My Poetic Journey Through the Storehouse of Imagination
Patrick Sylvain
Lake Atitlan at Dusk | Patrick Sylvain
I did not begin writing poetry because I wanted to be dangerous; on the contrary, I was fifteen years old and in love with a girl who had recently moved to my neighborhood in Port-au-Prince. Like many adolescents, it was through the painstaking trials of ardor and longing that I first began to grasp the weight of words and their affective power. It was during this time that I began what would become a lifelong dedication to poetry. When I use the word dangerous in the opening sentence, I am not aiming for mere shock value; I am describing a harsh political reality that prevailed in Haiti under successive dictatorial regimes. During those years, poets and intellectuals were often viewed as threats rather than as artists, because their words had the power to question authority, expose injustice, and inspire dissent. As a result, many writers were harassed, imprisoned, or forced into exile.
Under the dictatorship of François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” repression intensified to such an extent that the late 1950s and 1960s saw a massive exodus of Haiti’s cultural and intellectual elite. The regime relied on censorship, surveillance, and the violence of the Tonton Macoutes, making independent thought itself a political risk. In this climate, poetry could be treated as subversion, and a published line could carry the same danger as a political speech.
Among those driven into exile were four remarkable yet very different writers: Anthony Phelps (1928-2025), whose politically charged poetry and radio work challenged authoritarianism and made him a target of the regime. Jean Métellus (1937-2014), whose writings on freedom, identity, and human dignity conflicted with the dictatorship’s demand for silence. Paul Laraque (1920-2007), a committed intellectual whose outspoken criticism of oppression forced him into exile. René Depestre (1926- ), whose revolutionary ideas and political activism made him suspect to authorities long before Duvalier and kept him in exile for much of his life. For these writers, poetry was not only a literary act but also a moral and political one. In a society where free expression could provoke persecution, their work became “dangerous” precisely because it refused to accept silence.
As an adolescent, bewitched by poetry and by love, I began writing with a split tongue: privately against the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as “Baby Doc,” and for my neighbor Ruby, who stirred me to my core. That December, however, I left Haiti—and Ruby—for Massachusetts, where I found myself moored to a new and unfamiliar life. Before long, another longing took hold: a deep yearning for the homeland I had left behind. That longing nourished my creative impulse and drove me to shape poems out of lived experience. Those early poems were simple, yet sincere—an essential and tangible act of bearing witness to what I had known.
Over time, poetry assumed an ever greater prominence in my life. For over three decades, I have pursued it as a necessary outlet for artistic impulses, reflections, and memory, and at times as a way of making meaning that could be shared with others. Through this long pursuit, I have come to understand language as a storehouse of imagination, a means of exercising freedom, and a source of psychological coherence. Poetry, for me, is not simply an art form; it is a mode of consciousness, a way of testing truth against experience.
As my commitment to poetry deepened, I began to look for writers who could articulate what I felt intuitively. In that search, I encountered the work of the poet and critic Tony Hoagland, whose 2006 book Real Sofistikashun struck me with unusual force. Hoagland’s reflections on the artistic life helped me see my own path with greater clarity, especially the tension between instinct and craft, impulse and discipline, play and ambition. In that book, he writes: “The artistic life begins in instinct and moves toward calculation; or maybe, it begins in blind obsession and ends in self-possession. Or does it begin in play and end in ambition? Or, some say, it begins in inspiration and moves toward repetition.”
His words resonated with my own experience. I entered poetry through play—through the adolescent desire to impress Ruby with the elasticity of my imagination, my restless energy carried on linguistic currents I barely understood. What began as improvisation and infatuation gradually became something more deliberate, more demanding. Over the years, the act of writing moved me away from impulse alone and toward a harder-earned form of awareness. If poetry began for me in instinct and desire, it has led, slowly and imperfectly, toward a measure of self-possession, a way of inhabiting both language and life with greater intention.
Yet the movement toward self-possession in poetry has never followed a straight or orderly path. What I once thought of as personal growth—simply the natural evolution from instinct to craft—revealed itself, over time, to be inseparable from history, displacement, and the political realities that shaped my earliest consciousness. My poems did not develop in isolation; they grew out of the same forces that compelled me to leave home, to remember it from afar, and to continually redefine my place in relation to it. The deeper I moved into poetry, the more I understood that my artistic life could not be told as a purely individual story, but as one intertwined with the collective experience from which I came.
