Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma

Review
Author(s): J. D. Gauthier
Review by: J. D. Gauthier
Source: Books Abroad, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Spring, 1975), p. 382
Published by: Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40129464
Accessed: 24-01-2016 17:16 UTC

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382 BOOKS ABROAD
Scenes of life in Tangier emerge through
their visits to different cafes and through
Genet's brutal frankness. "The situation
here," Genet remarks, "is very unstable.
Everyone reeks of poverty and misery. The
foreigners are the only ones here who live
like human beings."
In introducing Jean Genet in Tangier, Wil-
liam Burroughs parades passages from the
Genet-Choukri meetings and concludes by
slapping Choukri on the back.
Suhail ibn-Salim Hanna
Oklahoma Baptist University
Abdellatif Laabi. L'arbre de fer fleurit.
Poemes (1972). Paris. Oswald. 1974. xii +
66 pages. 12.30 F.
Abdellatif Laabi is a young Moroccan
poet. Born in 1942, a native of Fez, he
went through the French educational system
up to the licentiate. In the sixties, he became
an ardent nationalist revolutionary and placed
his literary gifts at the service of the revolu-
tion. In 1973, he was condemned to ten years'
penal servitude for conspiring against national
security. The slim volume of poems L'arbre
de fer fleurit was written in 1972 while he
was awaiting judgment from the courts.
The epigraph to the text is taken from
Nazim Hikmet's poem "Les romantiques"
and gives the thematic measure of the volume:
"Je suis communiste / Je suis amour des pieds
a la tete." Perhaps less communist than na-
tionalist, Laabi's voice is the same one as that
of other groups in the world that have become
a sort of "fourth world": Palestinians, North-
ern Irelanders, Occitanians, Bretons and even
the Croats. Poetry has become for them a
ritual in their angry and sometimes blind
hatred of colonialism. "Levez-vous / millions
de poetes!" shouts Laabi. It is the ritual poet
who must awaken regional consciences and
who must call for political affirmation and
total commitment to violence.
The duality of love and violence, of hope
and revolt, of despair and pride runs through
almost every page of this small book. There
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is, for example, Laabi's very affectionate poem
to his son, Yacine. In tender, soft language,
the poet tells of his joy at receiving a letter
from his son: "Tu as ecris toi-meme l'adresse
. . . papa retrouvera ma lettre." The poet con-
gratulates the boy on his progress, his maturity
and his imagination. In a brutal and shocking
fourth and final stanza, the poet asks him to
love by becoming "un fils du peuple / qui
s'apprete a se battre / comme en Palestine et
au Vietnam . . . ."
Love is more powerful than hatred when it
comes to speaking to his wife. The same ten-
derness and softness prevail in the first poem
of the collection, by far the most lyrical piece:
"Ma femme aimee / ma main tremble / c'est
comme si j'avais seize ans / et que j'ecrivais
mon premier poeme." These verses will stay
with the reader much longer than some
of the melancholy and tiresome repetitions of
aggressive slogans.
"J'ai une terrible passion du futur," writes
Laabi. The title of his book of poems-
L'arbre de fer fleurit- may be symbolic of
what he hopes for, and the flowers will be
cluttered with weaponry and hardware.
/. D. Gauthier
Boston College
noted
Meja Mwangi. Carcase for Hounds. London.
Heinemann. 1974. vi + 134 pages. 45/.
The author, a Kenyan, is already represented in
Heinemann's African Writers Series with the novel
Kill Me Quic\> about the unemployed in Nairobi.
Carcasefor Hounds is set in more remote regions of
Kenya where General Haraka and his co-terroristsare
constantly on the move through the rain forests, ad-
ministering Mau Mau oaths and attacking villages and
homesteads and constantly pursued by colonial troops
under Captain Kinsley. Despite vivid descriptionsof
the hardships of living in and off the jungle, the
book is little more than a novel of action with slight
plot and characterization.Judging by its title, Taste
of Death by the same author, to be issued soon by
the East African Publishing House, promises little
more. Mwangi could do much better.
/. Burns