People come in many colors, shapes, and sizes. They have adapted to radically different climates, unique political situations, and clashing worldviews. Therefore, it is always startling when some incident comes along and reveals that we are not so different after all. And ever since the first man realized he could connect with a stranger on a deeply human level with words, humans have had poetry. Poetry is a dynamic and fluid art form created deliberately to receive a special kind of attention and evoke thoughts and feelings in its audience. Poetry speaks to a part of us ruled not by logic, but by our fears, desires, empathy, and hearts. Poetry lives and breathes, and without an attentive audience, it would die.
Nearly every person who takes the time to form a definition of poetry will come to a different conclusion, which is not so much discouraging as it is terribly exciting. Poet Lyn Hejinian wrote in her introduction to The Best American Poetry 2004, “the fact that there are no answers is one source of the vitality of the art form” (Hejinian, 9). Poetry evades definition because the only piece of it that is tangible is the written word, and this visible aspect is a miniscule part of the product. The product is a feeling, a conversation, and a better understanding of the human condition. Poetry is difficult to define because it is vast, dynamic, and ever-changing.
I feel that defining poetry is similar to defining beauty. I recently sat through a classmate’s Sociology presentation that outlined how the idea of beauty is socially constructed and affects society in unexpected ways. A woman today may be called a “classic beauty,” but the criteria for beauty is modified drastically from era to era. Despite personal preferences, the members of every society collectively agree upon what is "beautiful," and it is a fact that those beautiful people will receive a certain kind of attention that often gives them privilege. Beautiful people are more likely to receive second chances, be given jobs, and be considered kind and sociable. In this same way, poetry asks us to pay it a certain kind of attention and to give it the benefit of the doubt if we don’t understand it the first, second, or hundredth time we read it. If it is successful, its audience will fall under its spell and give it the attention it craves.
I choose to give poetry my attention when it evokes in me a feeling that I can’t name, but also can not shake. T.S. Eliot wrote that “genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.” Several times throughout this course I have heard a poem speak to me before I knew what it is saying. One of my first encounters with this phenomenon was while reading Eliot’s poem “The Wasteland.” In a forum post about the poem I wrote, “It is strange to me that I can be moved so poignantly by a poem that I don’t even understand.” This was still weeks before I learned the term Eliot himself coined the “objective correlative,” in which the poet uses an image to evoke an emotion without naming it. He successfully caused me to feel the heaviness of death in “The Wasteland” through his descriptions of fleeting seasons, “dull roots,” and “dead land.” It created in me the initial pull that made me want to spend more time with the poem.
As with beauty, we hope that poetry’s lure is not only skin deep. If people are going to spend time in contemplation over a splatter of words across a page, the words must tell them something important. This is what Yusef Komunyakaa argued as he wrote an introduction to The Best American Poetry 2003. He expressed concern about the way some poets mask their messages “through a language that deliberately confuses and blurs meaning” (Komunyakaa, 13). He believes that poetry should be written in response to events and feelings, and asks the question, “To what extent can language be distorted before it loses meaning, before it erases itself” (Komunyakaa, 17)?
Komunyakaa was a poet featured in the anthology Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness, which featured the work of 145 poets responding to conflict in various parts of the world throughout the twentieth-century. Many of the poets in the collection wrote under severe tyranny and repression. Sometimes they encoded their poetry with secret meanings to avoid execution or jail, but many were extremely brave by expressing their anger at powerful regimes as well as their sadness at the deaths of innocent people. Komunyakaa praises the poets because poetry should bring conflicts to the surface and refuse people the luxury of forgetting.
One poet featured in Against Forgetting was Wole Soyinka, a Nigerian-born poet, playwright, and author who responded with poetry to apartheid in his home country. One of his poems, “Massacre, October ’66,” subtly documents the genocide that claimed the lives of 10,000 people. Soyinka spent years of his life in solitary confinement because of his outspokenness about the conflict he was witnessing, but even in a tiny, dank cell, he found means to pen his feelings. By writing, Soyinka has brought light to a conflict that drastically altered and even ended the lives of millions of individuals. He successfully fulfils the job description of a poet that author Salman Rushdie describes is “to name the un-nameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world, and stop it going to sleep” (Rushdie).
Another poet I encountered who, through his art, connects readers with a population frequently kept silent is Mark Doty. Doty is a popular American poet who has received attention for his often autobiographical and anecdotal poetry. A theme that shines through Doty’s work is that of love in all its forms. Doty often writes about gay issues because he feels that the gay experience is misrepresented or completely erased in current culture (Contemporary Poets). I enjoyed reading his book Turtle, Swan this semester because he seamlessly blended stories and sentiment that made me feel connected to him and simultaneously gave me a window into a life very different from my own in which parents were not a constant guiding presence and AIDS was a devastating reality. Because I am human, I can relate to my fellow human’s anxieties and dreams, even if we come from very different circumstances.