Although it may seem logical to divide my poetic journey into a series of distinct phases, the reality is more fluid. My development as a poet has been deeply shaped by the sociocultural and political events of Haiti, forces that have profoundly influenced my sense of self. The experiences that have marked my life—while different in their particulars—have ultimately converged into a narrative that maintains a coherent thematic thread.
About eight years after arriving in the United States, I joined the Dark Room Collective, a gathering of African American writers committed to shaping their place within the literary world. Among peers who would later become major voices—such as Natasha Trethewey, Tracy K. Smith, John Keene, and Kevin Young—I had the good fortune of gaining insight from the accomplished writers we invited to participate in our reading series. From figures such as Michael S. Harper, Ntozake Shange, and John Edgar Wideman, I developed a deeper appreciation for the musicality of language and the principle of showing rather than telling. From Yusef Komunyakaa, I learned how poetic imagery could be used to excavate, process, and reveal painful—often violent—memories. A reading by Martín Espada also proved formative; his use of Spanish within English poems demonstrated how language itself can serve as a vehicle for identity. That strategy resonated strongly with me, given my own Haitian-American perspective.
My poem “Volcanic Songs” (published in The Caribbean Writers), workshopped by members of the Dark Room Collective, reflects this period of artistic growth. In it, I explore the musical traditions of Haitian culture and the role of song in resisting dictatorship and political oppression. The poem centers on Manno (Emmanuel) Charlemagne, widely regarded during that time as the Bob Dylan of Haiti and one of the most influential folk singers of my generation. Through the poem, I sought to honor his voice and to illuminate the significance of his music within both my personal history and the broader Haitian narrative. Here’s the second stanza of the poem, which really started as the first set memories about Manno:
Under the dictatorship of François Duvalier, known as “Papa Doc,” repression intensified to such an extent that the late 1950s and 1960s saw a massive exodus of Haiti’s cultural and intellectual elite. The regime relied on censorship, surveillance, and the violence of the Tonton Macoutes, making independent thought itself a political risk. In this climate, poetry could be treated as subversion, and a published line could carry the same danger as a political speech.
Among those driven into exile were four remarkable yet very different writers: Anthony Phelps (1928-2025), whose politically charged poetry and radio work challenged authoritarianism and made him a target of the regime. Jean Métellus (1937-2014), whose writings on freedom, identity, and human dignity conflicted with the dictatorship’s demand for silence. Paul Laraque (1920-2007), a committed intellectual whose outspoken criticism of oppression forced him into exile. René Depestre (1926- ), whose revolutionary ideas and political activism made him suspect to authorities long before Duvalier and kept him in exile for much of his life. For these writers, poetry was not only a literary act but also a moral and political one. In a society where free expression could provoke persecution, their work became “dangerous” precisely because it refused to accept silence.
As an adolescent, bewitched by poetry and by love, I began writing with a split tongue: privately against the dictatorship of Jean-Claude Duvalier, known as “Baby Doc,” and for my neighbor Ruby, who stirred me to my core. That December, however, I left Haiti—and Ruby—for Massachusetts, where I found myself moored to a new and unfamiliar life. Before long, another longing took hold: a deep yearning for the homeland I had left behind. That longing nourished my creative impulse and drove me to shape poems out of lived experience. Those early poems were simple, yet sincere—an essential and tangible act of bearing witness to what I had known.
Over time, poetry assumed an ever greater prominence in my life. For over three decades, I have pursued it as a necessary outlet for artistic impulses, reflections, and memory, and at times as a way of making meaning that could be shared with others. Through this long pursuit, I have come to understand language as a storehouse of imagination, a means of exercising freedom, and a source of psychological coherence. Poetry, for me, is not simply an art form; it is a mode of consciousness, a way of testing truth against experience.
As my commitment to poetry deepened, I began to look for writers who could articulate what I felt intuitively. In that search, I encountered the work of the poet and critic Tony Hoagland, whose 2006 book Real Sofistikashun struck me with unusual force. Hoagland’s reflections on the artistic life helped me see my own path with greater clarity, especially the tension between instinct and craft, impulse and discipline, play and ambition. In that book, he writes: “The artistic life begins in instinct and moves toward calculation; or maybe, it begins in blind obsession and ends in self-possession. Or does it begin in play and end in ambition? Or, some say, it begins in inspiration and moves toward repetition.”
His words resonated with my own experience. I entered poetry through play—through the adolescent desire to impress Ruby with the elasticity of my imagination, my restless energy carried on linguistic currents I barely understood. What began as improvisation and infatuation gradually became something more deliberate, more demanding. Over the years, the act of writing moved me away from impulse alone and toward a harder-earned form of awareness. If poetry began for me in instinct and desire, it has led, slowly and imperfectly, toward a measure of self-possession, a way of inhabiting both language and life with greater intention.
