you is a long poem written in French that uses the English word “you” as its title and uses the form of the polyhedron, a shape that has more than six sides, to represent the complexities and multi-faceted nature of love and relationships.

In French, as translator Moure points out, tu and vous have different meanings with tu being more intimate, less formal and more familiar. In English, you is used for both familiar and formal, singular and plural. It is no surprise, then, that you is complicated and multi-faceted. Neveu’s shift in pronouns throughout the long poem reflects these complications. As Moure writes in “YOU, VIA ME (A TRANSLATOR’S POSTFACE)”:

the textual self as “you,” addresses “he,” is “he” addressing “you” who is the narrator observing, is “I.”

I have long admired the writing and translations of Moure, who has, among other things, introduced English readers to the Galician poetry of Chus Pato. In you, Moure is aware of the challenges of Neveu using the single word “you” as ideogram:

Neveu’s faceting [you] in French is altered in English: “one word in French may
be two words or a bundle of words or suffixes in English.

Moure considers not just the words themselves or the lines they fall within, but also “the spacing above and below the line, [attending] to how the line rhythmically spaces and verticalizes the page.”

Most of the poem is presented like a vertical list with short lines and double-spacing, described beautifully by Moure in her post-face as “a vertical unfolding.” This shape caused me to focus intently on the individual lines and on single words, while simultaneously reading quickly and breathlessly, giving it a sense of urgency, making the book a page-turner.

The poem uses an economy of language to convey the rise and fall of a relationship. There are few articles and modifiers, and no connectives. Punctuation is used sparingly. Does love require rationalizations, excuses, explanations, or is it the expression of moments, fragmented experiences, disruptions? How does love ebb and flow? The form of this book makes me ask these questions. I don’t think they are answered in you, nor do they need to be. The list format frees the words from context.

In the three of her books that I’ve read—you, This Radiant Life (Book*hug Press, 2020), and Coït, translated by Angela Carr (Book*hug Press, 2012)—Neveu uses the spare list form, too. Coït plays more horizontally on the page, and single lines often appear alone on a page in This Radiant Life.

In contrast, you resists the horizontal and thus appears malleable, the words can be read in isolation or connect to the words on the page or connect to the whole book, allowing readers to construct their own narrative connections. Only toward the end of the book and after the relationship is over does the text take up the entire space of the page, both horizontally and vertically, in a breathless rush of words. As Moure describes it,

For Chantal Neveu, the blank page, and the interval between words, is like the
interval between inspiration and expiration of breath.

French tends to hold abstracts more easily than English. It prefers Latin over Germanic words. Much of the vocabulary of you is Latinate and abstract, so intensity increases when concrete and Germanic diction is used, leading to a more tactile, sensory and visceral feel. The poem begins this way:

first his breathing, then his pupils
I watch his mouth
its furrows its swells

Furrow from the Middle English and Proto Germanic, swells from Middle English are soft sounds and descriptive words, whereas further on the page, there are numerous Latin words, the language of abstracts and science with an alteration of ess and cee sounds:

an implicit programmatics
ascension
les façades le quartier
remanance of Rio

As she does in This Radiant Life, Neveu juxtaposes the lexicons of science and nature, creating a kind of pendulum rhythm, swinging back and forth between the abstract and the concrete, the body and the mind: rainwater and pulsebeats: prisms and photons.

Remanence is the ability of a material to retain magnetization. It is a term from physics that harkens back to Neveu’s book, This Radiant Life. you rewards readers who are willing to take the time to explore further, to delve into detail for particular words, such as remanence.

Terms related to magnetism, precious metals and scientific language appear throughout you. This gives the poem the quality of an experiment. Is love an experiment? Is it objective? Can we treat it objectively as scientists treat their experiments?

metallic taste of the city
a magnetism
from palate to nostrils
infra-resonance

Love can be withheld but it shines, nonetheless. People are drawn to one another like magnets. Love is timeless like the materials that make up the Earth. Can we ever defy the laws (of science and society) to love who we want? There is perhaps no better opportunity to engage with the concept of love as a complicated and multi-faceted experience.