SOURCE: "Aimé Césaire's 'Barbare': Title, Key Word, and Source of the Text," in Teaching Language Through Literature, Vol. XXI, No. 1, December, 1981, pp. 3-13.

In the following essay, Cutler contends that "a study of the extraordinary power of Césaire 's language will serve as a key to the poem 's meaning as well as an introduction to the emotionally charged themes of black poets writing in French."

Black poetry from Africa and the Caribbean has become the focus of interest in courses ranging from "Black Studies" to studies of Francophone literature in general. Black poets are as varied as the countries from which they come but they all share common concerns with the black man's alienation and suffering. Singing songs of despair and revolt, of nostalgia and hope, they bring new vocabulary and images to the poetic canon and express the complex black experience in frequently unfamiliar...