One thing that does not define poetry is its form. Poetry takes countless shapes- from Hejinian’s thick, blocky stanzas in My Life, to G.C. Waldrep’s sporadically indented stanzas with words floating mid-page in Disclamor, to the classic, lyric-like stanzas of Emily Dickinson. Form is a tool that poets use to call attention to their poetry and manipulate their audience’s eyes and minds, but it is impossible to say that because words are arranged in a certain way, they are or are not a poem. Even a novel, I have decided, should not be refused the right to be called poetry. I have read books that speak directly to my heart, that connect me to another place and time, and that still live and breathe inside of me years later, and I would challenge anybody who would try to tell me they are not poetry.
Any mention of the novel My Antonia by Willa Cather, which I read two years ago, causes my heart to skip a beat because I was so affected by her descriptions of the Nebraska prairie and the people who lived there. Who could deny the beauty and truth of the words, “There was only—spring itself; the throb of it, the light restlessness, the vital essence of it everywhere; in the sky, in the swift clouds, in the pale sunshine, and in the warm, high wind—rising suddenly, sinking suddenly, impulsive and playful like a big puppy that pawed you and then lay down to be petted. If I had been tossed down blindfold on that red prairie, I should have known it was spring” (Cather, 790)? This book has become a part of me.
Indeed, poetry is alive. It requires love and it loves company. If a poem is left cramped inside a book without air, it will die. We know that the poetry we read today is, in fact, poetry because it has survived. If we stop reading it, it will cease to be. All poetry that exists has earned and retained our attention, opened our eyes and our hearts to what is unique and universal, wonderful and discouraging, frightening and exhilarating about our world. All it asks of us in return is to feel, to respond, and to keep reading.
Works Cited
Cather, Willa. Early Novels and Stories. New York, N.Y: Literary Classics of the United States, 1987. Print.
“Mark (A.) Doty.” Contemporary Poets. Gale, 2001. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 7 Feb. 2011.
Hejinian, Lyn. Introduction. Lyn Hejinian and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry .2004. Scribner, 2004. 9-14. Print.
Komunyakaa, Yusef. Introduction. Yusef Komunyakaa and David Lehman, eds. The Best American Poetry 2003. New York: Scribner, 2003. 11-21. Print.
Rushdie, Salman. The Satanic Verses. New York, NY: Viking, 1989. Print.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Wole Soyinka: An Author and Advocate
Here I invite you to explore with me the life of poet, playright, and novelist Wole Soyinka, and how he responded to apartheid in Nigeria with POETRY! (I've done most of the work for you, and compiled it into a medium-sized paper.)
Wole Soyinka was born on July 13, 1934 in Isara, Nigeria. His father, Ayo, was a headmaster at St. Peter’s Primary School in Ake Abeokuta. Tribal elders directed Ake, the village that Soyinka grew up in. He was exposed as a child to tribal gods and folklore, and was even consecrated by his grandfather to the god Ogun, ruler of metal, roads, and creative and destructive essence. At the same time, his mother was a devout Christian (Contemporary Authors). A child with strong curiosity and sensibility, Soyinka began studying at his father’s school and ascended the ranks until he completed his bachelor’s degree with a major in English at the University of Leeds in England (Postcolonial African Writers African Writers).
Soyinka had begun his writing career by submitting poems and short stories to various magazines. While at Leeds, however, he came to love Shakespeare, Japanese Noh drama, and a wide range of other genres of theater. He continued to experience and enjoy the theater at the Royal Court, where he was a play reader, actor, and writer in the writer’s’ experimental workshops (Postcolonial African Writers African Writers).
While Soyinka was studying in Europe, tensions were high in his homeland. During the nineteenth century, Britain had set up several colonial structures in Nigeria. These areas were only beginning to merge when, in 1960, Nigeria gained its independence. In Britain’s attempts to protect the interests of the multiple regions, it created intense rivalry between them, as they each sought to control Nigeria’s political center (Civil War). A coup d’état occurred on January 15, 1966 by a group that hoped to save the country from falling apart, but it was interpreted as a subterfuge to take over the country. General Ironsi, head of state, was then displaced in a countercoup on July 29. A new head of state was installed named Yakubu Gowon (Nigeria). Gowon and his followers believed that a tribe called the Igbo were responsible for the initial takeover of power and were a threat to the well-being of the country. With this belief, those involved in the countercoup went on to commit a horrific extermination of Igbo people throughout the northern region of Nigeria. In a mere two months, over 10,000 Igbo had been killed while thousands more were injured or dispossessed. Another 1.5 million people within the borders of Nigeria were refugees (Nigeria).
Even in the time following the massacre, Igbo people were discriminated against and refused compensation for their loses. The only way they could be safe, they decided, was to remain in the eastern region, overseen by Lt. Col. Emeka Ojukwu who was an Igbo himself. They would not recognize Gowon as head of state (Nigeria). Furthermore, the possibility of secession from the rest of the nation appeared attractive because of a discovery of oil centered in the eastern region (Civil War). A meeting was organized between Gowon and Ojukwu to iron out their differences, but cooperation did not last long. The agreements established at the meeting concerning the salaries of displaced people and who would serve as commander in chief came into dispute, and the conflicts quickly elevated again. On May 26, 1967, Ojukwu assembled several political organizations and declared the eastern region an independent sovereign state called the Republic of Biafra. The same day, the federal authority split Nigeria into twelve states. Lt. Col. Gowon assumed sweeping powers over all of the states and issued Decree No. 14 which banned political activities and implemented press censorship (Nigeria).
