You 

Chantal Neveu’s You, translated from the French by Erín Moure, consists of a single long poem that contains traces of a love story, but that is beside the point. Neveu constructs the relationship in this poem purely through language, though the sense is that of language constructing the relationship. As Moure notes: “Neveu took the English word as her book title in French for it is intimate and formal, plural and singular, neutral all at once.” The you in this book is thus not a specific, identifiable character but instead surfaces the many possible meanings of you in the English language. You is the counter-figure in the poem—filling a need that is as much grammatical as it is romantic. 

you raze your fields 

choosing

new speed regime 

cruise

I’m in the thick of it 

moving forward

writing 

four reams

Most of the lines in this book contain just a few words. Such minimalism is deceptive, though, as this very self-aware love poem performs fervor and excess on every page. 

the black locusts

figuration of caresses 

swirled rumour of a fountain 

faint sound

metallic taste of the city

a magnetism

from palate to nostrils 

infra-resonance 

What the speaker is preoccupied with is not an object of desire or even desire itself, but the prospects of their mind’s possible entanglements. Neveu’s poem is an experiment in observing oneself responding to love—she is drawn to the cerebral possibilities of being absorbed by another. 

he walks 

fully male

along the quay

I have to interrupt you

have to go

I’m heading inside

Here, someone is looking at the he, but another voice breaks in—could it be the speaker addressing themself? There is a distinction being drawn between the self that desires another, and the self that wants to withdraw, and, I suspect, to write. Yet the poem doesn’t draw simplistic comparisons between the complexities of love and form—instead, it stays curious, attentive to the contours of a mind in love.

the afternoon

neck bent

bowed

raised again

to hear the cardinal

singing