%0 Journal Article
%T ¡°Lands that spit and spew¡±: Aim¨¦ C¨¦saire¡¯s vegetal poetry
%A Sebastian Charles Galbo
%J The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
%@ 1741-6442
%D 2019
%R 10.1177/0021989416683760
%X Little critical attention has concentrated on the rich botanical imagery of Aim¨¦ C¨¦saire¡¯s poetry. Far from serving as the placid, bucolic backdrop of Martinique, C¨¦saire¡¯s vegetal world is a space of tremendous and unpredictable flux and change. By performing several close readings of C¨¦saire¡¯s flora-centric poems in the context of ¨¦douard Glissant¡¯s poetics of Relation, this article articulates a notion of ¡°vegetal writing¡±, a kind of critical mode of composition and reading that produces distinct imaginings of creolization through the aesthetic lens of botanical imagery. In doing so, this article argues that C¨¦saire¡¯s vegetal poetry posits a challenge to romanticized pastoral renderings of Antillean landscape and, secondly, dominant readings that place C¨¦saire¡¯s work in the literary stronghold of N¨¦gritude. Instead, reading C¨¦saire¡¯s poems alongside Glissant¡¯s notion of Relation, vegetal writing creatively obfuscates the lines dividing root/stem, verticality/horizontality, mobile/immobile, self/other ¡ª placing the self in an increasingly complex, creolized world of hybridity, transformation, and human possibility
%K Caribbean Literature
%K C¨¦saire
%K colonialism
%K Martinique
%K postcolonial studies
%K Glissant
%K rhizome
%U https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0021989416683760