me in your archives

fearful of my censure

                                       writing is not in my nature

look for me rather in your innards

when a host of worms

                                          distorts your gut

look for me in the urine of fever

in the malaria of the backstreets

and there

               in the mud of cataracts

erase my forbidden names

                                           stamp out the spells that I cast

but at my call

break jars of honey

slit the throats of black bulls at mosque doors

feed beggars by the thousands

then I shall come

                              to spit in your mouth

destroy your tumors

                                rid you of your ancient ills

I still prefer you

                                in the straightness of your plowshares

my brothers with your rough hands

my brothers who sleep like roots

come

               tossed down

                                      overboard

stranger to the course of planets

between sky and void

sprung forth

                         in the blink of an eye

                                                           at the birth of speech

I know nothing of weightiness

                                                   or the mathematics of revolutions

Arab

        Berber

                  above all human

but with this indestructible voice

                                                      this mark

come from your tomorrows

                                              gravediggers of ruins

not to take upon myself

                                               the errors of the night

but unrestrainedly

                               to hammer with doorknockers

until every doorway

                                   offers up its logarithms

yes

      I slumber

in mountain salt mines

an ear hearkening to the wheel of time

I let new arms grow

                                  to enhance an awakening

I laugh yes I laugh in my dream

look at my eyelids

seeded by caravaneers

and my terrifying eye

                                   accurate

                                                   as a sandglass

...

In Praise of Defeat includes poems that encompass the period from 1965 right up to 2014 and it is an enormous tome coming in at over 800 pages plus.  Laâbi gives us his mandate coming right out of the gate in his long poem "Chronicle of the Citadel of Exile" where he tells us to "Write, write, never stop."  "Chronicle of the Citadel of Exile" is a true monster list poem and you all know how much we love those here, but at a whopping thirteen pages we just couldn't reproduce it.

Most contemporary poets have never had to face the challenges like those that have faced Abdellatif Laâbi.  None of my contemporaries have ever gone to prison for the political action of being a poet. Although a few of them have been behind bars.  Laâbi spent several years in prison and then was exiled.  Through it his poetry has remained distinctly humane, reachable, direct and impassioned. Somehow Laâbi has been able to find light in a world determined to regale the force of darkness.

To My Son Yacine

My darling son

I have received your letter

You already talk to me like a grown-up

you say how hard you try at school

and I feel your passion to understand

to chase away the shadows, the ugliness

to pierce the secrets of the great book of life

You are sure of yourself

And though not deliberately

you list your riches for me

you reassure me on your strengths

as if you were saying "don't worry about me

see me walk

see where my steps lead

the horizon, the vast horizon over there

has no secrets for me"

And I picture you

your fine brow

so high and straight

I picture your great pride

My darling son

I have received your letter

You say

"I think of you

and I give my life to you?"

without an inkling

of what you do to me in saying that

my crazy heart

my eyes on the stars

and through this word from you

it is no longer hard for me to believe

that the great Feast will come

when children like you

now men

will walk with giant steps

far from the poverty of the shantytowns

far from hunger, ignorance and sadness

My darling son

I have received your letter

You wrote the address yourself

wrote it with confidence

you thought to yourself, if I put this

Papa will get my letter

and perhaps I'll have a reply

and you started to imagine the prison

a big house where people are locked up

how many and why?

but they they can't see the sea

the forest

they can't work

to get their children enough to eat

You imagine something mean

something ugly

something that makes no sense

and makes you feel sad

or very angry

You think too

that those who made prisons

are certainly mad

and so very many other things

Yes my darling son

that is how one begins to think

to understand humans

to love life

to detest tyrants

and that is how

I love you

how I love to think of you

from the depths of my prison

...

Today's book of poetry is thrilled to share another Archipelago Books treasure, this Brooklyn publisher consistently pumps out classics from around the world of poetry and exposes them to North American readers.  In Praise of Defeat was translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith and the translation is seamless, invisible mending so to speak.  Laâbi's poems read and sound like they were written in English, all these uncompromising and tender love letters to his readers sound as natural as daybreak.

Sensation

The moment they open

the eyes

create light

So many eyes

so much light

The moment it blooms

consciousness

creates the world

then the universe

So much consciousness

so many worlds

then so many universes

If the eyes close

if consciousness is extinguished

the Whole disappears

This

is just a sensation

Nothing that deserves

to be graven in stone

or "written in a book"

But it is my sensation

I am here

eyes half-open

clinging to the thread

that sews day to night

the veils within

to those without

and swaddling clothes to shrouds

I am no longer here

The cavalcade of words

paws the ground

fails to get moving

between fingers and page

Welcome

dear

so dear stranger!

...

Abdellatif Laâbi's long poems are giant quilts of both comfort and instruction, bitter blankets of bitter defeats and regret.  Laâbi is a narrative monster and we were happy to hang on for the ride.

Today's book of poetry might have mentioned this before, perhaps not, but many years ago I had the honour of meeting George Faludy and hearing him read.  Well I haven't met Abdellatif Laâbi but I get the same gracious, intelligent and humble vibe from In Praise of Defeat as I did all those years ago sitting at Faludy's feet.  Prince's of peace, gentle scribes, fierce poets.

In Praise of Defeat is going to improve every poetry collection it joins.

Abdellatif Laâbi

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Poet, novelist, playwright, translator, and political activist, Abdellatif Laâbi was born in Fez, Morocco in 1942. He was also the founder of Souffles, an important literary review that was banned in Morocco in 1972. Laâbi received the Prix Robert Ganzo de Poésie in 2008, the Prix Goncourt de la Poésie for his Oeuvres complètes in 2009, and the Académie Française's Grand Prix de la Francophonie in 2011. Also available in English are his debut collection of poetry The Rule of Barbarism, the memoir Rue de Retour, and The World's Embrace: Selected Poems.

BLURBS

Keeping pace with the long poems that are Abdellatif Laâbi's distinctive achievement – the poems of torture and imprisonment in Morocco, or 'People of Madrid, Pardon' written in response to the train bombings of 2004 – an English-speaking reader like me inevitably keeps waiting for the public voice, the high style of anger and compassion, to falter or overreach. But Laâbi's voice does neither. Donald Nicholson-Smith's translations hold fast to this poetry's unnerving eloquence and simplicity, and its hell-for-leather speed.
     — T.J. Clark

As the new collection In Praise of Defeat, deftly translated by Donald Nicholson-Smith, shows, Laâbi’s early poems are poems of protest and of incarceration. They powerfully evoke the need for poetry to bear witness...In Praise of Defeat presents a poet-activist who was born in the direst possible circumstances, survived them, and has continued on a trajectory of art and activism. He shows any poet how the artistic space created by “poet, activist, former prisoner, exile” is the space where the most crucial acts of art happen.
     — Emily Wolahan, The Quarterly Conversation

archipelagobooks.org 

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