The selection starts with four poems from Poemes de la mer (1968) which literally translates to Poems of the sea. In these four poems, we see the recurring theme of water and the sea. Seeing that these stories are written by a Congolese (Congo-Brazzaville), we can connect the subject of the poems to the geography of the country. Time also seems to play a part in these pieces. There is some reminiscence of the past and perhaps Tati-Loutard could be alluding to his childhood in certain lines.
Tati-Loutard frequently uses words related to nature, especially in News of My Mother, the first piece. Progressively throughout the four pieces, the language becomes a bit harsher and darker.
I thought that Submarine Tombs was an interesting piece. It took me a few times of reading it to realize that Tati-Loutard seems to be speaking in the voice of a fish. This strategy is unique and unlike any of the others.
Pilgrimage to the Loango Strand was very dark. I initially got the feeling that it was going to be discussing slavery--so not only did Tati-Loutard write of miscellaneous feeling/emotion, but also somewhat of the current world affairs. In this story we have the first mention of God, which as I recall was quite a prevalent figure among the slaves. The speaker mentions how he follows the strands of the scent of blood and how he no longer can continue his pilgrimage because "life sickens [him]". There is mention later in the poem of "Jamestown" and "camps of death flowered with cotton". When reading this piece, only slavery and oppression came to mind.
The next five pieces were not as linear as the previous pieces. I found them nice to read because the language flows well and sounds cool, but I did not really gain much from reading them. There was some self-questioning and complex dilemma thrown in, but nothing that made me question anything in my own life. There is a lot of mention of birth and death and sporadic mention of birds and animals.
I preferred the preceding four pieces to the latter five. I feel like Tati-Loutard has lots of bottled up feelings and unleashes his anger or resent or whatever it may be on paper. There is often mention of death and dark imagery. I also get a sense of some sort of clandestine type of feelings.
The punctuation is more formal in certain pieces than others--mostly informal. The line-lengths are quite concise and the word choice is not so sophisticated that we high school students cannot understand.
