1998
First Published
4.05
Average Rating
156
Number of Pages
Poet, playwright, novelist, and essayist Eacute;douard Glissant, born in Martinique in 1928, is one of the most important contemporary writers in French. iBlack Salt/i collects two decades of Glissant's poetry and makes it available for the first time in English. It is a poetry that is aesthetically distinguished and historically significant, characterized by potent metaphors of local identity.brPublished in France as iLe Sel Noir/i, the volume brings together in English translation three separate poetry collections from Glissant's early years, iLe Sang Riveacute;/i (Blood Riveted), iLe Sel Noir/i (Black Salt), and iBoises/i (Yokes). Read together, these three works embody Glissant's project to develop a Caribbean literature no longer contained by European language. He incorporates conventions of orality and ties the poems concretely to a Martiniquan experience of history and geography/geology, expressing an ongoing search for identity in a struggle between memory and forgetting. From iRiveted Blood/i through iBlack Salt/i to iYokes/i, Glissant can be seen to be developing a poetic instrument that is increasingly stark and increasingly particularized as it undergoes inflections that derive from oral and Creole sources and simultaneously opens to the local landscape, the traditional culture, and the history of Martinique.brEacute;douard Glissant is Distinguished Professor of French, City University of New York, Graduate Center. His other books in English include iCaribbean Discourse/i and iPoetics of Relation/i, and iFaulkner Mississippi/i, forthcoming from Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. Betsy Wing's translations include Didier Eribon'siMichel Foucault/i, and Heacute;legrave;ne Cixous' iThe Book of Promethea/i.br
Avg Rating
4.05
Number of Ratings
19
5 STARS
42%
4 STARS
26%
3 STARS
26%
2 STARS
5%
1 STARS
0%
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Author
Édouard Glissant
Author · 15 books
Édouard Glissant was a French writer, poet, philosopher, and literary critic from Martinique. He is widely recognised as one of the most influential figures in Caribbean thought and cultural commentary.
