Sequel #34 Pascale Petit click to enlarge

« I would like to do my own storytelling » This is one of those phrases that
spinning in heads today and that sums them all up. And that
might as well condense the Spring Steps project for
Acapulco, the latest book by Pascale Petit. Compose poetry with
the verbal universe offered to us by networks, advertising, television,
magazines is first of all a challenge. Is it not, on the contrary, to submit,
let this background noise overwhelm you, losing any chance of resuming
the hand ?

Isn’t this also renouncing to accomplish what poetry claims,
to open up a territory beyond the reach of these discourses ranging from the commercial,
to politics, through personal development and mimicry
conscious and especially unconscious of the connected groups? Against them he is
understood that poetry clears a territory liberated by a language that does not
would not come to terms with the discourse of enslavement in the name of
communication « .

And if this is precisely what attempts and succeeds, « from the inside »,
Pascal Petit?
First, this finding

“I like what I am likely to like”

which exposes the effectiveness of the injunctions, linguistic and others, that we
undergo. Then the work of highlighting, dismantling their
accumulation, to ruin its scope.

“…I always stop my dreams before the end”

The first line of the book, opening with ellipsis, makes
enter the reader in the continuity of a sentence begun elsewhere.
It is also introduced by an “editor’s note, (note from the dreamer)”. In
the space of the dream, « stopped » to plug into pseudo-dreams coming from
communication, “storytelling”.

« and win a trip to Mauritius »

“chic nude gives you shine”
« here is the essential of the dressing room »

Be careful though: these propositions are stated rather at the first
nobody. The addressee sees himself transformed into an active “I”.

« I can’t stay without anything for an evening »

“I say yes to my dress no to my heels”

« I crave the prairies of the Pacific Rockies »

« I want it / I already have it »
« I already have it / I still want it »

And make no mistake, it’s not just an inventory
condescending to frivolous consumption internalized and converted into
intentions by advertising power. The “react” is not – not
only- one click. We have real “citizen” resolutions

“I can react I can react every day
Round the clock
reminiscence of altruism
I can react I can react
I can take to the streets”

A disturbing impression of lack of differentiation therefore sets in, between
fads and concrete commitments, the spectacle of the world ranging from
tourist destination to disaster or war.

“Friday is tsunami”

“Sunday is a minute of silence”

“every thursday is turkey”

“we are good at money time”

An insurmountable malaise accompanies this cruel state of affairs. We get lost in
stupid alternatives

» you prefer ? »
swim to the coral reef
Or wait until you turn eighteen on death row? »

Even culture, poetry, music, philosophy waltz in the drum of
the great recycling machine

« Kafka doesn’t come to parties anymore »

« I love witgenstein »

« i want more shakespeare sonnets »

“Rachmaninoff is blah”

« Would today Apollinaire say ‘I like' »

The hopeless feeling of helplessness gives way, however, at the end of the book, where
the ready-made phrases come together in a way of freedom

“from today I decide
to dream
in free verse
to write with two fingers

The messages of the networks, the ready-made phrases of the colonizing cloud
our heads recombine and open.

“I choose who can see
who can love

« click to enlarge »

proposes Pascale Petit at the end of this beautiful and bewitching work

“you will see the whole universe”

No spring for Acapulco
by Pascale Petit
Discreet series 72 pages 14 euros