Yet the movement toward self-possession in poetry has never followed a straight or orderly path. What I once thought of as personal growth—simply the natural evolution from instinct to craft—revealed itself, over time, to be inseparable from history, displacement, and the political realities that shaped my earliest consciousness. My poems did not develop in isolation; they grew out of the same forces that compelled me to leave home, to remember it from afar, and to continually redefine my place in relation to it. The deeper I moved into poetry, the more I understood that my artistic life could not be told as a purely individual story, but as one intertwined with the collective experience from which I came.
Although it may seem logical to divide my poetic journey into a series of distinct phases, the reality is more fluid. My development as a poet has been deeply shaped by the sociocultural and political events of Haiti, forces that have profoundly influenced my sense of self. The experiences that have marked my life—while different in their particulars—have ultimately converged into a narrative that maintains a coherent thematic thread.
About eight years after arriving in the United States, I joined the Dark Room Collective, a gathering of African American writers committed to shaping their place within the literary world. Among peers who would later become major voices—such as Natasha Trethewey, Tracy K. Smith, John Keene, and Kevin Young—I had the good fortune of gaining insight from the accomplished writers we invited to participate in our reading series. From figures such as Michael S. Harper, Ntozake Shange, and John Edgar Wideman, I developed a deeper appreciation for the musicality of language and the principle of showing rather than telling. From Yusef Komunyakaa, I learned how poetic imagery could be used to excavate, process, and reveal painful—often violent—memories. A reading by Martín Espada also proved formative; his use of Spanish within English poems demonstrated how language itself can serve as a vehicle for identity. That strategy resonated strongly with me, given my own Haitian-American perspective.
My poem “Volcanic Songs” (published in The Caribbean Writers), workshopped by members of the Dark Room Collective, reflects this period of artistic growth. In it, I explore the musical traditions of Haitian culture and the role of song in resisting dictatorship and political oppression. The poem centers on Manno (Emmanuel) Charlemagne, widely regarded during that time as the Bob Dylan of Haiti and one of the most influential folk singers of my generation. Through the poem, I sought to honor his voice and to illuminate the significance of his music within both my personal history and the broader Haitian narrative. Here’s the second stanza of the poem, which really started as the first set memories about Manno:
We sat around Manno to watch
his long black fingers
converse with his guitar strings,
as his colossal voice exploded
songs as hot as burning oil.
That moment—watching Manno’s music ignite both memory and a form of resistance—marked an early realization that poetry could carry history, culture, and political struggle in a language that remained intimate and human. Writing “Volcanic Songs” helped me understand that my work could move between personal recollection and collective experience, a discovery that prepared me for the more formal workshop settings where I would later refine this approach.
For much of the 1990s, I participated in a number of summer poetry workshops offered through the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences at University of Massachusetts Boston. Through the workshop model—and through sustained engagement with both peers and established writers—I further developed my inclination to write within a matrix of bicultural literacy. I began composing poems that were accessible to non-Haitian audiences while still preserving their cultural integrity. In essence, I learned not to make excessive demands on the reader.
Another important lesson from these workshops was the ability to create distance from my subjects and approach them with descriptive clarity. I came to understand that a poem gains strength when it resists forcing a response from the reader. Portraying truth without the burden of sentimentality became an essential discipline in my work. At the same time, I grew increasingly aware of the rhythmic patterns inherent in my language, influenced by the polyrhythms of Haitian music. I began to see poetic possibilities within the complexity and improvisation of jazz as well as the ceremonial drumming traditions of Vodou. These musical structures found their way into my writing, shaping both rhythm and form. I drew on the innovative polyrhythms of Haitian music while composing the poem “Spice-Jack ‘Buju’ Ambroise,” later published in Black Renaissance. While listening to his music, the following image and sensation invaded my senses and I wrote down: “Drenched, my body charged, I dwell in music.” In that moment, the technical lessons of the workshops and the ancestral rhythms of my culture converged, allowing the poem to move beyond observation into immersion. That poem allowed me to enter an unrestrained psychological terrain where language could echo the pulsation of music itself.
