iv
national history which make this a pivotal period in Haitian poetry. A second chapter focuses on
Haiti’s most prolific nineteenth-century poet, Oswald Durand, whose collection Rires et Pleurs
includes poetry from the 1860s through the 1880s. Haitian theories of racial equality are
expressed in Durand’s corpus and set within the thematic and aesthetic norms of French
Romanticism, but the effort to inscribe a national and racial specificity enriches as much as it
complicates his poetic project. In the final chapter, I document the shift that occurs for the last
Haitian Romantic poet, Massillon Coicou. In his 1892 collection Poésies Nationales, the
confident project of asserting national identity gives way to the sense of national failure due to an
increasingly triumphant imperialism and internal corruption. On the eve of the Haitian
centennial, Coicou’s verse demonstrates the ways in which political crisis in Haiti are inherently
tied to the notion of poetry. He ultimately turns to political activism, and his assassination in
1908 symbolizes the demise of poetry as a viable, national project.