Poetry
Rires et pleurs
Not translated into English
Oswald Durand · 1896
Synopsis
Poems in which love and the beauty of women stand beside the land and nature of Haiti, the memory of slavery and the history of the revolution. The pieces in French sit alongside Choucoune, written in Creole: in it a man tells, calling on the little birds of the wood as witnesses, of his meeting with a young woman whose beauty seized him, and of the memory he keeps of her.
Context
The Crété printing house published them in Corbeil in 1896, in two volumes of about two hundred and fifty pages each, according to the catalogue of the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Choucoune, which the poet is said to have written in prison, was set to music by Michel Mauléart Monton; adapted in English under the title Yellow Bird, the song was taken up by Harry Belafonte and by Celia Cruz. The book was reissued in Haiti, in 1967 by the éditions Panorama, then in 2005 by the Presses nationales d'Haïti, according to Potomitan.
Who it is for
Two volumes of verse in French, in the public domain; the piece in Creole keeps its author's spelling, which takes a little getting used to for today's reader.
Prizes and reception
According to Amy Reinsel, these poems show why their author was hailed as a national poet; Choucoune became a song known well beyond Haiti.
Sources for this page 4
The pages consulted to check this page.