Where have all the poets gone? You know, those grand old bearded guys—tormented, cursed, romantic—who composed all those famous triplets, rondos and sonnets. Everyone knew their verses by heart, reciting them as if they were anthems.
    These days, it’s tempting to conclude that French poetry was a literary parenthesis that opened in the 15th century with François Villon and closed in the early 20th with Paul Claudel, Charles Péguy and Guillaume Apollinaire. If not, where is contemporary poetry hiding? Where are the children who recite it and the lovers who are moved by it? Who has it provoked and angered? Is it little read because it’s not energetically promoted by publishing houses or because it’s unreadable? Has it become “asocial,” as contemporary poet Michel Deguy wonders? And if so, why?
    Perhaps for poetry to find an audience, it needs the calamities—wars, epidemics, dictatorships, famines—that have mercifully spared France for more than half a century. It demands anger, heartache, revolt, fiery words, obscenity. Some of the less awful rappers have tried to take up the challenge, but it’s hard to pull off in these relatively phlegmatic times, when pornography is commonplace and violence is in the headlines every day.
    So how can we touch people, elicit emotion? A few songs by, say, Gainsbourg, Léo Ferré, Bashung and Grand Corps Malade are more successful, in their modest way, than all the ambitious typographical games, deconstruction, linguistic contortions and semantic brutality of the poetic avant-garde, which has only managed—in my humble opinion—to bore readers. The terseness of Jean Daive, one of the most emblematic representatives of contemporary poetry, or the so-called “spontaneous lyricism” of Anne-Marie Albiach—she too considered a major poet—offer a universe that’s so hermetic and abstract that it touches only a very few who miraculously happen to be on the same wavelength. It’s a very private club.
    I was pondering all these questions as I visited an exhibit about René Char at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. It commemorates the centennial of the poet, who was born in June 1907 in L’Isle-sur-la-Sorgue, in the Vaucluse, and died in Paris in 1988. He was no doubt one of the last great popular poets who were alive when I was young, and whom I might have run into on the street. Others were Jacques Supervieille, Saint-John Perse, Jacques Prévert, Pierre Reverdy and Jacques Réda. (I could add Paul Eluard, but he died when I was two.)
    René Char was physically imposing—he played rugby in his youth—and physically courageous. He took up arms against the German Occupation and fought under the name “Captain Alexander.” He said that one must “act like a primitive and plan like a strategist,” and advocated—with respect to poetry (but poetry was his life)—“an insurgent order.” His work is indelibly linked to the war and to his love for his native Provence. Sadly, he seems to be the last French poet you still want to read aloud and can still be deeply moved by. Written during years of anxiety and action, his poetry is painful, as witnessed by these last four verses of “Observers and Dreamers”; written in 1934, it is from The Hammer With No Master:

Seuls aux fenêtres des fleuves Les grands visages éclairés Rêvent qu’il n’y a rien de périssable Dans leur paysage carnassier

Alone at river-windows Great lighted faces Dream there is nothing that dies In their carnivorous landscape

    Thinking about Char, one realizes that tragedy, passion, brutality—all those essential things that weigh on us so heavily—are poetry’s noblest raw materials. Lightness, comedy, humor, derision and irony are harder poetic weapons to wield. And that may be the key to the decline of Western poetry today. We live in more fortunate or at least more peaceful times. We’re more preoccupied with our comfort than with our survival. There are limits to our freedoms, but we’re not battling tyranny. Our collective passions have given way to individual concerns about our private lives. The result: Poetry is less urgent, less passionate.
    Yet there’s still hope, if you look in the right places. The future of poetry may not lie in lyrical flights, interminable epics or obsessive deconstruction, but in playfulness, humor, gaiety, pleasure and friendship. Take poetry slams, for example—those poetic jousts that originated in America and are becoming more and more popular in France. Visit the site of the Fédération Française de Slam Poésie (ffdsp.com), and you’ll realize that the poetry we thought was a dying art is actually alive and well.
    Slammers don’t hold salons. They go to bars. They have three minutes to recite their verses in front of a friendly audience, and afterwards the proprietor offers them a drink at the bar. With slam, people are reconquering poetry, giving it back its place among us—one that’s unpretentious and often cheerful and very welcome. I think René Char would have approved of this new “insurgent order.”
“René Char” runs through July 29 at the Bibliothèque Nationale; bnf.fr.