In September 1991, I was actively involved in the United States–based popular democracy movement supporting Haiti. When the Haitian military and police—backed by the administration of George H. W. Bush and elements within the United States Department of State—carried out a violent coup d’état against the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, I was outraged. Yet the moment also compelled me to explore more deeply the relationship between poetry and political struggle. Almost instinctively, I began writing a series of poems to process my emotional response to the event. This period marked a turn in my work toward darker and more dangerous themes. The writing proved therapeutic, but it also served another purpose: I believed that poetry could contribute, in its own way, to the historical record.
My poem “Flash Back,” written in 1993, emerged from my experience working as a researcher and videographer for the Frontline documentary series produced by PBS in Haiti after the coup against President Aristide. The country remained mired in instability and violence, and I often encountered the victims of political terror. Corpses in the streets and survivors of brutality were a recurring part of the landscape I documented. As I interviewed victims and recorded disturbing footage, poetry became my means of survival—my panacea.
During this period, I also lost a close friend, Antoine Izmery, who was assassinated amid the political turmoil. “Flash Back,” later published in Callaloo, helped me process another tragedy: the assassination of Guy Malary, whom I had been scheduled to interview shortly before he was killed. In the midst of this upheaval—externally political and internally emotional—I felt a deep obligation to pursue the truth and to give it expression through language. Here’s the third stanza of the poem, which opened the psychological floodgate of emotions and memories that ended up being a seven-stanza poem with a total of twenty-eight lines:
For much of the 1990s, I participated in a number of summer poetry workshops offered through the William Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences at University of Massachusetts Boston. Through the workshop model—and through sustained engagement with both peers and established writers—I further developed my inclination to write within a matrix of bicultural literacy. I began composing poems that were accessible to non-Haitian audiences while still preserving their cultural integrity. In essence, I learned not to make excessive demands on the reader.
Another important lesson from these workshops was the ability to create distance from my subjects and approach them with descriptive clarity. I came to understand that a poem gains strength when it resists forcing a response from the reader. Portraying truth without the burden of sentimentality became an essential discipline in my work. At the same time, I grew increasingly aware of the rhythmic patterns inherent in my language, influenced by the polyrhythms of Haitian music. I began to see poetic possibilities within the complexity and improvisation of jazz as well as the ceremonial drumming traditions of Vodou. These musical structures found their way into my writing, shaping both rhythm and form. I drew on the innovative polyrhythms of Haitian music while composing the poem “Spice-Jack ‘Buju’ Ambroise,” later published in Black Renaissance. While listening to his music, the following image and sensation invaded my senses and I wrote down: “Drenched, my body charged, I dwell in music.” In that moment, the technical lessons of the workshops and the ancestral rhythms of my culture converged, allowing the poem to move beyond observation into immersion. That poem allowed me to enter an unrestrained psychological terrain where language could echo the pulsation of music itself.
In September 1991, I was actively involved in the United States–based popular democracy movement supporting Haiti. When the Haitian military and police—backed by the administration of George H. W. Bush and elements within the United States Department of State—carried out a violent coup d’état against the government of Jean-Bertrand Aristide, I was outraged. Yet the moment also compelled me to explore more deeply the relationship between poetry and political struggle. Almost instinctively, I began writing a series of poems to process my emotional response to the event. This period marked a turn in my work toward darker and more dangerous themes. The writing proved therapeutic, but it also served another purpose: I believed that poetry could contribute, in its own way, to the historical record.
My poem “Flash Back,” written in 1993, emerged from my experience working as a researcher and videographer for the Frontline documentary series produced by PBS in Haiti after the coup against President Aristide. The country remained mired in instability and violence, and I often encountered the victims of political terror. Corpses in the streets and survivors of brutality were a recurring part of the landscape I documented. As I interviewed victims and recorded disturbing footage, poetry became my means of survival—my panacea.
During this period, I also lost a close friend, Antoine Izmery, who was assassinated amid the political turmoil. “Flash Back,” later published in Callaloo, helped me process another tragedy: the assassination of Guy Malary, whom I had been scheduled to interview shortly before he was killed. In the midst of this upheaval—externally political and internally emotional—I felt a deep obligation to pursue the truth and to give it expression through language. Here’s the third stanza of the poem, which opened the psychological floodgate of emotions and memories that ended up being a seven-stanza poem with a total of twenty-eight lines:
I cannot cope with this grammar of hate,
syntax of violence. Yet, I am pulled by
this senseless savagery. The soldiers
with their machine guns, I with my camera.
Fingers on the triggers. We shoot.
Writing this poem made me realize that poetry could do more than help me endure these experiences; it could also create a space where painful memories might be confronted, named, and ultimately shared. That realization stayed with me, and it shaped the way I later brought poetry into the classroom.
