On the Revolutionary Poetics of ‘Poet of One Island’

Cover of 'Jacques Viau Renaud’s Poet of One Island. Courtesy of Get Fresh Books.

The Caribbean is a multilingual, diverse region with countries that share a history as colonies of world powers. Being a person of the Caribbean means existing in between languages and cultures, code-switching to survive in the so-called “post-colonial” era. For us, translation is a natural part of living, what connects us despite our colonizers’ best efforts. Even though I am fluent in both English and Spanish, I particularly enjoy collections that include these two languages, be it through a Spanglish approach in the writing or using more formal literary translation. They remind me of the bilingual experience I had growing up in Puerto Rico; they feel like the most natural reading experience. 

Last year, Get Fresh Books released a bilingual edition of Poet of One Island, a book of poems from Haitian-Dominican writer Jacques Viau Renaud. Renaud, who died at age 23 fighting against a U.S.-backed dictatorship in the Dominican Republic after the ouster of leftist president Juan Bosch, left us poems that are as incendiary against oppression as they are emotionally entrenched in sorrow and hope for his people and others in Latin America. Understanding that Dominican struggles for freedom during the mid-19th century had a connection to liberation fights across the continent (including the United States), Renaud’s poems, translated by Ariel Francisco, are an ancestor’s blueprint to pan-American organizing and allegiance against common imperial enemies.

Born in Haiti and raised in the Dominican Republic, Renaud acknowledges his double national identity and reframes it as being a man of the island of Hispaniola. His loyalty is to:

 “my homelands, 

of my island 

that has long divided man – 

 there, where they came together to create a river.

Centering collective kinship against colonizing forces in the Caribbean and Latin America is representative of the revolutionary literature and efforts in the region at the time.”

Renaud’s short life does not define his lyrical, heartfelt, rich poetry, which demonstrates rigor and technique beyond his years. His narrative style, use of repetition, lush imagery, and the revolutionary foundation of his language are reminiscent of the works of José Martí, Pedro Mir, and Pablo Neruda. Nevertheless, Renaud’s contributions to Caribbean and Latin American literature have been mostly forgotten. Poet of One Island seeks to reverse that.

Francisco’s selection of poems and translations showcases the wide range of Renaud’s preoccupations and influences. The collection starts with poems depicting the desolate, grieving landscape of the Dominican Republic and its people as the deadly Trujillo dictatorship ends and political instability—instigated in large part by the U.S.—reigns in its wake:

“My homeland arose from this mourning life

like a lone earthen breeze in the wastelands.

Dry air of the mountains

caresses our faces with the aroma of death

while hunger walks the path of man.”

In Renaud’s long poems, the terrain is as alive in its sorrow as its poor inhabitants, and they are impossible to separate in the building of a national memory. In “I’m Trying to Tell You About My Homeland,” he writes: 

“Here I was born,

from here I left, tied to the blood,

alone, after years,

I found the red stain inside me,

and then learned to read the leaves,

to speak with the earth

and be quiet when she reconstructs the history

of the many dead that sustain her,

of the blood that fed her fruits,

the screams that sustained her precocious mountains.”

The dead are also part of this historical-national reassembling. They are not rotting but alive in the natural elements, in the vibrant energy of Aiyití: 

“Here the dead turn into handsome fish, 

covered in algae, silent moss, 

cliffs of rumors protected by the night.”

If these first few poems don’t make Renaud’s politics obvious enough, his poem for the failed 1959 invasion of three mountain towns by anti-Trujillo revolutionaries (“From the Mountains)” makes it crystal clear. As the collection moves to more galvanizing poems with a resounding patriotism, Renaud’s repetitive style, long lines, and circular movements evoking a return to what has been lost—and what may come next—combine with a personified homeland for an intimate, heart-wrenching conversation between poet and muse in “Homeland.”

“Oh homeland

Bloody pennant

from the screaming center

I await you

I hear you

I sing. 

Oh homeland

you’ll grow

you’re growing.” 

Renaud connects the Dominican fight for self-determination and liberation from oppressive governments with struggles in the United States with “A un líder negro asesinado” (“To a Murdered Black Leader”), his poem for assassinated civil rights activist Medgar Evers. His connection to North America’s anti-establishment literary scene is also present in his poem “Walt Whitman.” Both an elegy and ode to the literary giant, it ends with Renaud declaring him “another cosmos, / son of the Caribbean.” 

