Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard

Through reading Loutard's poetry I noticed a striking theme of the sea repeated throughout his first four poems. It makes sense considering that they from a book called "Poemes de la Mer" which translates to sea poems/poems of the sea. He uses a lot of nature imagery throughout his poetry such as "tree of the seasons", "earth of the past", "flow of seed", "first call of the sun" (61) all of these can be found in his first poem News of My Mother. He, like many other African poets also uses dark imagery especially in his poems Noonday in Immaturity and Pilgrimage to Loango Strand. Images such as "scent of their blood", "scars burnt", "life sickens me", "blind me", "estuary of death" (62-63) all follow this pattern. It is rather disturbing and intense to read yet it still is very interesting, just in a dark way. I had trouble understanding what his poetry was really about, but I have a feeling that there was a source of bitterness in his life that caused him to write the way he did. I really enjoyed the first four poems of his collection but the proceeding ones were far to dark for me. This poet has pent up anger or bitterness about something in his life and I am curious as to what it could possibly be. I could only speculate as to what it might be.