Dominique Fourcade's 'Citizen Do' Examines His Poetic Bond with René Char

In 'Citizen Do', published by POL in 2009, poet Dominique Fourcade revisits his deep connection to René Char, whom he met in 1958 at age twenty. Fourcade, author of 'Rose-déclic', published early poems with Corti before falling silent around 1970 to focus on visual arts, organizing major Matisse exhibitions. He returned to poetry in 1983 with 'Le Ciel pas d'angle'. The book's centerpiece is his preface to the 2007 BNF exhibition for Char's centenary. Fourcade describes Char's rhetoric as 'insistent' yet revealing 'immense weakness', emphasizing that Char's wartime resistance—he published nothing during the war, with 'Feuillets d'Hypnos' appearing in 1946—shaped an ethics and poetics of refusal. Fourcade states: 'The hero devoured the poetry in him, which prevented the hero from accomplishing himself.' The volume also includes 'Chansons et systèmes pour Saskia' for his granddaughter, with echoes of Ronsard. Fourcade insists: 'I am not the subject here, I do not want to be and I must not be, but waiting is the subject of all youth and all life.' He characterizes his own work as 'units of sense-sound' where 'sense comes last' and writing is 'vulnerability'.