Bernard Zadi Zaourou’s poetry, with its many varied themes, has been nurtured as much by the Négritude movement, in particular by Césaire’s style, as by the traditional oral poetry of the Bété, the area he comes from. The major departure from his usual poetic style In Les Quatrains du dégoût (2008) suggests the poet’s disillusion regarding his faith in black men in particular and mankind in general. This article shows how the choice of a constraining form, the quatrain, differs stylistically from the poet’s usual work as well as reflects a change in the way he considers the issue of black identity. What comes out of this analysis is a structural paradox, given not only the use of fixed form, long considered an impossible feat with regard to the rhythm of negro-African orality, but also the way in which the poet voices a form of disapproval of black men, together with a condemnation of the West, which is seen as a corrupting force.