Césaire's location on [Martinique in the West Indies] is what distinguishes his poetry from that of his predecessors among the French symbolists and surrealists, from that of his contemporaries of African origin. His geographical position—a moral position, a rhetorical stance—is the first metaphorical premise of his poetic work. The island is the eye of a storm of images…. (p. 13)

Césaire's is the turbulent poetry of the spiritually dislocated, of the damned. His images strike through the net; only in surrealist dreams can he reveal the unbroken sonorities of the sky…. Césaire's is the Black Power of the imagination; to a younger generation of African poets …, it is Césaire rather than [Léopold Sédar] Senghor who is Negritude's true chief of state.

Césaire is similarly regarded by those who care for surrealist poetry. His is a late, vigorous manifestation of the...