CESAIRE, Aime. State of The Union Caterpillar, The Asphodel Bookshop, Cleveland, 1966
Green paper covers with bold black lettering on front cover, red spine; unpaginated; minor crease to front cover; slight fading of the text in parts but otherwise near fine.
The first edition of the Caterpillar issue inscribed by the collection's translator Clayton Eshelman to Michael Armstrong
Born in Martinique in the French Carribean, Cesaire was a poet, playwright and political activist persistent in his expresison of the need for revolution amidst opression and racial prejudice. Known as the author of one of the staple texts of French political literature, a series of essays titled Discourse on Colonialism (1950) ; this would prove to be the catalyst in establishing the literary and ideological movement, Negritude, a term he himself encompassed as, "the simple recognition of the fact that one is black, the acceptance of this fact and of our destiny as blacks, of our history and culture.”. About Césaire’s work, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote: “A Césaire poem explodes and whirls about itself like a rocket, suns burst forth whirling and exploding like new suns—it perpetually surpasses itself.”
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