SOURCE: "New Perspective on Léon-Gontran Damas," in Critical Perspectives on Léon-Gontran Damas, edited by Keith Q. Warner, Three Continents Press, 1988, pp. 87-98.

In the following essay, which was originally published in the journal Black Images in 1973, Warner examines Damas's poetic techniques, particularly the poet's use of repetition, humor, and musical rhythm.

It is perhaps unfortunate that the name of Léon Damas is so often linked with those of Aimé Césaire and Léopold Senghor. The result is nearly always to the disadvantage of the French Guyanese poet, whose output is, to be candid, not as voluminous as that of the other two illustrious Negritude poets. The tendency seems to have been to study the various aspects of Césaire and Senghor while restricting analysis of Damas' works to his poems of protest in Pigments. This is not to imply that Pigments does not warrant...