As I used poetry to process the emotional residue of these profoundly disturbing memories, I also began encouraging others to do the same. For seventeen years, while teaching Haitian and Haitian American ESL students in the Cambridge Public Schools and the Boston Public Schools, poetry became a central pedagogical tool. It supported my instruction while enabling students to bear witness to their own histories. During this time, I wrote four books of poetry designed for use as curriculum materials. My goal was for students to recognize themselves in the language of the poems and to develop both confidence in their voices and an appreciation for poetry.
My students wrote their own poems as well. Through this process, I witnessed a remarkable expansion of their vocabulary in both Haitian “Creole” and English, while their writing evolved as part of a deeply cathartic practice. I encouraged them to write about Haiti, their immigrant experiences, and the traumas they had endured. Their stories were often powerful and unforgettable. I still remember the poem written by one student who had witnessed her father—a member of the Tonton Macoute—being burned alive in Haiti. Her words revealed how poetry can transform even the most painful memories into testimony.
Armed with an understanding of the transformative potency of the written word and its socio-political associations, I developed a college-level course that I taught at Tufts University, Poetry as Political Discourse. There, I was able to construct a pedagogical composition that allowed a diverse group of students to consider the intersection between poetry and politics. The curriculum included an examination of works by Pablo Neruda, Martin Espada, Paul Célan, Carolyn Forché, Adrienne Rich, Anna Akhmatova, Yusef Komunyakaa and Bei Dao, among others. Perhaps, I had failed to fully recognize the dangerousness of writing until this time; I was taken by the personal stories of my students, how they connected to the poetry of various lands. One student, Michael, was of Slavic descent. He introduced me to Serbo-Croatian poetry, particularly the works of Radovan Karadzic, who belonged to an ultra-nationalist tradition and used poetry to propagate a militaristic agenda. Another student, Sunita, wept as she read the following lines from Anna Akhmatova’s poem, Prologue. Her father had been abducted and killed by the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers because of his support of the national government:
As I used poetry to process the emotional residue of these profoundly disturbing memories, I also began encouraging others to do the same. For seventeen years, while teaching Haitian and Haitian American ESL students in the Cambridge Public Schools and the Boston Public Schools, poetry became a central pedagogical tool. It supported my instruction while enabling students to bear witness to their own histories. During this time, I wrote four books of poetry designed for use as curriculum materials. My goal was for students to recognize themselves in the language of the poems and to develop both confidence in their voices and an appreciation for poetry.
My students wrote their own poems as well. Through this process, I witnessed a remarkable expansion of their vocabulary in both Haitian “Creole” and English, while their writing evolved as part of a deeply cathartic practice. I encouraged them to write about Haiti, their immigrant experiences, and the traumas they had endured. Their stories were often powerful and unforgettable. I still remember the poem written by one student who had witnessed her father—a member of the Tonton Macoute—being burned alive in Haiti. Her words revealed how poetry can transform even the most painful memories into testimony.
Armed with an understanding of the transformative potency of the written word and its socio-political associations, I developed a college-level course that I taught at Tufts University, Poetry as Political Discourse. There, I was able to construct a pedagogical composition that allowed a diverse group of students to consider the intersection between poetry and politics. The curriculum included an examination of works by Pablo Neruda, Martin Espada, Paul Célan, Carolyn Forché, Adrienne Rich, Anna Akhmatova, Yusef Komunyakaa and Bei Dao, among others. Perhaps, I had failed to fully recognize the dangerousness of writing until this time; I was taken by the personal stories of my students, how they connected to the poetry of various lands. One student, Michael, was of Slavic descent. He introduced me to Serbo-Croatian poetry, particularly the works of Radovan Karadzic, who belonged to an ultra-nationalist tradition and used poetry to propagate a militaristic agenda. Another student, Sunita, wept as she read the following lines from Anna Akhmatova’s poem, Prologue. Her father had been abducted and killed by the Sri Lankan Tamil Tigers because of his support of the national government:
At dawn they came and took you away.
You were my dead: I walked behind.
In the dark room children cried,
The holy candle gasped for air.
The immediacy and poignancy of poetry was reinforced for me through my students’ reactions to the poems. It also became much clearer to me why dictatorial regimes feared poets, and why Plato, in his Republic, forewarned about the dangerous qualities of poets.
