Pores calls itself an “avant-gardist journal of poetics research” & is edited out of Birkbeck College in London by founder Will Rowe along with Caroline Bergvall, Robert Hampson, and Sean Bonney. It’s the most well-considered and thoughtfully edited web publication for poetry since Jacket. The second issue has just been posted with superb work from Charles Bernstein, Rachel Blau DuPlessis, Gilbert Adair, Alan Gilbert, Allen Fisher, Alan Halsey, Carolee Schneeman, Brian Kim Stefans, Maggie O’Sullivan, Hazel Smith & more. I ran Habib Tengour’s “Opération jumelles” through the French-to-English translator at Babelfish &, while it no doubt made a hash of it, as it always does anything that is not the most normative of texts, it gave me a result that I found fascinating (& just a hint further as to why you should be reading this webzine):

 

Operation binoculars

 

The shortly after September 11, I should have awaked me American. The metamorphosis did not have anything of surprising. It arrived! In Paris. In Copenhagen. In Ankara... Alchemy of the loan to be carried. But me? To find me in my bed, similar with the day before, had what to worry the neighbors. I touched myself. What arrives? What arrives to us? However, I looked at television. Like everyone. I did not take down a settee. Like everyone. And like everyone, I did not believe my eyes of them. Impossible! Impossible! The film passed and passed by again. Without stop. The advertising page jumped. Deferred series. Not question of fiction. Documentary incredible. INOUI! It is the direct one. In my agitated sleep, it passed to the idle. The two binoculars subsided on my chest. I started. I relit television. That started again. By interval, the camera angle changed. I was sounded by the catastrophe. The images ate me the glance. Diabolic puffs raised me the heart. What arrives to me?

 

I test difficulties of finding the formula for saying what occurs. Analyses abound. With carries part. The words do not miss. And of the neologisms. The newspapers provide us each day of it. The metamorphosis developed. And me? Despite everything my efforts and a goodwill with the top of any suspicion. But perhaps had I unconscious reserves to cooperate. That requires a thorough examination.

 

The third day, I pété leads. Name of God! My cranium bursts. Inside, it is a pulp. It is necessary that that ceases! Move yourself! I trifouillé the meter with a nail-clippers. Clac! Roasted the cathode ray tube. I rub the hands. I did not metamorphose myself but I acquired mischievousness. It is perhaps frustration not to be American like everyone. That taps me. The pile of newspapers to the dustbin. I would never have time to read... What a relief!

I became insane. To bind.

As this character of Gogol which loses its nose while crossing the street. Fortunately, I had a strong cold. A respite...

- Now that the tele one is ruined, you are satisfied! me engueule it. With what that does advance you? If you are not rotten to even make the share of the things!... I warn you: you repair it or you buy another of them! And fissa!

...

The lexicon is treacherous... One can say what one wants. But when you do not awake like everyone, there is what to be alarmed. It is much more serious. The neighbor of stage does not say any more hello. They all are there in front of, to await the elevator; and you, you take the backstairs. What changed? How to know? You broke the tele one... There is average, the radio functions. The emissions are more intelligent. The voice does not puff out the brain like the image.

I calm myself. I do not include/understand what is told. It is not with me that one speaks. Return to me the words of a reader: "It is your language. But you do not write the language of yours. In addition, you live outside! How thus think you of contributing to an unspecified national avant-garde?" A little brutal, hypocritical reader ...

"the avant-garde, told me If Nacer, these were six gray sheep that one renewed with each crossing of the Maurice line. Bigeard had discovered the trick. During the operation binoculars, it sent shepherds as a scout systematically.   "... I often thought of this thin herd. No monument celebrates their sacrifice with the fatherland. Very early, this anecdote sowed suspicion in my spirit.

However, I made the barricades!

It is Stratis the sailor who saved me drowning. It trailed me with a bar of the Bastille. To speak, one is better. The salted almonds untie the language. Of goal in white: "Then? Does the policy, that really interest you?... The praxis? Of course! But this deserted policy public places. The raï makes fury. Drop all that. You are conspicuous. And a man of the past! You, you do not require that clogged companions attach you to a mast to listen to the song of the sirens...

By bits. Glanant per Ci. Jumping by there. Advancing straight. Turning over me. Forking. Fragmentation of the thought. That turns in round.

"This sudden passion is equivocal", said Kateb. With Malek, we looked it with recognition. Something in the intonation. We were alone to seize the nuance. That put balsam in the heart to us. But here is an inaccessible event. I did not find words to transmit it. Not facts. In oneself, without interest. But magic of the situation. Kateb, if worthy...

_ this order me ravit. Thank you, unknown friends, to have made me sign. Thank you in you, Pierre, to have communicated my address... It said in the mouth of the wolf . Eh, well? Where is the need? It is always a question of form.

Sénac, cut out holes in its books to him. "With time, the world, one carries it inside oneself. One has very few words to make fly." I represent our discussion. Because the body was not there any more. The revolution abhorred its stripped plaster boards of management. Which fault made voiceless our following days?

I learned how to work. With me to conceal. The poet must be erased.

Not to choke the poem.

What arrives? One spends time to see it. More one supplement to realize some. Baghdad was shaven. Grenade fell. And Jerusalem  ? The dates run up against the wickets. Rotted pot of the memory... Since the beginning, the Arabs remember a radiant future hopelessly. To two range of arc. This great nation resulting from the son of the maidservant is made type on the fingers. And that lasts. Is this genetic? How all that programmed is? Too much, it too is!

The friends die in a number. Also those die which I do not know. To funerals, the faithful ones follow the procession in cash. Far from the world. Progressively, their number is reduced. They train a small family. With the variation, the corner of the street. One serves a tea or a coffee with the choice to them. They take some dates. There is always to tell the same stories thousand times told.

...

"the time of the Arabs..." sighed Emile.

 

Habib Tengour

The Kremlin Bicêtre August 2002