Philippe Delaveau's 'Ce que disent les vents' Reviewed

Pascal Boulanger reviews Philippe Delaveau's poetry collection 'Ce que disent les vents', published by Gallimard. Delaveau's first collection 'Eucharis' (1989) sparked debates between formalism and lyricism. His poetry, influenced by a dream of becoming a composer, operates through vibration and radiance, engaging with the luminous fabric of time. It draws from everyday moments—a hand lifting a curtain, autumn in a city, laundry in Naples, wind cutting a passerby, a Lisbon tram over the sea. Each poem is marked by travel and the call of the real, confronting a desacralized world while echoing lessons of agony and the fragile glory of day. Delaveau listens to details vibrating inside and outside existence, as in lines: 'The heavy body brings us back to earth. To dust. / To the terrible song of silence and cypresses.' His verse is ample, attentive to landscape variations, offering an acquiescence, an opening, an exaltation, a homage to beauty.