Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Senghor, Léopold Sédar - K. Anthony Appiah （review date 5 July 1992）

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K. Anthony Appiah （review date 5 July 1992）

SOURCE: “Poet Laureate of Africa,” in Washington Post Book World, July 5, 1992, p. 2.

[In the following review, Appiah offers praise for The Collected Poetry.]

Sometime in the late '60s, one summer holiday at home in Ghana, I took down the collected poems that Leopold Sedar Senghor had sent my parents, and began to translate them from the French. My father was an African politician and diplomat of Senghor's generation, a generation whose leaders knew each other across national and linguistic divides. Senghor had sent him this elegant red volume, “the definitive version,” he wrote in his brief introduction, “of my poems.” I started at the beginning with “In Memoriam,” the opening poem from Chants d'Ombre （“Shadow Songs”）, published in 1945.

C'est Dimanche
J'ai peur de la foule de mes semblables au visage de pierre.
（Today is Sunday
I fear the crowd of...

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1. Introduction
2. Principal Works
3. Criticism
   1. Newsweek （review date 27 July 1964）
   2. Gwendolyn Brooks （review date 13 September 1964）
   3. Robert W. July （review date 25 October 1964）
   4. O. R. Dathorne （essay date 1974）
   5. Lilyan Kesteloot （essay date 1974）
   6. Frederick Ivor Case （essay date 1975）
   7. Janis L. Pallister （essay date April 1980）
   8. Dorothy S. Blair （essay date 1984）
   9. Janet G. Vaillant （essay date 1990）
   10. Roger Shattuck and Samba Ka （review date 20 December 1990）
   11. K. Anthony Appiah （review date 5 July 1992）
   12. Isaac I. Elimimian （essay date 1994）
   13. Koffi Anyinefa （essay date Summer 1996）
4. Further Reading
5. Copyright

1. African Literature