Voyelles

(by Arthur Rimbaud)

 

 

A noir, E blanc, I rouge, U vert, O bleu: voyelles,

Je dirai quelque jour vos naissances latentes:

A, noir corset velu des mouches éclatantes

Qui bombinent autour des puanteurs cruelles,

 

Golfes d'ombre; E, candeurs des vapeurs et des tentes,

Lances des glaciers fiers, rois blancs, frissons d'ombelles;

I, pourpres, sang craché, rire des lèvres belles

Dans la colère ou les ivresses pénitentes;

 

U, cycles, vibrements divins des mers virides,

Paix des pâtis semés d'animaux, paix des rides

Que l'alchimie imprime aux grands fronts studieux;

 

O, suprême Clairon plein des strideurs étranges,

Silences traversés des [Mondes et des Anges]:

—O l'Oméga, rayon violet de [Ses] Yeux!

 

Notes to the Translations

Voyelles

Arthur Rimbaud is, of course, one of the most celebrated luminaries of Symbolist decadence, and his poetry constitutes one of the cornerstones of the avant-garde in the early 20th-Century. “Voyelles,” his fabled sonnet about the “colours” of the vowels, offers a series of hallucinations about these emotional lynchpins of language.

Wave 3.5c
After Oulipo

November, 2010

Poems

Christian Bök

Christian Bök is the author not only of Crystallography (Coach House Press, 1994), a pataphysical encyclopedia nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, but also of Eunoia (Coach House Books, 2001), a bestselling work of experimental literature, which has gone on to win the Griffin Prize for Poetic Excellence.

Bök has created artificial languages for two television shows: Gene Roddenberry’s Earth: Final Conflict and Peter Benchley’s Amazon. Bök has also earned many accolades for his virtuoso performances of sound poetry (particularly the Ursonate by Kurt Schwitters).

His conceptual artworks (which include books built out of Rubik’s cubes and Lego bricks) have appeared at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City as part of the exhibit Poetry Plastique. The Utne Reader has recently included Bök in its list of “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Your World.” Bök teaches English at the University of Calgary.