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Original Essays | November 5, 2009

John Buntin: IMG Notes from the (Bibliographic) Underground



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25 Local Warehouse Anthologies- Miscellaneous International Poetry
6 Remote Warehouse Anthologies- Miscellaneous International Poetry

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Other titles in the Wesleyan Poetry series:

  1. A Visit to Civilization
  2. A Visit to Civilization
  3. Against the Meanwhile
  4. Against the Meanwhile: 3 Elegies
  5. All Odd and Splendid
  6. Alphabet Theater
  7. Alphabet Theater
  8. Altazor
  9. American Women Poets in the 21st Century: Where Lyric Meets Language
  10. Anabranch
  11. Arcady
  12. Born to Slow Horses
  13. Breath: Poems and Letters
  14. Bright Felon: Autobiography and Cities
  15. Candy Necklace
  16. Cascadia
  17. Continued
  18. Continued
  19. Crazy Melon and Chinese Apple: The Poems of Frances Chung
  20. Dien Cai Dau
  21. Distance from Loved Ones
  22. Divine Honors
  23. Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
  24. Door in the Mountain: New and Collected Poems, 1965-2003
  25. Drafts 138, Toll
  26. Eating in the Underworld
  27. Echoes of Memory
  28. Echoes of Memory
  29. Edge Effect
  30. Eyeshot
  31. Eyeshot
  32. Fall
  33. Fortress
  34. Gilgamesh: A Verse Play
  35. Gilgamesh: A Verse Play
  36. Glass Enclosure
  37. Glottal Slip: 101 Poems
  38. Grace, Fallen from
  39. Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005
  40. Grave of Light: New and Selected Poems, 1970-2005
  41. Halfway Down the Hall
  42. Hinge & Sign
  43. How Charlie Shavers Died: And Other Poems
  44. I Have a Name
  45. Il Cuore: The Heart
  46. In Your Own Sweet Time
  47. Indelible
  48. It Is If I Speak
  49. James Dickey
  50. Little Boat
  51. Live from the Homesick Jamboree
  52. Loose Sugar
  53. Lullaby for One Fist
  54. Lunch
  55. Lunch
  56. Luster
  57. Meteoric Flowers
  58. Meteoric Flowers
  59. Mixed Plate
  60. Mose
  61. My Vocabulary Did This to Me: The Collected Poetry of Jack Spicer
  62. National Cold Storage Company
  63. New Dark Ages
  64. New Time
  65. Next Life
  66. Odes and Elegies
  67. Of Gravity & Angels
  68. Once Again, La Fontaine: Sixty More Fables
  69. Once Again, La Fontaine: Sixty More Fables
  70. Other
  71. Outlandish Blues
  72. Paris Spleen: Little Poems in Prose
  73. Pieces of Air in the Epic
  74. Pieces of Air in the Epic
  75. Poasis
  76. Practical Water
  77. Provoked in Venice
  78. Ravishing Disunities : Real Ghazals in English (00 Edition)
  79. Recumbents: Poems
  80. Recumbents: Poems
  81. Roll Call of Mirrors
  82. Sea Room
  83. Selected Poems
  84. Selected Poems
  85. Selected Poems
  86. Shades
  87. Shadowing the Ground
  88. Signs & Abominations
  89. Singularities
  90. Some Values of Landscape and Weather
  91. Splitting and Binding
  92. Steles, Volume 1
  93. Sundays on the Phone
  94. Tea
  95. Ten to One: Selected Poems
  96. The Alphabet in the Park
  97. The Bad Wife Handbook
  98. The Black Riviera
  99. The Clouds Float North
  100. The Collected Poems of Barbara Guest
  101. The Collected Poems of Philip Whalen
  102. The Couple
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  104. The Cradle of the Real Life
  105. The Eagles Mile
  106. The Education of Desire
  107. The Father of the Predicaments
  108. The Flowers of Evil
  109. The Folded Heart
  110. The Front Matter, Dead Souls
  111. The Front Matter, Dead Souls
  112. The Known World
  113. The Long View
  114. The Millennium Hotel
  115. The Outernationale
  116. The Outernationale
  117. The Real Enough World
  118. The Rehearsal of Misunderstanding
  119. The Self-Dismembered Man
  120. The Sights Along the Harbor: New and Collected Poems
  121. The Sights Along the Harbor: New and Collected Poems
  122. The Sleep That Changed Everything
  123. The Spaces Between Birds
  124. The Tulip Sacrament
  125. The Wesleyan Tradition: Four Decades of American Poetry
  126. The White Fire of Time
  127. The Whole Motion
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  131. Thieves of Paradise
  132. Tickets for a Prayer Wheel
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  134. Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry, 1800-1950
  135. Tug
  136. Up to Speed
  137. Veil
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  139. Vinegar Bone
  140. What Kind
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  143. Writing Through
  144. Zither & Autobiography
  145. Zong!
  146. Steles