Rounding out from these expansive declarations of brotherhood in the larger struggle, “Song for America” connects the American continent as one in its fight for freedom. 

“Oh America!

Piece of the dissented chant,

reborn America

burdened men of America

light your bonfires

and march toward the light that guards history.” 

There are verses dedicated to multiple Latin American nations, including declarations of love for Puerto Rico (“because you permanently inhabit the cry”) and acknowledging again the forced twoness of La Hispaniola by calling Santo Domingo a “dismembered corpse / shout parted in two / but born of a single throat, / from a single anguish.” 

The chapbook-length poem “Permanence of the Cry” dominates the second half of Poet of One Island. Renaud at his most formidable, “Permanence of the Cry” builds into 20 sections over 58 pages (in the bilingual version), where Renaud’s rich lyricism, long verses, musical language, powerful imagery, and striking use of questions and exclamations as poetic devices grow into a symphony of anti-colonial sense-making. This lyrical manifesto searches to name and escape the overwhelming grief of the current moment as much as build a foundation for what’s ahead. His cries for justice and revenge against his enemies accompany his wailing verses for the perished innocents. 

“There will be no peace?

Those who ruled on man’s destiny,

those that would never sing with the meek,

will knead their own blood and rot.

There will be no peace!

Cry to end the cry,

die to kill death!” 

His most personal, intimate moments on the page take place in this touching edict on the psychology of a colonized subject.

“Let no one believe that joy brings joy:

it costs too much to be human.

It hurts too much to desire happiness.

I’m scared. Countless hurt.

Countless killed.

This march goes on and on,

this uncontrollable searching.”

Even as the poem cycles through immense grief, ruminations on the charged emotional and political landscape of the colonized, and his struggle between faith and doubt on revolutionary pursuits against seemingly impossible opponents, Renaud builds a poetics against hate, pride, and cowardice; a poetics for community-building, collective action, and love: 

“Who, who predicted this terrible transformation of man into a creature of hatred? We’ve paid dearly for our fear of death. . .

We’ve paid dearly for our pride. 

How to raise life in the latitudes of hatred? 

Men,

do not collapse.

It’s crucial to stand united,

uniting hurts,

love is painful,

but be love’s accomplice

it’s the only way to save your lives.”

It also examines the role of the poet in this struggle. Naming himself “a simple mediator of words” that can “divine a silence larger than all the silences,” Renaud critically looks at his role as communicator of the revolution by emphasizing the lack of readership and reach of his poems on a largely uneducated population. By putting his body on the line, by fighting the actual fight, he did what many writers don’t dare to do outside of the page today. In times of genocide and endless war for profit, in times of political persecution and rising fascism, Renaud is an example for those of us who do not think the work we do on the page is enough to change the world. There is “[n]othing to learn from a mute audience,” from “word bearers /. . . who thought speaking the word was enough / so everyone would hear and love.”

Those who stand on the sidelines will not go unpunished as a new society springs up:

“May those who say nothing suffer for not seeing.

May those who heard nothing suffer for not listening.

May those who haven’t suffered suffer for their avoidance.

Now arrives the time of sowing.

It’s crucial to rid the earth of weeds.”

After a long, compelling journey, Poet of One Island ends with its shortest poem, “Fatigued March,” which alludes to death and the end of the liberation struggle for the writer. Chronologically, it feels like a fitting ending, but it was an anticlimactic choice after the incredible momentum that “Permanence of Cry” builds.

Poet of One Island is a collection edited, translated, and published by writers of Dominican descent, and the care put into this effort is evident. There are translation and organizational choices I don’t agree with (like changes in Renaud’s use of punctuation), and yet this book is a labor of community and reciprocity, evoking Renaud’s search for love and compassion in people, to nurture each other into the best version of ourselves. 

As liberation struggles grow around the world, I join Renaud’s hope for a liberated Dominican Republic, Haiti, Caribbean, Latin America, and America, the continent. To that I add Palestine, Sudan, and all nations fighting for their freedom:  

“[R]aise your heads 

raise them high 

to see from afar this land that constitutes 

our future.”