Poetry and short stories by Rahman,brigitte arlette

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Apart from the poetry by Brigitte Rahman, I had the opportunity to read some of the textual criticisms about her. Far from disapproving of the critics’ expertise, kindness or knowledge of the subject they wrote about, I realised that my opinion about her poetry varies considerably.

As well as myself, every critic tends to classify a piece of writing into a literary movement or tendency, and analyse the author accordingly. I take that in the case of Brigitte Rahman’s poetry, such classifications are difficult to hold and I will try to explain why this is so.

Her poetry has often been determined as surrealistic or sentimental or too involved and so on. To me it seems like putting on the "shelf", trying to systematize something that evidently cannot be put on a single "shelf" , cannot be determined and lacks determination by its nature. Therefore, with due respect to my colleagues who also wrote about Brigitte Rahman’s poetry, I will try to look at it from a different point of view, offering you no answers to the questions but quite the contrary, showing you how her poetry invites many questions from both the reader and the critic. Meanwhile, I am deeply aware of the fact that poetry strives after the eternity and the criticism is a sort of correspondence between the eternity and the current moment a critic lives in.

A more careful reader will notice fascinating spontaneous as much as deliberate mix of tendencies in style and genre. That, of course, points to post-modern poetry, which has been written about a lot in the last decade and yet little apprehended. That is quite normal because the criticism does not precedes the art but follows it.

Talking about different tendencies in style we actually think of leading tendencies of the French post modern poetry, starting from symbolism through different avant-garde tendencies to the latest almost cyber ones. It does not mean that the poet blindly follows some existing or previous forms of poetry depending on her mood. Quite the opposite, we are talking about the effective use of the patterns that this poet transcendences in an authentic poetic statement. Here, I use the word "symbolism" deliberately because there is something that, by its spirit, reminds me of great thinkers and authors that gathered around Stephane Mallarme. Saying that, I primarily think of the attention they paid to the particular relationship they had with the archetypes and mystic. I do not think that Brigitte Rahman follows the poetry of Stephane Mallarme or some other authors that gathered around him, but I certainly think that there is a mysterious thread and the atmosphere that - in a way - connects the two. On the other hand, the poet skillfully and creatively bridges the gaps between the periods by the deep involvement of the poetry she creates. That is, she incorporates positive values of the contemporary society into her poetry and even more, appreciates its faults, injustice and defies them. I have often wondered how she manages to do so and at the same time avoid being pathetic. After a short, friendly correspondence with her, I have realised that she manages it by her originality. Although she is French by origin, she writes in English. In one letter she told me that she did that wanting her poems to be "cold". Her poems are not "cold" but in a very dominant way are not pathetic either. Furthermore, her poetry has got very strong emotional shades that present themselves to the reader post festum, that is after the reading, when we try to dive into what we have just read.

Particular narrative flow of the poetry can point to the existence of mythos (the soul of the tragedy). However, if the story exists at all it is divided into so many segments that every reader can create his own story, his own soul of the tragedy.

Such an obvious concept, through which every reader can tell his own story, is characteristic for the post-modernism. In that context, at least from the point of literary criticism, claims that Brigitte Rahman is a surrealistic writer do not hold. In my opinion and according to the arguments I have presented so far, we are talking about the new sensibility, new wave which has been defined as post-modernism by many.

Perhaps it is the fact that the poet consciously rejects direct quotations as the basis for her poetry, that diverted the critics’ attention.

However, if we expand the meaning of the word "quotation" to the concepts, instruments that the poet uses creating her poetry, then it is more obvious and clear that we are talking about the poetry of the new sensibility.

Although I have no inclination whatsoever to conclude the text with the bottom line because I think it is pathetic, here, the bottom line simply forces itself on us:

Brigitte Rahman is a poet of the new sensibility, new statement and yet creating the poetry of universal importance and everlasting values.