Focusing primarily on définitif bob (2002) but also on some earlier works, my paper will look at how Portugal’s writing develops ways of activating multiple frames of reference simultaneously. On the one hand, ‘upstream’ so to speak, her texts ‘fold in’ a wide range of intertexts, from high art to popular culture, including such fields as instruction booklets, classical painting and video games. On the other hand, ‘downstream’, in the flow (but also the characteristic stops and starts) of her diction, she obliges the reader to construct the contexts that make the utterances of the poem comprehensible. The game this sets up with the reader is one of the chief pleasures of reading Portugal, but I would like to pay particular attention to moments of rupture where aberrant words and textual fragments threaten to bring the game to an end. For it is at such moments, when we feel that we may be ‘lost in the funhouse’ (John Barth) of language, that some of the deeper resonances of Portugal’s work become perceptible.

This paper (in French or English) will be conceived in a way that would complement and greatly benefit from Anne Portugal’s own participation in the colloquium. She is undoubtedly a significant voice in France today, who presents her work in a very engaging manner, and her presence in Tallahassee would be an asset.