The ten etchings of Aléa (1982) spread out into each of the ten poems by Réjean Beaudoin, forming a whole in which traces of oriental calligraphy are most clearly evident: signs striped markings, mysterious scripts, visible poems. These brightly coloured pages (sepia, brown, ochre) take form as abstract illuminations or still-to-be-invented instruments and are infused with an impalpable breath, like a gauze curtain trembling in the breeze over an open window. . . . The poems are brief (two, three, or four lines) and rigorously unadorned; their subtle assertions and discreet, deceptively transparent aphorisms speak of books, libraries, words, and music; of dew, morning rain, dawn over the city, or the footstep of a sandal.

From:
Duquette, Jean-Pierre. “Écrire L’image / Writing Pictures,” translated by Hugh Hazelton. Ellipse no. 48 (1992) pp. 25-26