prescient reflections of national failure lies resistance in both through recourse to history and
through gestures of racial solidarity. Another evident yet unexplored response to futility and
failure which “Exultation” also includes is the continued belief in poetry itself. In this text
Haiti’s revolutionaries as Haiti’s very history is equated as powerful poems which “perce à
travers la brume épaisse du présent!” Not only do Coicou’s texts make the actions of slaves into
feats worthy of poetic celebration, but the events are literary expressions, epics, in and of
themselves:
Oh, je vous vois passer dans mes rêves parfois,
Beaux, rayonnants, divins! Oui, pères je vous vois;
Je vous entends aussi nous rappeler, vous-mêmes,
Tous ces faits immortels, ces éloquents poèmes
Dont vous avez rempli le livre d’or des temps; (79-83)Shortly after these verses, the revolutionary leaders are further elevated, comprising asupreme ‘pléiade,’ a designation which brings together various images of the cosmos with those
of literature. This in turn evokes precisely the point that Williams had made in his preface, that
the belief in the divine nature of poetry meant that it was the ideal mode of expression for these
events and the venue through which they would become part of Haitian history and culture.
Even when centered on the Haitian Revolution, poetry is also endowed with timelessness,
complementing the ideas in the collection so rooted in history. Many temporal markers
throughout the collection express this timeless quality of such ideals, which, while they may
enter human history through various circumstances, have always existed outside typical notions
of dated events and national independence. Moreover, forgotten or unrecognized historical
moments can be invoked as recurring events in the present through the power of the poetic word
until ultimately it is the desire for poetry which is revealed. The proliferation of literature, of
poetry in particular, was of special importance to Coicou as to some of his fellow Haitians.