Cesaire at 70. Marxist revolutionary. For a quarter century, representative from Martinique (near Grenada) to the French Assembly. For four decades, father-apologist for the ideology of negritude. Leading Third World intellectual. French playwright and surrealist poet. "Whoever would not understand me," he writes, "would not understand any better the roaring of a tiger." Now perhaps, with [The Collected Poetry by Aime Cesaire], we can begin to understand this tiger….

One now sees that there are two styles in Cesaire's life work, two minds at work: the influence of Andre Breton and other surrealists, encouraging him to take at random the mythologies and landscapes of black Africa and the Caribbean in defining negritude; and the influence of American black poets of the Harlem Renaissance, encouraging him to take images of glory from slavery and segregation in making his definition. The surrealism liberated him, but I'm not sure how effectively it...