Poetic Solicitude: Two Languages and the Lyric Voice of Ex Nihilo

Abstract

The 2021 bilingual collection of poetry by E.D. Blodgett and J.R. Léveillé, Ex Nihilo, is an example of poetic solicitude, a work of art that transcends the ideological and identitarian perils of bilingualism to become the expression of a poetic vision greater than that attainable in either language or by either poet individually. In this article, I wish to investigate the nature of this joint, bilingual poetic dialogue through discussion of the conditions that made it possible. Ex Nihilo, I will suggest, transcends the language-based sectarianism latent in bilingualism to allow the two languages to “protect, touch and greet each other” in the expression of a poetic voice that is more than the English of Blodgett and the French of Léveillé. This poetic transcendence is made possible due to the confluence of three essential factors: the complementary poetics of the two poets, the formal potential inherent in the modified renga that structured their exchange, and the self-abnegating capacity of Blodgett and Léveillé to both lead and follow the compositional example of the other in the elaboration of poetic images and stylistic devices that, together, bend and into a shared arc of thematic expression. The differences between the two poets – their poetic identities and separate national languages – are essential to Ex Nihilo, but only to the extent that they are expressed and then synthesized into something greater. Paradoxically, it is only in acknowledging and accommodating the différence posed by the two languages – including the two poetic identities shaped by and anchored in the respective languages – that Ex Nihilo is able to transcend the solitudes of the two languages.