The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire

The definitive edition of the complete work of a master Caribbean poet

The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire gathers all of Cesaire's celebrated verse into one bilingual edition. The French portion is comprised of newly established first editions of Césaire's poetic ouvre made available in French in 2014 under the title Poésie, Théâtre, Essais et Discours, edited by A. J. Arnold and an international team of specialists. To prepare the English translations, the translators started afresh from this French edition. Included here are translations of first editions of the poet's early work, prior to political interventions in the texts after 1955, revealing a new understanding of Cesaire's aesthetic and political trajectory. A truly comprehensive picture of Cesaire's poetry and poetics is made possible thanks to a thorough set of notes covering variants, historical and cultural references, and recurring figures and structures, a scholarly introduction and a glossary. This book provides a new cornerstone for readers and scholars in 20th century poetry, African diasporic literature, and postcolonial studies.

"[A] voluminous work of nearly 1000 pages which should bring joy to the lovers and researchers of poetry alike."?Philippe Triay, francetvinfo, La 1&&&232;re

"The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire is a fundamental work for readers of twentieth century poetry, and those especially interested in the relationships that define a poet's response to his fraught and bloody time."?Alan Graubard, Pacific Rim Review of Books

"Césaire's poetry offers a model of artistic and political opposition that equips people with more than stress and anxiety....it deepens shallow notions of identity and suggests that a subjectivity informed by powerlessness can be useful for understanding, and overturning, power."?David B. Hobbs, The Nation

"Césaire, like Mallarmé and Whitman before him, took his poetic lines on long walks, employing all the elements at his disposal?linguistically an thematically ? to craft a new language that could express his Blackness, or rather more specifically, his Africanness, his Caribbeanness."?André Naffis-Sahely, Poetry London

"The Complete Poetry of Aimé Césaire promises to jump start a reassessment of Césaire's importance as a twentieth-century poet. It is the only bilingual edition in any language to date."?Pluton Magazine