Jacques Jouet, Metro Poet

Jacques Jouet has invented a unique form of poetry: the “poème de métro,” literally a poem exclusively written on the subway. The reader will find in Jouet’s own article, “With (and Without) Constraints,” details about the genesis of this particular genre along with the so-called self-defining poem, which is itself a metro poem. I would like to examine this new genre in its two complementary aspects: its mode of enunciation, which in effect “kills” the draft version, and the response it imposes upon the reader, making it almost impossible to read a metro poem without, at least in spirit, being in the metro.