DERRIDA: A BIOGRAPHY by BENOIT PEETERS

JEFF HARRISON Engages

Derrida: A Biography by Benoit Peeters
(Polity Press, Cambridge UK, 2013)

[each line below is an excerpt from Benoit Peeters' Derrida: A Biography]


a   b   c
Hélène, what comes next?

her spectre
never speaks
here, the ghost is me
by playing dead
the spectre of her spectre
speaks

Hélène, what comes next?

a   b   c
another
birth of the poem in prose
cat

uproar around the beast
a cat that looks at you
king

horse
legs trapped in glue
glue of the pool milk

flower, horse
flower
in the dreams of the German Romantics

Hélène
bears
the lamp

a different eye
ah, how beautiful
and horrible to behold

in the world
a young dog
pens
stories about viscounts
the inkwell
as
magic
as little alligators

finishing
a
story
the
young dog
says
the fire has done its work

to raise
your
lamp
Hélène
phantasm
I advance
the science of monsters

rubber
soul
I do so
find it obscene
that
border between
the tomb and the room

gaze
cat
gaze

king
horse
won't
flower,
not
for all the cats in the world


****

Jeff Harrison reviewed books for the past eleven issues of Galatea Resurrects. He has publications from Writers Forum, MAG Press, Persistencia Press, White Sky Books, and Furniture Press. He has e-books from Blazevox, xPress(ed), and Argotist Ebooks. His poetry has appeared in An Introduction to the Prose Poem (Firewheel Editions), The Hay(na)ku Anthology Vol. II (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), The Chained Hay(na)ku Project (Meritage Press and xPress(ed)), Sentence: a Journal of Prose Poetics, Xerography, Moria, NOON: journal of the short poem, Dusie, MiPOesias, EOAGH, EXPLORINGfictions, and elsewhere. You can read his poetry here and here. You are welcome to visit Antic View.