The Art of Disappearing

??In his first book written entirely in English, the Franco-Canadian poet Patrice Desbiens explores through his poetry the alienation of the French-speaking minority of Ontario trapped between Anglo-Canadian and Quebec culture. His bilingual poetry—never translated but rather reinterpreted—is in search of an identity reflects a disaffection with both cultures, belonging neither to the English or to the French. His most significant bilingual work, L’homme invisible / The Invisible Man, a book of poems eventually brought to the stage, revealed Patrice Desbiens as a major voice in Ontario. The Invisible Man, bilingual by birth, becomes the emblematic figure of the Franco-Ontarian in search of identity. The story takes place in the two mother tongues of the invisible man imprisoned in a verbal stereo of two worlds. A life in the shadows his poems portray the alienation entailed the double linguistic affiliation: being divided, in two languages, he is still too French or too little and not really belonging to either culture. This sardonic view of the cultural situation in French Ontario is tempered by a lapidary writing, a surprising humor and powerful images. A fragmented outsider in two distinct cultures, distinguished by an ardent coolness, Patrice Desbiens is a detached and sardonic observer. One of the few poets who has both a critical and popular success, his poetry is that of everyday life. Inspired by jazz, his popular and dissonant poems are based on a discordance syntax as well as rhythmic lyricism.