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Wesleyan Poetry)

by Aime Cesaire

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land (Wesleyan Poetry) Cover

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments:

Cesaire's masterpiece that reaches the powerful and overlooked aspects of black culture.

Synopsis:

Aime Cesaire's masterpiece, Notebook of a Return to the Native Land, is a work of immense cultural significance and beauty. The long poem was the beginning of Cesaire's quest for negritude, and it became an anthem of Blacks around the world. With its emphasis on unusual juxtapositions of object and metaphor, manipulation of language into puns and neologisms, and rhythm, Cesaire considered his style a beneficial madness that could break into the forbidden and reach the powerful and overlooked aspects of black culture.

Clayton Eshleman and Annette Smith achieve a laudable adaptation of Cesaire's work to English by clarifying double meanings, stretching syntax, and finding equivalent English puns, all while remaining remarkably true to the French text. Their treatment of the poetry is marked with imagination, vigor, and accuracy that will clarify difficulties for those already familiar with French, and make the work accessible to those who are not. Andre Breton's introduction, A Great Black Poet, situates the text and provides a moving tribute to Cesaire.

Notebook of a Return to the Native Land is recommended for readers in comparative literature, post-colonial literature, African American studies, poetry, modernism, and French.

What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating based on 2 comments:
Andrew Daily, April 20, 2008 (view all comments by Andrew Daily)
Aimé Césaire died on Thursday, at the age of 94. Discussions are ongoing about transferring his remains to the Pantheon in Paris - France' s highest honor to her poets, statesmen and heroes (others buried there include Victor Hugo, Voltaire, Rousseau, Zola, Jaurès, Schoelcher). This book will remain his lasting testament, a long prose poem, simultaneously enigmatic and topical, that more than any other captured the vicissitudes of being both French and black, of existing at that liminal space between Europe and the America. This poem overflows with imagery, coined words, long lines and unique meters, thunderous ideas: the whole of life, of Martinique, of France, of the great dilemmas of the 20th century are in here. André Breton thought it might be the greatest poem of the 20th century. I have no doubts. A thousand years from now, when our civilization fades to a distant memory, Césaire, alongside Picasso and Schoenberg, will, I believe, be remembered as capturing the true predicament of our 20th century lives.
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(4 of 6 readers found this comment helpful)
ishe, August 29, 2006 (view all comments by ishe)
Aime Cesaire is a threller in the hands of all the blacks
which left no stone unturned in the quest to dig dipper
the black cultural oasis.i realy enjoyed the recipe and piece is so a traper to catch our dignity,our culture away from the lions mouths.Cesaire i really enjoy your superb brew.
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Product Details

ISBN:
9780819564528
Translator:
Eshleman, Clayton
Translator:
Smith, Annette Gail
Translator:
Smith, Annette Gail
Author:
Cesaire, Aime
Author:
Eshleman, Clayton
Publisher:
Wesleyan University Press
Location:
Middletown, Conn.
Subject:
Caribbean & Latin American
Subject:
Poetry
Subject:
Continental european
Subject:
Translations into english
Subject:
Martinique
Subject:
Poety
Series:
Wesleyan Poetry
Series Volume:
v. 4
Publication Date:
August 2001
Binding:
Paperback
Language:
English
Pages:
66
Dimensions:
8.32x5.40x.37 in. .28 lbs.

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