I have come to understand this: to write is to recognize the power of words. To recognize that power is to confront history and the social structures that shape human life. To understand those structures is to develop a consciousness of both self and world; and consciousness, in turn, compels the will to witness and to testify, to free the body from the weight of negative history. As Adrienne Rich indicates in Arts of the Possible, “the unconscious wants truth, as the body does.” That truth, however, is never weightless. I may desire lightness, but the history of my country is densely packed, and it demands a heavy lifting. The African American writer and playwright Ntozake Shange once suggested that I carefully balance the weight of Haiti’s history with my psychological needs as a writer, a balance that requires both honesty and restraint.
Within literature, to witness and to testify is ultimately to write, and writing itself becomes an act of dissidence—an intervention that transcends mere communication and acquires its own urgency and agency. In this sense, the personal struggle to confront history joins a larger human tradition. Across continents and throughout history, literature has accompanied social movements, articulating grievances, preserving memory, and provoking emotional and intellectual response. Writing does not simply describe struggle; it often animates it.
In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, words poured from me in an unrelenting surge. I entered a period of furious writing, compelled by grief and outrage. My poems mourned the thousands of lives lost and lamented the squandered potential of a nation and its people. They also confronted the willful neglect of Haitian political leadership. My poem “Stanzas to a Silent Executive” emerged from this moment as a response to what I perceived as the violence of silence—an indictment of the absence of moral and political accountability at the highest levels of power. In January 2011, I was invited to read my work at Brandeis University and to discuss Haitian poetry more broadly. One of the poems I read was “Stanzas to a Silent Executive.” In response, a staff writer from The Brandeis Hoot observed: “While most of Sylvain’s poetry dealt with personal themes, he also dealt with the political. His ‘Stanzas for a Silent Executive’ was a criticism of the Haitian government’s nineteen days of silence following the earthquake. The poem used apocalyptic imagery of a city ‘canvassed by dust’ with ‘topsy-turned streets… and cutting-edge poverty’ to illustrate a country that needed to hear words of guidance, something from their leaders. He read, ‘I know you are not a wordsmith, but your tongue must be baffled by your mouth’s silence.’” Here is the fifth stanza of the poem that caught the reporter’s attention:
I have come to understand this: to write is to recognize the power of words. To recognize that power is to confront history and the social structures that shape human life. To understand those structures is to develop a consciousness of both self and world; and consciousness, in turn, compels the will to witness and to testify, to free the body from the weight of negative history. As Adrienne Rich indicates in Arts of the Possible, “the unconscious wants truth, as the body does.” That truth, however, is never weightless. I may desire lightness, but the history of my country is densely packed, and it demands a heavy lifting. The African American writer and playwright Ntozake Shange once suggested that I carefully balance the weight of Haiti’s history with my psychological needs as a writer, a balance that requires both honesty and restraint.
Within literature, to witness and to testify is ultimately to write, and writing itself becomes an act of dissidence—an intervention that transcends mere communication and acquires its own urgency and agency. In this sense, the personal struggle to confront history joins a larger human tradition. Across continents and throughout history, literature has accompanied social movements, articulating grievances, preserving memory, and provoking emotional and intellectual response. Writing does not simply describe struggle; it often animates it.
In the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, words poured from me in an unrelenting surge. I entered a period of furious writing, compelled by grief and outrage. My poems mourned the thousands of lives lost and lamented the squandered potential of a nation and its people. They also confronted the willful neglect of Haitian political leadership. My poem “Stanzas to a Silent Executive” emerged from this moment as a response to what I perceived as the violence of silence—an indictment of the absence of moral and political accountability at the highest levels of power. In January 2011, I was invited to read my work at Brandeis University and to discuss Haitian poetry more broadly. One of the poems I read was “Stanzas to a Silent Executive.” In response, a staff writer from The Brandeis Hoot observed: “While most of Sylvain’s poetry dealt with personal themes, he also dealt with the political. His ‘Stanzas for a Silent Executive’ was a criticism of the Haitian government’s nineteen days of silence following the earthquake. The poem used apocalyptic imagery of a city ‘canvassed by dust’ with ‘topsy-turned streets… and cutting-edge poverty’ to illustrate a country that needed to hear words of guidance, something from their leaders. He read, ‘I know you are not a wordsmith, but your tongue must be baffled by your mouth’s silence.’” Here is the fifth stanza of the poem that caught the reporter’s attention:
I know you are not a wordsmith, but even your tongue is
baffled by your mouth’s silence. In my own broken existence,
I too wrestled with words. But, your inscrutable silence
staggered fretful ears that slept under rice paper tents.