Soyinka had returned from Europe to Nigeria in 1959, while the country was only beginning to break apart. For much of his life, Soyinka had been influenced by Western values, lifestyle, and art (Postcolonial African Writers). Upon returning, he became involved in the preparations for independence by the country, but he was able to look at the situation with the eyes of an outsider. He was opposed to the corruption and the Nigerian civilian government takeovers. His contribution to the cause was writing a series of plays on corrupt power. In these plays he blended references to Yoruba traditions with European art and philosophy (Contemporary Novelists). This characteristic made him a unique voice in both literature and cultural politics.
One of Soyinka’s earlier poems, found in his collection Idanre & Other Poems, is entitled “Massacre, October ’66.” The poem clearly responds to the genocide that claimed the lives of 10,000 Igbo people. The title reads almost as if it preceded a research paper, but the poet’s language takes on a much more symbolic trajectory. He employs images of autumn, “dying leaves” and “brain of thousands pressed asleep to pig fodder” to illustrate the overwhelming devastation of the genocide. Without knowledge of the event, the reader of the poem would not be able to pinpoint exactly what the poet refers to, and in fact Soyinka has been criticized for being overly allusive in his writing (Contemporary Novelists).
Soyinka fiercely opposed the federal government’s violent treatment of the Igbo people as they tried to legitimize their new state (Contemporary Authors). Though Emeka Ojukwu had declared the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967, “the federal government declared the action null” (Postcolonial African Writers). They attacked Biafra from two sides with an enormous supply of weaponry, and Biafra completely lacked the materials to fight back. They were pushed toward the coast where a sea blockade, internal division, and very little support from the rest of the world stopped them. Not only could they not fight, but the people of Biafra had no food. Due to starvation and war, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people died daily at the beginning of the war, and nearly 10,000 daily by the end. By April 1969, the population of Biafra had shrunk to a third of its original size (Postcolonial African Writers).
Audiences immediately took notice of Soyinka’s strong opinions against the treatment of the Biafra people, so it became international news when he was first arrested in 1965. He was accused of forcing a radio announcer to report incorrect election results at gunpoint, though his accusers never had any evidence of this. He was released after three months, but was arrested again in 1967 following a trip to Biafra to establish a peace commission. This time the police filed no official charge, but accused him of helping the Biafran people buy fighter jets (Contemporary Authors). The detention lasted for two years and for much of it, Soyinka was held in solitary confinement. Though he had no pens or notebooks in his tiny cell, he was able to find a creative outlet. He used materials such as toilet paper, cigarette packets, and homemade “soy-ink” to write several works that reflected his state of mind and the dreadful conditions he experienced. One of these pieces is A Shuttle in the Crypt, a book of poems (Postcolonial African Writers).
In the preface of A Shuttle in the Crypt Soyinka explains that the shuttle is a caged animal, a “restless bolt of energy,” that he identified with while in prison as a way to battle the dangers of isolation. The collection, he writes, “is a map of the course trodden by the mind, not a record of the actual struggle against a vegetable existence…” (Soyinka).
One of the poems found in A Shuttle in the Crypt is “A cobweb’s touch in the dark.” In this poem, the poet has an experience with a cobweb that causes him to think about the ancestral web. The poem contains five short stanzas, made up of three to four lines each that serve to explore feelings stirred in the poet by the web. By touching the web, he feels the “dark vapours of the earth exhaling. A thread of the web causes him to think of “things gone by, a brush of time.” In the end, however, “It slips,” and the moment is over (Shuttle in the Crypt). This poem is a clear example of how exactly Soyinka overcame his time in solitary confinement. Though he was stuck in a small cell with little external stimulation, he went inside himself and indulged his tendency to wonder and create (Abou-bakr). Like a shuttle, he was restless within his cage, but rather than being concerned only with physical freedom, he successfully transcended his captivity through mental exploits that covered time and space.
On January 11, 1970, Emeka Ojukwu, who had led the people of Biafra for three years, fled to Cote d’Ivoire. The attempt to exist as a separate entity had failed. The Igbo people were then, and are today discriminated against and were not reinstated in their previous jobs (Nigeria). After being released from confinement at the end of the war, Soyinka was forced into exile several times over the course of nearly thirty years. In 1994, a leader by the name of Ibrahim Babangida assumed power. Under this leadership Soyinka was charged with treason for his criticism of the military regime, and given a death sentence in his home of Nigeria (Contemporary Authors). He has written and taught in an array of settings, from head of the English Department at Lagos University to the overseas fellow in Churchill College at Cambridge University, to professorship and lectureship assignment in universities in Britain and the United Sates. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is the President's Marymount Institute Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California(Postcolonial African Writers).
In the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1986, Thomas Hayes wrote about Soyinka that “His drama and fiction have challenged the West to broaden its aesthetic and accept African standards of art and literature. His personal and political life have challenged Africa to embrace the truly democratic values of the African tribe and reject the tyranny of power practiced on the continent by its colonizers and by many of its modern rulers” (Contemporary Authors). Soyinka is predominantly known for his novels and plays, but across all of his writing he advocated for democracy and justice (Femi). His understanding of the African conflicts and Western language and culture gave him the ability to make a devastating issue real for readers around the world.
