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This issue of JACKET is a co-production with SALT magazine



Pam Brown

Paris, France

Without a notebook             or, at least,
   not writing,               I sat outdoors
     in the same bustling street,
        rue Vieille-du-Temple,
on my last day
  last year in Paris        & what I thought
    was that I didn’t want to leave
       and, like Gertrude Stein,        I thought
"It’s funny about dogs."       (she thought
  dogs resemble their nations)
                              and about
     the story in Paris, France
             about the nice story
                              of a dog -
There was a girl in a café
   who was very fond of a dog
who used to come there      regularly
                      with a man      and
 she regularly gave the dog
                              a lump of sugar,
one day
   the man came in      without the dog
 and said the dog was dead.
The girl had
      the lump of sugar in her hand
 and when she heard the dog was dead
          tears came to her eyes
              and she ate the lump of sugar.

On my very first visit to Paris,
      almost a decade ago now,
  I went to 37, rue de Fleurus
     to see where Gertrude & Alice had lived
        and I photographed the building.



On my second visit,
       five years ago,        I entered
 the courtyard
     at 37, rue de Fleurus
at lunch-time        & heard
   piano music           floating
 from the upstairs apartment,
          their apartment,    & cooking smells
   & clinking plates      (as everyone
in France has lunch   - returning home
               from work, from school)
-  the building unrenovated,
               unpretentious,           lived-in.

On my third visit,
      two years ago,        I read
         her book Paris, France
and so           last year
                I could think
    "It’s funny about dogs."



Dalmatian at the Cafe de Flore, 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain

At the Café de Flore, 172 Boulevard Saint-Germain



But wait — there’s more! ...from Pam Brown’s author notes page here on the Jacket site, you can link to a photo and a biographical note, and also to dozen or so Jacket pages where her work features or where she is reviewed or interviewed.


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This issue of Jacket is a co-production with SALT magazine,
an international journal of poetry and poetics, edited by John Kinsella
PO Box 937, Great Wilbraham, Cambridge PDO, CB1 5JX United Kingdom ISSN 1324-7131

This material is copyright © Pam Brown
and Jacket magazine and SALT magazine 2001
The URL address of this page is
http://jacketmagazine.com/14/brown-p-paris.html