In French, 'il', the third person masculine singular pronoun, can also have no gender at all: il pleut means 'it's raining'. In Dominique Fourcade's "IL", 'il' means 'it' - but not exactly. Genderless, 'it' is the man-woman, the woman-man - and the place where we are each other. Rather than exploit difference, Fourcade allows the sonority of the word to generate the curious masculine-feminine dialogue we all hear within us, if listening. Full of rich permutations, the resulting poems reveal an enormous resonance within this simple word as well as a zone of peace.

Translated by: Peter Consenstein