The first hot summer day of 2012. The dome of Pantheon at 11:30 was sparkling in the morning while I was heading for Rue de la Bucherie to meet Jack Hirschman.
Our correspondence began in 1999; we have both translated each other’s poetry, me, a sum of his non-leftish poems and he, an early collection of jazz poems of mine.
We walked around the Quartier Latin and after an hour or so we chose to have a drink at the café-bar La Rive Gauche. got to my hang-out, La Rive Gauche. It was a beautiful encounter with bursts of laughter and jokes and an open, yet full of disagreements and objections, conversation. For me poetry is an absolute expression of humanism; originality of the spirit, for Hirschman poetry is a tool for social confrontation and ideological guidance.
A brass-band from Austria across the Fontaine Saint-Michel kept us silent for a few moments, while I believe we were both concentrated on the arguments that we had exchanged the previous minutes. The conversation started all over again with me supporting the idea that the poet is a loner; a man who stands alone before society; Hirschman supported the idea that a poet is a political activist. The dissidence was a very real one.
Paris, June 2nd 2012
Yannis Livadas was born in Kalamata, Greece, in 1969. He is also an editor and translator. Done a variety of different works in his life. His poems have also appeared in greek, american, french, indian, croatian, irish and spanish poetry magazines. He lives in Paris, France.
You can also read the article here
https://livadaspoetry.blogspot.com/search?q=Hirschman