Works Cited
Abou-bakr, Randa. "The Political Prisoner as Antihero: The Prison Poetry of Wole Soyinka and 'Ahmad Fu'ad Nigm." Comparative Literature Studies 46.2 (2009): 261-86. Print.
"Civil War: Postcolonial African Writers Africa." Encyclopedia of African History. London: Routledge, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 24 March 2011.
Killam, Douglas, and Rowe, Ruth. The Companion to African Literatures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Print.
Femi, Euba. “Wole Soyinka.” Postcolonial African Writers African Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print
"Nigeria: Biafran Secession and Civil War, 1967-1970." Encyclopedia of African History. London: Routledge, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 24 March 2011.
Postcolonial African Writers African Writers : a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press. 1998. Print.
Soyinka, Wole. A Shuttle in the Crypt. Hill and Wang, 1972.
"SOYINKA, Wole." An African Biographical Dictionary. Amenia: Grey House Publishing, 2006. Credo Reference. Web. 26 March 2011.
Soyinka, Wole. Early Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1998.
"Wole Soyinka." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.
"Wole Soyinka." Contemporary Novelists. Gale, 2001. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.
Wole Soyinka was born on July 13, 1934 in Isara, Nigeria. His father, Ayo, was a headmaster at St. Peter’s Primary School in Ake Abeokuta. Tribal elders directed Ake, the village that Soyinka grew up in. He was exposed as a child to tribal gods and folklore, and was even consecrated by his grandfather to the god Ogun, ruler of metal, roads, and creative and destructive essence. At the same time, his mother was a devout Christian (Contemporary Authors). A child with strong curiosity and sensibility, Soyinka began studying at his father’s school and ascended the ranks until he completed his bachelor’s degree with a major in English at the University of Leeds in England (Postcolonial African Writers African Writers).
Soyinka had begun his writing career by submitting poems and short stories to various magazines. While at Leeds, however, he came to love Shakespeare, Japanese Noh drama, and a wide range of other genres of theater. He continued to experience and enjoy the theater at the Royal Court, where he was a play reader, actor, and writer in the writer’s’ experimental workshops (Postcolonial African Writers African Writers).
While Soyinka was studying in Europe, tensions were high in his homeland. During the nineteenth century, Britain had set up several colonial structures in Nigeria. These areas were only beginning to merge when, in 1960, Nigeria gained its independence. In Britain’s attempts to protect the interests of the multiple regions, it created intense rivalry between them, as they each sought to control Nigeria’s political center (Civil War). A coup d’état occurred on January 15, 1966 by a group that hoped to save the country from falling apart, but it was interpreted as a subterfuge to take over the country. General Ironsi, head of state, was then displaced in a countercoup on July 29. A new head of state was installed named Yakubu Gowon (Nigeria). Gowon and his followers believed that a tribe called the Igbo were responsible for the initial takeover of power and were a threat to the well-being of the country. With this belief, those involved in the countercoup went on to commit a horrific extermination of Igbo people throughout the northern region of Nigeria. In a mere two months, over 10,000 Igbo had been killed while thousands more were injured or dispossessed. Another 1.5 million people within the borders of Nigeria were refugees (Nigeria).
Even in the time following the massacre, Igbo people were discriminated against and refused compensation for their loses. The only way they could be safe, they decided, was to remain in the eastern region, overseen by Lt. Col. Emeka Ojukwu who was an Igbo himself. They would not recognize Gowon as head of state (Nigeria). Furthermore, the possibility of secession from the rest of the nation appeared attractive because of a discovery of oil centered in the eastern region (Civil War). A meeting was organized between Gowon and Ojukwu to iron out their differences, but cooperation did not last long. The agreements established at the meeting concerning the salaries of displaced people and who would serve as commander in chief came into dispute, and the conflicts quickly elevated again. On May 26, 1967, Ojukwu assembled several political organizations and declared the eastern region an independent sovereign state called the Republic of Biafra. The same day, the federal authority split Nigeria into twelve states. Lt. Col. Gowon assumed sweeping powers over all of the states and issued Decree No. 14 which banned political activities and implemented press censorship (Nigeria).
Soyinka had returned from Europe to Nigeria in 1959, while the country was only beginning to break apart. For much of his life, Soyinka had been influenced by Western values, lifestyle, and art (Postcolonial African Writers). Upon returning, he became involved in the preparations for independence by the country, but he was able to look at the situation with the eyes of an outsider. He was opposed to the corruption and the Nigerian civilian government takeovers. His contribution to the cause was writing a series of plays on corrupt power. In these plays he blended references to Yoruba traditions with European art and philosophy (Contemporary Novelists). This characteristic made him a unique voice in both literature and cultural politics.
One of Soyinka’s earlier poems, found in his collection Idanre & Other Poems, is entitled “Massacre, October ’66.” The poem clearly responds to the genocide that claimed the lives of 10,000 Igbo people. The title reads almost as if it preceded a research paper, but the poet’s language takes on a much more symbolic trajectory. He employs images of autumn, “dying leaves” and “brain of thousands pressed asleep to pig fodder” to illustrate the overwhelming devastation of the genocide. Without knowledge of the event, the reader of the poem would not be able to pinpoint exactly what the poet refers to, and in fact Soyinka has been criticized for being overly allusive in his writing (Contemporary Novelists).
