SOURCE: "Recall in Léopold Sédar Senghor's 'Joal'," in The French Review, Vol. LVII, No. 5, April, 1984, pp. 625-33.

In the following essay, O'Keefe discusses the influence of Senghor's early environment on his work, maintaining that "if the eponymous subject of this poem lies at the heart of Senghor's artistic material, what is true for 'Joal' will be informative about all his poetry."

As both thinker and doer, Léopold Sédar Senghor has been an influential presence globally. The prominent roles that he has played include theoretician of négritude, member of the French Assemblée Constituante (in 1945) and Chambre des Députés, a delegate to the Council of Europe, to the UN, and to UNESCO, and the first president of the Republic of Senegal. One might think that the poet in him would derive much inspiration from all that the intellectual and the statesman have...