Writing this poem confirmed for me that poetry must continue to confront silence wherever it appears—whether in political power, in collective memory, or within the self. Yet it also reminded me that such work demands greater discipline, wider reach, and a deeper commitment to craft. That realization has guided my recent efforts to refine my voice and to prepare for the larger task I feel called to undertake.
Despite the recognition my poetry has received over the years, I remain aware of the need to deepen and refine my craft in order to expand my creative boundaries. As a bilingual poet with a substantial body of work written in Haitian “Creole,” I feel a responsibility to make my story—and the story of Haiti—more widely known. Poetry allows me to speak not only to conscious thought but also to the deeper registers of human experience: to desire, fear, imagination, and vision. Yet I also recognize that I am still learning to master the poetic craft; I am still searching for that liberated poetic release that comes when one fully dwells in the realm of language and imaginative fidelity. As Seamus Heaney writes in The Government of the Tongue, “The achievement of a poem, after all, is an experience of release.” He goes on to claim that “in that liberated moment, when the lyric discovers its buoyant completion and the timeless formal pleasure comes to fullness and exhaustion, something occurs which is equidistant from self-justification and self-obliteration.” That state of release, however, is not accidental. It must be earned through patience, discipline, and sustained engagement with language, and it reminds me that the freedom I seek in poetry depends on the rigor I am willing to impose on myself as a writer.
Like any language, poetry demands practice, discipline, and an attentive ear for musicality as well as form. Mastery requires sensitivity to rhythm, nuance, and the subtle contours of expression. The level of proficiency I seek cannot be achieved in isolation; it requires time and immersion within a vibrant literary environment where language is constantly challenged, shaped, and renewed.
From 2008 to 2014, I taught Haitian language and culture at Brown University. In my teaching, I regularly turned to poetry as a way of revealing the deeper layers of the Haitian language. Haitian “Creole” is rich with metaphor, coded speech, and double meanings, forms of expression that carry historical and cultural memory within them. The language is also infused with concepts and imagery derived from the tradition of Vodou. A superficial understanding of vocabulary alone cannot capture these complexities. Poetry, with its density and suggestiveness, offers a means of unlayering the intertwined textures of language and culture.
In April 2014, when Robert Pinsky informed me that I had been accepted into the MFA program at Boston University, where I would study with him and other distinguished poets, I felt a profound sense of arrival. At last, I thought, I would be able to devote sustained attention to the excavation of poetic language under the guidance of writers whose work exemplifies both artistic vision and technical mastery. Pinsky’s poetry—marked by rhythmic precision, philosophical inquiry, and a commanding engagement with language—moves fluidly between the personal and the social, mapping human experience in ways that transcend the boundaries of the self. I had first encountered his work through my involvement with the Dark Room Collective and the literary journal AGNI, and later through the anthology Poets for Haiti, to which we were both contributors.
I have also long admired the work of Louise Glück, whose poems enact a kind of anthropological mapping of human experience. Her writing captures life in its most elemental states—organic, emotional, and often unsettlingly intimate. What I find most compelling is the way her body of work evolves over time, continually breaking with convention in obedience to creative impulse. Rather than offering solutions, her poetry generates questions, inviting readers into a space of reflection and discovery. To learn from poets such as Pinsky and Glück—writers who relentlessly excavate the possibilities of language—was an opportunity I embraced with deep anticipation.
Within the Haitian American community, I am sometimes referred to simply as “the poet.” Many years ago, the renowned Haitian writer Félix Morisseau-Leroy entrusted me with what he described as a responsibility: to tell, without cease, both the beauty and the ugliness of Haiti, and to act dangerously when the truth demands it. “The literary baton is in your hand,” he told me. In every society, artists play a vital role in preserving memory and shaping collective identity through their work. It is still my hope that, through the rich medium of poetry—and fiction as well—I will continue to contribute to that continuum and help articulate a lasting record of the Haitian American experience, as well as my own creative journey.
To write, then, is not merely to produce poems but to enter a lifelong discipline of listening, remembering, and shaping language so that experience may endure beyond the moment in which it is lived. My work has been formed by exile and belonging, by music and silence, by violence and tenderness, by the histories of Haiti and the possibilities of these United States. Each poem becomes an attempt to reconcile these forces, to give them rhythm, measure, and voice. I do not yet consider the task complete; in many ways, it has only begun. What I seek now is a deeper fidelity to language, a greater openness to risk, and the courage to continue writing toward that elusive moment of release when the poem speaks with a truth larger than the self. If I am to carry the literary baton that was placed in my hands, I must keep moving forward—learning, questioning, and writing—so that the stories entrusted to me may remain alive in the music of words.
