Tati-Loutard Poetry Reflection

Our assignment for this class was to read a collection of poems by Jean-Baptiste Tati-Loutard. I found his anthology and the poems to have a lot in common with one another. For the most part, all of his poems dealt in some way with nature. They all used adjectives and nouns that highlighted both the power and beauty of the natural world. He particularly had an interest with the sea, as evidenced by poems such as End of Flight, Letter to Edouard Maunick, and Submarine Tombs. Every one of these poems, and several other in the anthology deal with the beauty and the power of the sea. Tati-Loutard also heavily uses personification in his poem, giving human like qualities to inhuman objects. For example, he uses lines like "fields opened themselves", "baobab took aim", and "footsteps which sang"in his poem News of My Mother. None of his poems used rhyme as a literary technique, and I failed to notice any poetic types such as sonnets or haikus which his poems deal with. His poems also have a large amount of pronouns and don't have a large number of similes. He mainly writes in metaphors as a literary devise.
     Tati-Loutard is very effective in his use of imagery. Through his words, he is able to paint a vivid picture of what he is intending to describe. Phrases such as "camps of death flowered with cotton" and "The sea still describes infinity" in Pilgramage to Loango Strand demonstrate the poets effectiveness in imagery. Finally, the poets diction largely deals with harsh adjectives and dark nouns. The topics of his poetry tend to be fairly morbid. Several of these poems deal with death, and the majority of his poems have dark pessimistic undertones. Poems such as Pilgrimage to Loango Strand, Submarine Tombs, and End of Flight show the poets fascination with death.