Soyinka fiercely opposed the federal government’s violent treatment of the Igbo people as they tried to legitimize their new state (Contemporary Authors). Though Emeka Ojukwu had declared the Republic of Biafra on May 30, 1967, “the federal government declared the action null” (Postcolonial African Writers). They attacked Biafra from two sides with an enormous supply of weaponry, and Biafra completely lacked the materials to fight back. They were pushed toward the coast where a sea blockade, internal division, and very little support from the rest of the world stopped them. Not only could they not fight, but the people of Biafra had no food. Due to starvation and war, an estimated 3,000 to 5,000 people died daily at the beginning of the war, and nearly 10,000 daily by the end. By April 1969, the population of Biafra had shrunk to a third of its original size (Postcolonial African Writers).
Audiences immediately took notice of Soyinka’s strong opinions against the treatment of the Biafra people, so it became international news when he was first arrested in 1965. He was accused of forcing a radio announcer to report incorrect election results at gunpoint, though his accusers never had any evidence of this. He was released after three months, but was arrested again in 1967 following a trip to Biafra to establish a peace commission. This time the police filed no official charge, but accused him of helping the Biafran people buy fighter jets (Contemporary Authors). The detention lasted for two years and for much of it, Soyinka was held in solitary confinement. Though he had no pens or notebooks in his tiny cell, he was able to find a creative outlet. He used materials such as toilet paper, cigarette packets, and homemade “soy-ink” to write several works that reflected his state of mind and the dreadful conditions he experienced. One of these pieces is A Shuttle in the Crypt, a book of poems (Postcolonial African Writers).
In the preface of A Shuttle in the Crypt Soyinka explains that the shuttle is a caged animal, a “restless bolt of energy,” that he identified with while in prison as a way to battle the dangers of isolation. The collection, he writes, “is a map of the course trodden by the mind, not a record of the actual struggle against a vegetable existence…” (Soyinka).
One of the poems found in A Shuttle in the Crypt is “A cobweb’s touch in the dark.” In this poem, the poet has an experience with a cobweb that causes him to think about the ancestral web. The poem contains five short stanzas, made up of three to four lines each that serve to explore feelings stirred in the poet by the web. By touching the web, he feels the “dark vapours of the earth exhaling. A thread of the web causes him to think of “things gone by, a brush of time.” In the end, however, “It slips,” and the moment is over (Shuttle in the Crypt). This poem is a clear example of how exactly Soyinka overcame his time in solitary confinement. Though he was stuck in a small cell with little external stimulation, he went inside himself and indulged his tendency to wonder and create (Abou-bakr). Like a shuttle, he was restless within his cage, but rather than being concerned only with physical freedom, he successfully transcended his captivity through mental exploits that covered time and space.
On January 11, 1970, Emeka Ojukwu, who had led the people of Biafra for three years, fled to Cote d’Ivoire. The attempt to exist as a separate entity had failed. The Igbo people were then, and are today discriminated against and were not reinstated in their previous jobs (Nigeria). After being released from confinement at the end of the war, Soyinka was forced into exile several times over the course of nearly thirty years. In 1994, a leader by the name of Ibrahim Babangida assumed power. Under this leadership Soyinka was charged with treason for his criticism of the military regime, and given a death sentence in his home of Nigeria (Contemporary Authors). He has written and taught in an array of settings, from head of the English Department at Lagos University to the overseas fellow in Churchill College at Cambridge University, to professorship and lectureship assignment in universities in Britain and the United Sates. He currently teaches at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and is the President's Marymount Institute Professor in Residence at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California(Postcolonial African Writers).
In the Dictionary of Literary Biography Yearbook: 1986, Thomas Hayes wrote about Soyinka that “His drama and fiction have challenged the West to broaden its aesthetic and accept African standards of art and literature. His personal and political life have challenged Africa to embrace the truly democratic values of the African tribe and reject the tyranny of power practiced on the continent by its colonizers and by many of its modern rulers” (Contemporary Authors). Soyinka is predominantly known for his novels and plays, but across all of his writing he advocated for democracy and justice (Femi). His understanding of the African conflicts and Western language and culture gave him the ability to make a devastating issue real for readers around the world.
Works Cited
Abou-bakr, Randa. "The Political Prisoner as Antihero: The Prison Poetry of Wole Soyinka and 'Ahmad Fu'ad Nigm." Comparative Literature Studies 46.2 (2009): 261-86. Print.
"Civil War: Postcolonial African Writers Africa." Encyclopedia of African History. London: Routledge, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 24 March 2011.
Killam, Douglas, and Rowe, Ruth. The Companion to African Literatures. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Print.
Femi, Euba. “Wole Soyinka.” Postcolonial African Writers African Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1998. Print
"Nigeria: Biafran Secession and Civil War, 1967-1970." Encyclopedia of African History. London: Routledge, 2004. Credo Reference. Web. 24 March 2011.
