Far from being the ivory-tower dweller that the titles "professor" and "poet" might evoke, Jacques Brault has never been a writer in isolation but part of a larger movement which changed the direction of Quebec literature. Known mainly for his work as a poet and critic, he has also been an active participant in the literary movement centering around the publishing house Hexagone and has worked on the editorial boards of the journals Liberté and Etudes Françaises.

The early circumstances of Brault's life did not favor a literary or academic career. Born to Louis and Emilienne Dagenais Brault in 1933, he grew up in a poor, working-class family in Montreal. He relates in the essay "Une Grammaire du coeur" (collected in Chemin faisant, 1975) that he discovered poetry when a neighborhood girl moved away, leaving to him as a parting gift an old French grammar in which...