Reviewed by Andrew Spragg
The Book of Skies continues the essential project of translating Leslie Kaplan’s work from French to English. In 2018, Jennifer Pap and Julie Carr produced the first English translation of Kaplan’s work – Excess—The Factory (Commune Editions, 2018). This new book, published by Pamenar Press, offers further insight on why her work has garnered such extensive critical appreciation in Europe.
Kaplan’s commitment to the ‘68 project in France is at the forefront of her biography and writing. She quit her university studies to pursue factory work in early 1968, putting Maoist theory into practice. As On Établissement, a contemporary mimeograph from the Central Commission of the Établissement Groups, neatly summarizes:
We should explain that it is not up to some militants in our midst to “transform” and “revolutionize” their comrades through closed-door discussions, baptized “ideological struggle.” It is through political work, political education, and prolonged struggle at the heart of the masses that our comrades will be able to transform their point of view profoundly, learn to correctly serve the people, and to make revolution.
What is notable, and frequently overlooked, is that the Établissement Groups were seeking to transform the point of view of the students, to find ways to “correctly serve the people”, in addition to promoting radical politics amongst the working classes. The Book of Skies, which appeared in French in 1983, gives a sense of the practical effects of Kaplan’s decision.
For a life so explicitly centered on living the political, Kaplan’s writing is striking for its absence of didacticism. It accrues its political meaning and message through careful, attentive observation. It is simple in its syntax, though not without impact: “There are things that I know. I think about them.” (71) could well be a manifesto for Kaplan’s poetry, its quietly certain way of knowing through describing; politics through living.
I get a drink at the café, I watch the clouds pass by.
There is no city, you wouldn’t call it that. There are houses,
streets, factories. (p30)
There are frequent images of vacuity, a sense of partial completion, contrasted with crowds and people and populations. It evokes Pasolini’s Roman suburbs, always under construction, always on the move, turning on the ways capital forces cities and their citizens through multiple transformations (“We’re in a suburb, the bodies take up too much/space, they are exaggerated.” [72]).
The sky too, as one might anticipate from the title, is a constantly transformed thing, and it is ambiguous whether Kaplan is using it to reflect emotional states or the impact of large-scale manufacturing:
The sky is often peculiar, mauve. Strong color, it’s surprising.
Industry. (51)Vague striped sky, steel wool. I look at the dispersed matter.
The sky moves a bit. (106)Open sky, without end. Permanent sky. The other side
reveals itself, also. It’s too blue. (116)
It functions as a constant in Kaplan’s poem, both a persistent source for observation and index of emotion. It is frequently embedded into the moments Kaplan describes, “He’s outside at the café. Oblique sky, enveloping.” (62). It is both seen and felt, and registers feeling, but with the stark inclusion of the word “Industry,” the choice of “steel wool,” Kaplan also neatly juxtaposes the impact of work on everything. Even the language is contaminated with it.
Unlike Pasolini, Kaplan’s poetry is not descriptively florid and Romantic, though it carries as much freight in terms of political and emotive impact. The sequence, broken into four sections, describes things with an air of detachment. People are most commonly indicated by a function: “a grandmother” (52), “the beautiful fruit seller” (62), “my neighbor across the hall” (97). It is possible to think of this in the context of the Établissement Groups, with its roots in observation, of participating to see and learn and form objective conclusions. Kaplan writes, “The women, I see them all. I see their particular lives.” (36), and indeed there are multiple descriptions of women engaged in factory work and domestic labor, with all its dangers and tedium exposed:
The factory is small, very dangerous. Rubber. In the back, a
staircase, a cracked window. The women are dragging. They
wear special gloves. (64)On each floor I see the other women.
They are young, pretty, with small hard faces. They
mostly stick together, in the back.
I am with the older people, doing the inspections. Often
there’s nothing to do. The older people talk, play cards, I
read. (113)
Companionship and solidarity occasionally grow into these moments: “I am with a young woman, obese and blonde, who always tells / the truth. In the morning, I buy her coffee. We take turns.” (68), though Kaplan’s writing does not yield to sentimentality. It is matter of fact, functional, content to see and tell the reader what is seen.
There are few men in The Book of Skies. A machinist on the bus offers up a lurid and unsolicited detail about his sex life. A more substantial presence is a “he” who is enfolded into romantic and domestic arrangements across the book. This is underpinned with an implicit threat of violence that turns into more explicit abuse by the later sections.
The violence, we don’t talk about it, ever. How can one not
acknowledge it? It moves through him, he doesn’t stop it.
It’s a violence without representation, in motion, it marries
everything. Tight, very tight, and vast, no precision. I admire
it, also. It’s like a woman, I suffer it. I take it with me. (90)
In a couple of startling pages, Kaplan’s sequence moves from observation of others to a lucid analysis of the relationship turning sour.
He takes no responsibility for his condition, not a bit. Bullshit,
bullshit, is how he talks. His reference point, no doubt, a
direction that falls apart. (92)
The lack of precision attendant on this “he” can be set in contrast to the way Kaplan conveys meaning with her use of structure and language (“When he’s present, I find myself alone, sent away, dispersed.” [93]). Images of domesticity and motherhood immediately follow “There are weddings, ceremonies. We go to the country, we/dance. Baptisms, too. Children are there.” (94) Through a simple but effective set of juxtapositions, Kaplan’s writing alerts the reader to how quickly idealism has shrunk to domesticity, passion into violence. There is no immediate resolution, and the section closes out on a less than hopeful note,
We constantly do our accounts, money, life. We think about
what’s essential. We think about it all the time.
At night, we sleep together. We find the position, we sleep. (98)
The Book of Skies is expressly political in the way the text sets itself in dialogue with those questions of necessity, “what’s essential,” and the means of living. It is a poem of social welfare, grocers who give credit, secret economies and brief enjoyments to be had. The sky, with its innately changeable but persistent presence, complements this. By the close of the poem, the reader finds a new note of defiance,
Across the street, a laundromat, it burned down once. The
owner is a strong woman. She lives alone and says so. (119)
The ‘he’ mentioned in the earlier sequence already dissipated. No longer part of the poem. Attentiveness has returned, and it concludes “thoughts are like things, / precise, imprecise.” (112)
The work The Book of Skies does is embedded in a narrative text without ornament, one that privileges observation over speculation or theoretical rubric. Kaplan’s ability to deal with the “precise, imprecise,” is an intrinsic part of what makes this a vital text. It can be read at pace, unencumbered as it is with Modernist flourishes, but what it does over time, and in time, is reveal a richness that feels both universal and particular. If this is the work Kaplan has been writing untranslated into English for years, then The Book of Skies is a compelling argument for more.
Andrew Spragg’s writing has appeared in Chicago Review, Hix Eros, PN Review, Poetry London, the Poetry Review, Poetry Wales and the Quietus. Recent books include OoP (2022). He runs RunAmok Press with Jimmy Cummins. Certain precise instruments compass me round, or getting to it by gradients was published this summer.
The Book of Skies is published by Pamenar Press
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