Postcolonial African Writers African Writers : a bio-bibliographical critical sourcebook. Westport: Greenwood Press. 1998. Print.
Soyinka, Wole. A Shuttle in the Crypt. Hill and Wang, 1972.
"SOYINKA, Wole." An African Biographical Dictionary. Amenia: Grey House Publishing, 2006. Credo Reference. Web. 26 March 2011.
Soyinka, Wole. Early Poems. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 1998.
"Wole Soyinka." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.
"Wole Soyinka." Contemporary Novelists. Gale, 2001. Gale Biography In Context. Web. 21 Mar. 2011.
Poetry Inspired by the Mennonite Experience
After reading the compelling and poignant poems in A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry, I have written three poems of my own that in one way or another tie into my own experience growing up in the Mennonite faith. Enjoy!
--------------------------------
What I Learned from My High School Choir Director
after a poem by Julia Kasdorf
I learned from my high school choir director how to laugh
early in the morning when I’d rather be in bed, how not to be
the “flotsam and jetsam” that holds everybody else down. I learned
that when a teacher can reveal his heart, his joys and concerns,
to his class, that class becomes a family. I learned that a choir
is greater than the sum of its parts, that if you all sing in a racquetball court
and listen carefully, tones ring out that nobody is uttering.
I learned how powerful it feels to be young, full of dreams and
potential as you dance into a retirement home chapel.
I learned never to judge a song until I’ve sung it a hundred times
with people I love. I learned what it feels like to know a song for years
but not understand it until one day, without a warning, your heart
lunges into your throat and your eyes get hot and wet as you
look across a congregation and choke out the words,
“Know that the God who sent His son to die that you might live
will never leave you lost and alone in his beloved world.”
I learned that when bombs explode in subways, when a boy
comes to school without a mother, when a community loses a teacher
and friend, the only thing you can do
that makes any sense at all
is join together
and sing.
------------------------------------
Chicken Coop
I stick an old milk jug under the faucet,
hear a satisfying squeak as I twist the tap.
It takes all of my strength to battle the weight
of a stream spilling into the bottom.
This is my favorite part of the day:
time to feed the hens.
I step out into the frosty morning.
The chicken coop is the only piece
of “farm” left in our farmhouse.
We keep chickens simply because we can
but I like to believe that I am a true farm girl
who has to work if I’m going to eat.
I pry open the crooked door, inhale that unmistakable
musky odor of wet straw and bird poop.
Past the ancient rusty restraining funnel that was used
to massacre chickens daily, three hens greet me eagerly.
The biggest struts right up to my outstretched hand.
Strangely, that beak that appears sharp as a pitchfork only tickles.
Another hen runs for cover to miss the pellets I scatter with my small iron scoop.
She is half-naked; Cinderella given only rags and abused by two evil stepsisters.
I, too, would be ashamed to be seen like that.
When the chickens have been fed and watered,
I steady myself on the rail of a feed trough,
and peer into the each of the ten nesting boxes.
Aha! I glimpse a white treasure shrouded in shadows.
I grab for the egg.
Mine. I turn it over in my chubby palm.
No one can admire an egg like a seven-year-old.
It’s perfectly smooth, aside from a few miniscule and endearing warts,
but not a blemish against its pallid armor.
Holding it, I marvel at the novelty
of this something that was nothing yesterday.
Neither Dad, nor Santa, nor the Easter Bunny
planted it for me to discover.
But now it is mine,
to do whatever I want with.
feed to the cat, crack into a frying pan,
adorn with a face, play house.
God has the best ideas.
-----------------------------------
Sweetest Hours
We sing proudly, as though
we are the only little girls in the world
who can sing in three-part harmony.
The crowd is not a lively bunch,
but we know better than to take it hard—
they’re so old that clapping probably hurts.
Pop sits among them, eyes closed.
He’s heard this one before.
Perhaps he’s remembering the way his father’s
deep voice lay down the bass line on Sunday mornings.
Perhaps Pop whistled the tune while riding his great
John Deere over fertile fields on his way to a well-deserved dinner.
Watching him, the serene look on his face tells me
that he’s probably back there right now.
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care…
Years later, the three of us stand at the foot of a bed,
looking down at a body withered to almost nothing,
barely an outline beneath the thin yellow sheet.
Four of us together in one room,
the same blood pumping through our veins.
No one has a thing to say.
So once again, but this time not because
we are proud or even a little bit sure of ourselves,
we let our innocent voices blend.
In seasons of distress and grief,
my soul has often found relief.
And I learn right there that miracles do occur.
Because up from the covers floats a ghostly white hand,
and it dances in four to the lilt of our song.
This robe of flesh I’ll drop, and rise
To seize the everlasting prize,
And shout, while passing through the air,
“Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer!”
--------------------------------
What I Learned from My High School Choir Director
after a poem by Julia Kasdorf
I learned from my high school choir director how to laugh
early in the morning when I’d rather be in bed, how not to be
the “flotsam and jetsam” that holds everybody else down. I learned
that when a teacher can reveal his heart, his joys and concerns,
to his class, that class becomes a family. I learned that a choir
is greater than the sum of its parts, that if you all sing in a racquetball court
and listen carefully, tones ring out that nobody is uttering.
