Synopses & Reviews
Generating an exciting poetic dialogue that is as insightful as it is eloquent and creative, this combined poem and complementary philosophical analysis is an astute rendering of the intersection of intellect and language as an art form. With the original French preserved on the facing pages, this collaborative work by an emerging French poet, Virginie Lalucq, and the distinguished philosopher Jean-Luc Nancy presents a startlingly robust poetic experience. The serial poem “Fortino Sámano” is a meditation on a photo of the eponymous subject, taken by Mexican photographer Agustín Víctor Casasola during the Mexican Revolution. In the image Sámano, a Zapatista lieutenant and counterfeiter, appears to stare death nonchalantly in the face moments before his execution by firing squad. The poem makes no attempt to craft a biography or history of the man, but instead treats the image itself—reflecting on the fact that the camera caught the image of life just prior to its end. Jean-Luc Nancy contributes a series of commentaries on the poem, creating a philosophical contemplation of “Fortino Sámano” but also a poetic investigation of the lyric genre that works hand-in-hand with the poem itself. The inspiring union becomes an altogether unique poetic experience with an unmatchable depth and plenty to ruminate on during each subsequent re-reading of this delightful and impressive project.
Review
"We all know that the reader collaborates in the text. Here, a reader was given the chance to articulate his reading, which in turn changed the poem. The roles of poet and philosopher seem almost reversed: the poem's language is plain, stripped down, and engages philosophical questions, whereas Nancy attends to words rather in a poet's way, playing with sound, punning . . . what we have here is extraordinary: a collaboration that throws light on processes of thinking, poetic or philosophical." —Rosmarie Waldrop, author, Driven to Abstraction
Review
"A significant contribution to the literature of phenomenology and a work of groundbreaking scholarship." —Richard Rand, professor, on Listening
Review
"It encompasses both philosophy and autobiography, intellectual exploration and examination of feeling." —Shenandoah Literary on Or Consequence
Review
"Nancy is indeed one of the most interesting thinkers in France today." —Common Knowledge on Being Singular Plural
Synopsis
Fortino Samano (the overflowing of the poem), translated by Cynthia Hogue and Sylvain Gallais, with French on facing pages, is a collaborative work by the emerging French poet, Virginie Lalucq, and the distinguished philosopher, Jean-Luc Nancy. Lalucq wrote the serial poem, Fortino Samano, after seeing an exhibit of photographs on the Mexican Revolution by Agustin Victor Casasola. Her series is a meditation on the single, extant photograph of Samano, a Zapatista lieutenant and counterfeiter, which Casasola snapped as Samano, smoking a last cigar, appeared to stare death nonchalantly in the face moments before his execution by firing squad (it was reported that he himself gave the order to fire). Little is known about Samano, and Lalucq's poem makes no attempt to be biographical or historical. Rather, she treats the image itself, the fact that the camera caught the image of life just prior to its end. What, then, does the image represent? She asks. Nancy's section, Les debordements du poeme (The overflowing of the poem), is a series of poetic commentaries on each of the poems in Lalucq's series. It is a philosophical contemplation of the specific poem, Fortino Samano, and also, a poetic investigation of the lyric genre, which works hand-in-hand with Lalucq's poems. Fortino Samano is an exciting poetic dialogue, and a significant work in poetics, which Hogue and Gallais have brought into English.
About the Author
Virginie Lalucq is the author of numerous books and her poetry has been included in anthologies and journals in France. She is a founding member of the editorial collective for the journal Nioques and is a librarian at the National Foundation of the Political Sciences in France. Jean-Luc Nancy is an author with an education in philosophy and biology. His books include Being Singular Plural and Listening. He was a distinguished professor of psychology at the Université Marc Bloch and has been a visiting professor at various prestigious institutions worldwide. Sylvain Gallais is a professor of economics and French at Arizona State University, and has also served as their coordinator of the French program in the International School of Languages and Cultures. His books include France Encounters Globalization. Cynthia Hogue has published seven collections of poetry, including The Incognito Body and Or Consequence. She is the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry in the creative writing program at Arizona State University. Gallais and Hogue live in Phoenix, Arizona.