“On the State of the Union” is indicative of how Aimé Césaire’s vision of négritude had evolved from the concerns of being a Martinican struggling for racial equality with white Europeans into a universal view of civil rights for Blacks…. Read More ›
The fifth independent collection of poetry by Léopold Sédar Senghor, Nocturnes was published in 1961, the year after Senghor became president of Senegal, and it was awarded the International Grand Prize for Poetry from the Poets and Artists of France…. Read More ›
Mahmoud Darwish’s poetry partakes of different cultural and mythological traditions. We find in his poems allusions to seminal texts from ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, pre-Islamic Arabia, Persia, and India. In this poem, the title is taken from an Indian classic on… Read More ›
In this unrhymed prose poem, Césaire develops the central image of torrential rain and its effects—both destructive and cathartic—on island cultures: “The rain, it’s the testy way here and now to strike out everything that exists, everything / that’s been… Read More ›
This 13-line free-verse poem starts with gratitude, “I thank you, my God, / for having created me black,” and establishes a mood of celebration. The next line, a continuation of the initial thought, creates a startling counterpoint: “for making me… Read More ›
Michelle Cliff’s first book, Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise, is a collection of what can best be described as “proems” in both the intuitive and the official meanings of the word. The pieces combine prose and poetry… Read More ›
Kamau Brathwaite’s poetic trilogy, The Arrivants (1988), consists of three previously published long poems: Rights of Passage (1967), Islands (1968), and Masks (1969), each comprised of many constituent parts. Critic Pamela Mordecai labels the trilogy’s structural elements in descending order… Read More ›
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