I learned how powerful it feels to be young, full of dreams and
potential as you dance into a retirement home chapel.
I learned never to judge a song until I’ve sung it a hundred times
with people I love. I learned what it feels like to know a song for years
but not understand it until one day, without a warning, your heart
lunges into your throat and your eyes get hot and wet as you
look across a congregation and choke out the words,
“Know that the God who sent His son to die that you might live
will never leave you lost and alone in his beloved world.”
I learned that when bombs explode in subways, when a boy
comes to school without a mother, when a community loses a teacher
and friend, the only thing you can do
that makes any sense at all
is join together
and sing.
------------------------------------
Chicken Coop
I stick an old milk jug under the faucet,
hear a satisfying squeak as I twist the tap.
It takes all of my strength to battle the weight
of a stream spilling into the bottom.
This is my favorite part of the day:
time to feed the hens.
I step out into the frosty morning.
The chicken coop is the only piece
of “farm” left in our farmhouse.
We keep chickens simply because we can
but I like to believe that I am a true farm girl
who has to work if I’m going to eat.
I pry open the crooked door, inhale that unmistakable
musky odor of wet straw and bird poop.
Past the ancient rusty restraining funnel that was used
to massacre chickens daily, three hens greet me eagerly.
The biggest struts right up to my outstretched hand.
Strangely, that beak that appears sharp as a pitchfork only tickles.
Another hen runs for cover to miss the pellets I scatter with my small iron scoop.
She is half-naked; Cinderella given only rags and abused by two evil stepsisters.
I, too, would be ashamed to be seen like that.
When the chickens have been fed and watered,
I steady myself on the rail of a feed trough,
and peer into the each of the ten nesting boxes.
Aha! I glimpse a white treasure shrouded in shadows.
I grab for the egg.
Mine. I turn it over in my chubby palm.
No one can admire an egg like a seven-year-old.
It’s perfectly smooth, aside from a few miniscule and endearing warts,
but not a blemish against its pallid armor.
Holding it, I marvel at the novelty
of this something that was nothing yesterday.
Neither Dad, nor Santa, nor the Easter Bunny
planted it for me to discover.
But now it is mine,
to do whatever I want with.
feed to the cat, crack into a frying pan,
adorn with a face, play house.
God has the best ideas.
-----------------------------------
Sweetest Hours
We sing proudly, as though
we are the only little girls in the world
who can sing in three-part harmony.
The crowd is not a lively bunch,
but we know better than to take it hard—
they’re so old that clapping probably hurts.
Pop sits among them, eyes closed.
He’s heard this one before.
Perhaps he’s remembering the way his father’s
deep voice lay down the bass line on Sunday mornings.
Perhaps Pop whistled the tune while riding his great
John Deere over fertile fields on his way to a well-deserved dinner.
Watching him, the serene look on his face tells me
that he’s probably back there right now.
Sweet hour of prayer! sweet hour of prayer!
That calls me from a world of care…
Years later, the three of us stand at the foot of a bed,
looking down at a body withered to almost nothing,
barely an outline beneath the thin yellow sheet.
Four of us together in one room,
the same blood pumping through our veins.
No one has a thing to say.
So once again, but this time not because
we are proud or even a little bit sure of ourselves,
we let our innocent voices blend.
In seasons of distress and grief,
my soul has often found relief.
And I learn right there that miracles do occur.
Because up from the covers floats a ghostly white hand,
and it dances in four to the lilt of our song.
This robe of flesh I’ll drop, and rise
To seize the everlasting prize,
And shout, while passing through the air,
“Farewell, farewell, sweet hour of prayer!”
I'm Loving "My Life"
My time in Poetry class is up, but fortunately we had an opportunity to cram in one final book, "My Life" by Lyn Hejinian. I hadn't any idea how I was going to make sense of this book, because it's written unlike any poem I've ever seen. It is 165 pages long and made up of 44 poems, or 44 stanzas of one long poem, depending on how you read it. Furthermore, each stanza is 44 sentences long.
Hejinian had an interesting idea with her formatting, but it is the content of her poetry that made me genuinely love reading "My Life." Hejinian has pulled together people, experiences, feelings, vignettes, and questions from her life and pieced them together to make a messy but genuine portrait of life, her life.
Hejinian's autography was such a fulfilling read, more than most biographies, because instead of touching on the areas of life that everybody thinks need to be addressed (such as where she grew up, what her professions were, who she married) she writes about the smallest details that make her unique and also like everybody else. I was shocked by how many images I felt were taken directly from my own life, or questions that I have felt myself asking as well:
“In the kitchen on the left is the drawer for refolded brown extra-strength doubled paper bags marked with the name of the supermarket in red”(85).
"A beautiful concert or an unusual autumn sunset makes me feel restless if I'm by myself, wanting someone with whom to share it" (40).
"Supper was a different meal from dinner" (30).
"Thinking back to my childhood, I remember others more clearly than myself, but when I think on more recent times, I begin to dominate my memories" (92).
