on Jean D’Amérique
For many of us — myself very much included — the question of which language to communicate in is generally less of a question and more of a foregone conclusion. The United States and its stubborn, don’t-tread-on-me monolingualism is, globally speaking, an anomaly. 43% of people worldwide are bilingual, and while there are more polyglossic US residents these days — the most recent US census registers about 1 in 5, or 20%, of US residents, who speak a language different than English at home — this is still very far behind the global state of affairs, where some folks toggle between three dialects in a single sentence at the market or on the street.
Writing capital-L literature is different, of course, than haggling over the price of oranges. When one chooses a language, one chooses an audience, not to mention a canon. So Jean D’Amérique’s choice of French over, say, his mother tongue, Kreyol, is instructive when it comes to reading the following three poems, which appear in his third book of poems, Atelier du silence, or Workshop of Silence. D’Amérique was born and raised in Haiti and got his start in writing and performance as a slam poet; though he remains an accomplished rapper and performer, his main trade these days is as a page, not necessarily a stage, poet.
He has preserved the sense of linguistic play and political consciousness that one associates with slam, while using the open — and notably white — field of the page to perform subtle but exhilarating formal tricks that slam, as an oral phenomenon, cannot. “page blank” demonstrates Jean’s intricate sonic attention, with its dexterous assonance and consonance in the original, as well as the end rhyme between the second and third lines, suggesting that breakage and revelation are linked, and that that which is broken is not suddenly useless — as so many say not only of Haiti and other postcolonial nations — but open, now, to understanding. It also lays out an argument central to Workshop of Silence and his larger poetic investigation: that poems are the revelatory results of the politically essential act of play.
In translating these and other poems, it is paramount to me to communicate this sense of play, which is often visible in the way Jean shuffles sounds in meaningful and ecstatic patterns across the landscape of a poem, even as the poems stare directly at the horrific outcomes of hypercapitalist exploitation as seen in Gaza, Port-au-Prince, and other places “wed by force to the evening of bones.” It may seem counterintuitive to have poems built of language manifested through play that record atrocity and injustice — but isn’t it also unjust for us to assume that even amid pain and privation there is no joy? That no one smiles in Gaza over an iftar dinner laid out on a cloth laid over the rubble? That even as gangs tighten their grip on a Central American capital or a Caribbean port, there isn’t someone falling in love?
Paradox is, ultimately, a thing Jean knows well. To be a member of the first free Black nation in the Americas, whose freedom so threatened the fragile ecosystems of exploitation such that the entire world conspired economically and politically against it, is an education in paradox. We can see this in Jean’s sophisticated understanding of how hard it is to speak and to attain the right to speak. “if I could speak,” he says, “I’d ask for a moment of silence / through the gag in my freedom of speech.”
— Conor Bracken
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
blazing cities
imagine
overhearing an encounter
between cities burning
and dropping a curtain
as if what they rise out of
was kin to droppings
because to look at them
is to be burned too
while night and day
cities flicker on under the stars
while things go swimmingly in Amsterdam
I doubt Ghouta
could present you a single dewy lawn
or Gaza
or Aleppo
all these cities
wed by force to the evening of bones
gray without wanting to be
who want nothing from the graves’ buffet
cities that a chemistry high in sorrow
allows only burning as perfume
these blazing cities
will they be allowed to leave like this
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
page blank
tongue drinks
to the health of the shattered couplet
to the poem that reveals
the blank page
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
moment of silence
my name is John Rock Gougueder
I dreamed of clean water for my people
asked the government for a university
they made a truck shudder lewdly
over my body
my name is Nâzım Hikmet
I tore up flags to release dreams to the wind
trampled shame with poems for feet
they cemented bars
around my skull
my name is Aslı Erdoğan
I threw rocks onto shadows
dug into boulders to find freedom’s dawn
they shaved my wings
to encase them in concrete
my name is Jean Dominique
I watched men lug a people up grim hills
and pin their tongues to barbed wire
I called this a crime
spelled it in light on the radio
they plucked me like a fly
with what machine guns leak
here’s some more blood on the morning
if it falls to me to scrub the word
I have nothing to fail with but this maimed name
sacred red smearing its lips
if I could speak
I’d ask for a moment of silence
through the gag in my freedom of speech
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
villes en fumée
imaginez
une rencontre à haute voix
entre des villes en fumée
cloison qu’on voile
comme si d’où qu’elles fusent
pareilles étaient les fumées
au fond si l’on regardait
brûlé serait-on
pendant que nuit et jour
s’allument des villes à belle étoile
pendant que ça roule pas mal à Amsterdam
je défie Ghouta
de pointer une seule herbe fraîche
ou Gaza
ou Alep
toutes ces villes
mariées de force au soir des os
grises sans le vouloir
qui n’en veulent rien au déjeuner des tombes
villes qu’une chimie haute en douleur
ne laisse choisir que brûler pour faire parfum
ces villes en fumée
les laissera-t-on partir ainsi
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
blanche page
langue bue
à la santé du vers brisé
au poème de révéler
page blanche
◆ ◆ ◆ ◆ ◆
minute de silence
je m’appelle John Rock Gougueder
ai fait songe d’eau claire pour mon pays
demandé université au gouvernement
on a fait jouir un camion
sur mon corps
je m’appelle Nazim Hikmet
ai déchiré drapeaux pour lâcher rêve au vent
piétiné honte à coup de poèmes
on a mis des barreaux
autour de mon crâne
je m’appelle Aslı Erdoğan
ai jeté pierres sur les ombres
creusé rochers pour offrir aurore à la liberté
on a rasé mes ailes
pour les envelopper de béton
je m’appelle Jean Dominique
ai vu des hommes hisser un peuple aux collines mornes
accrocher sa langue aux barbelés
j’ai nommé cela crime
épelé lumière à la radio
on m’a cueilli comme une mouche
avec ce qui fuit des mitraillettes
voici encore du sang sur le matin
s’il me revient de laver mot
je n’ai pour y faillir qu’un nom mutilé
inviolable rouge à lèvres
si j’avais la parole
je demanderais une minute de silence
pour ma liberté d’expression étouffé