Despite the recognition my poetry has received over the years, I remain aware of the need to deepen and refine my craft in order to expand my creative boundaries. As a bilingual poet with a substantial body of work written in Haitian “Creole,” I feel a responsibility to make my story—and the story of Haiti—more widely known. Poetry allows me to speak not only to conscious thought but also to the deeper registers of human experience: to desire, fear, imagination, and vision. Yet I also recognize that I am still learning to master the poetic craft; I am still searching for that liberated poetic release that comes when one fully dwells in the realm of language and imaginative fidelity. As Seamus Heaney writes in The Government of the Tongue, “The achievement of a poem, after all, is an experience of release.” He goes on to claim that “in that liberated moment, when the lyric discovers its buoyant completion and the timeless formal pleasure comes to fullness and exhaustion, something occurs which is equidistant from self-justification and self-obliteration.” That state of release, however, is not accidental. It must be earned through patience, discipline, and sustained engagement with language, and it reminds me that the freedom I seek in poetry depends on the rigor I am willing to impose on myself as a writer.
Like any language, poetry demands practice, discipline, and an attentive ear for musicality as well as form. Mastery requires sensitivity to rhythm, nuance, and the subtle contours of expression. The level of proficiency I seek cannot be achieved in isolation; it requires time and immersion within a vibrant literary environment where language is constantly challenged, shaped, and renewed.
From 2008 to 2014, I taught Haitian language and culture at Brown University. In my teaching, I regularly turned to poetry as a way of revealing the deeper layers of the Haitian language. Haitian “Creole” is rich with metaphor, coded speech, and double meanings, forms of expression that carry historical and cultural memory within them. The language is also infused with concepts and imagery derived from the tradition of Vodou. A superficial understanding of vocabulary alone cannot capture these complexities. Poetry, with its density and suggestiveness, offers a means of unlayering the intertwined textures of language and culture.
In April 2014, when Robert Pinsky informed me that I had been accepted into the MFA program at Boston University, where I would study with him and other distinguished poets, I felt a profound sense of arrival. At last, I thought, I would be able to devote sustained attention to the excavation of poetic language under the guidance of writers whose work exemplifies both artistic vision and technical mastery. Pinsky’s poetry—marked by rhythmic precision, philosophical inquiry, and a commanding engagement with language—moves fluidly between the personal and the social, mapping human experience in ways that transcend the boundaries of the self. I had first encountered his work through my involvement with the Dark Room Collective and the literary journal AGNI, and later through the anthology Poets for Haiti, to which we were both contributors.
I have also long admired the work of Louise Glück, whose poems enact a kind of anthropological mapping of human experience. Her writing captures life in its most elemental states—organic, emotional, and often unsettlingly intimate. What I find most compelling is the way her body of work evolves over time, continually breaking with convention in obedience to creative impulse. Rather than offering solutions, her poetry generates questions, inviting readers into a space of reflection and discovery. To learn from poets such as Pinsky and Glück—writers who relentlessly excavate the possibilities of language—was an opportunity I embraced with deep anticipation.
Within the Haitian American community, I am sometimes referred to simply as “the poet.” Many years ago, the renowned Haitian writer Félix Morisseau-Leroy entrusted me with what he described as a responsibility: to tell, without cease, both the beauty and the ugliness of Haiti, and to act dangerously when the truth demands it. “The literary baton is in your hand,” he told me. In every society, artists play a vital role in preserving memory and shaping collective identity through their work. It is still my hope that, through the rich medium of poetry—and fiction as well—I will continue to contribute to that continuum and help articulate a lasting record of the Haitian American experience, as well as my own creative journey.
To write, then, is not merely to produce poems but to enter a lifelong discipline of listening, remembering, and shaping language so that experience may endure beyond the moment in which it is lived. My work has been formed by exile and belonging, by music and silence, by violence and tenderness, by the histories of Haiti and the possibilities of these United States. Each poem becomes an attempt to reconcile these forces, to give them rhythm, measure, and voice. I do not yet consider the task complete; in many ways, it has only begun. What I seek now is a deeper fidelity to language, a greater openness to risk, and the courage to continue writing toward that elusive moment of release when the poem speaks with a truth larger than the self. If I am to carry the literary baton that was placed in my hands, I must keep moving forward—learning, questioning, and writing—so that the stories entrusted to me may remain alive in the music of words.
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