The list goes on and on. I found myself constantly underlining phrases that struck an emotional chord with me. I felt myself wanting to tell somebody what I was reading, so we could share in these small truths that make us human. "My Life" is a book I see myself coming back to many times throughout my own life, and I believe each time it will hold more meaning. It's strange to think that this book is now a part of me, just as the people that Lyn Hejinian has known, the poems she has heard, and the tiny red rocking horse that somehow has earned a place in her memory are all a part of her.
Hejinian had an interesting idea with her formatting, but it is the content of her poetry that made me genuinely love reading "My Life." Hejinian has pulled together people, experiences, feelings, vignettes, and questions from her life and pieced them together to make a messy but genuine portrait of life, her life.
Hejinian's autography was such a fulfilling read, more than most biographies, because instead of touching on the areas of life that everybody thinks need to be addressed (such as where she grew up, what her professions were, who she married) she writes about the smallest details that make her unique and also like everybody else. I was shocked by how many images I felt were taken directly from my own life, or questions that I have felt myself asking as well:
“In the kitchen on the left is the drawer for refolded brown extra-strength doubled paper bags marked with the name of the supermarket in red”(85).
"A beautiful concert or an unusual autumn sunset makes me feel restless if I'm by myself, wanting someone with whom to share it" (40).
"Supper was a different meal from dinner" (30).
"Thinking back to my childhood, I remember others more clearly than myself, but when I think on more recent times, I begin to dominate my memories" (92).
The list goes on and on. I found myself constantly underlining phrases that struck an emotional chord with me. I felt myself wanting to tell somebody what I was reading, so we could share in these small truths that make us human. "My Life" is a book I see myself coming back to many times throughout my own life, and I believe each time it will hold more meaning. It's strange to think that this book is now a part of me, just as the people that Lyn Hejinian has known, the poems she has heard, and the tiny red rocking horse that somehow has earned a place in her memory are all a part of her.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Sonar Comes from Airbags
Last week I learned about N+7 poems, which hijack poems that have already been written and replace each noun with the seventh noun following it in the dictionary. For example, "wood" becomes "word" and "sigh" becomes "sigmoidoscope"(which, for future reference, is an instrument inserted in people's rectums to look around and inspect, diagnose, etc!). N+7 poems can serve all sorts of purposes by allowing the reader to extract new meaning from an old text or helping a poet to get something interesting and maybe inspiring on paper. I took a couple of stabs at N+7 poetry, having no idea what would happen. What I wanted was to have a product that read plausibly... but what happened was this:
Two Robbers
- An N+7 Poem inspired by Robert Frost's The Road Less Taken
Two robbers diverged in a yellow word,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one travois, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the underling.
Then took the otolith, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better clamor,
Because it was grassy and wanted weasel;
Though as for that the Passiontide there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morphallaxis equally lay
In leans no stereograph had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the fishbowl for another DBA!
Yet knowing how weakforce leads to weakforce
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigmoidoscope
Somewhere agencies and agencies hence:
Two robbers diverged in a word, and I—
I took the onlooker less traveled by,
And that has made all the diffraction.
-------------------
That was fun enough, but then I wondered if the N+7 approach might have an opposite effect on some poetry. Maybe instead of making a serious work of art silly, it could cause a silly children's poem to sound more adult and abstract. If this is possible, my experiment did not lead me to this conclusion. I chose a short poem by Dr. Seuss, and here are the before and after shots:
Original:
I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
N+7:
I have heard there are trousers of more than one kinfolk.
Sonar comes from airbags and sonar comes from Belladonna.
But I’ve brought a big bather. I’m all ready you see.
Now my trousers are going to have trousers with me!
---------------------------
I would recommend trying out an N+7 poem. It might not lead you to any significant life truths, but if you are like me, you will enjoy having your concerned friend at the library ask you why you are chuckling over a dictionary.
Two Robbers
- An N+7 Poem inspired by Robert Frost's The Road Less Taken
Two robbers diverged in a yellow word,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one travois, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the underling.
Then took the otolith, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better clamor,
Because it was grassy and wanted weasel;
Though as for that the Passiontide there
Had worn them really about the same.
And both that morphallaxis equally lay
In leans no stereograph had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the fishbowl for another DBA!
Yet knowing how weakforce leads to weakforce
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigmoidoscope
Somewhere agencies and agencies hence:
Two robbers diverged in a word, and I—
I took the onlooker less traveled by,
And that has made all the diffraction.
-------------------
That was fun enough, but then I wondered if the N+7 approach might have an opposite effect on some poetry. Maybe instead of making a serious work of art silly, it could cause a silly children's poem to sound more adult and abstract. If this is possible, my experiment did not lead me to this conclusion. I chose a short poem by Dr. Seuss, and here are the before and after shots:
Original:
I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind.
Some come from ahead and some come from behind.
But I’ve brought a big bat. I’m all ready you see.
Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!
N+7:
I have heard there are trousers of more than one kinfolk.
Sonar comes from airbags and sonar comes from Belladonna.
But I’ve brought a big bather. I’m all ready you see.
Now my trousers are going to have trousers with me!
---------------------------
I would recommend trying out an N+7 poem. It might not lead you to any significant life truths, but if you are like me, you will enjoy having your concerned friend at the library ask you why you are chuckling over a dictionary.
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