In life there always comes a time when people need to pause and weigh whatever successes and failures they may have incurred during the course of living. This does not only help them understand themselves better, but it proffers a rare opportunity to determine what track to take in future. Today, taking Zimbabweans as a case study, a lot can be said about the development of poetry in the country and the growing negative attitude towards this very important genre of literature.

A lot of water has flowed under the bridge since the beginning of time when the traditional poet ( the nyanduri) used to compose impeccable pieces of verse that heavily weighed of rich language and wisdom of the time. The skill of weaving words into some wonderful and rhythmatic pieces was not a commonplace. Best poets were usually honoured with great duties like singing praises to forebears living in the spiritual world. Not only expert poets recited poetry during those years, but also each and every child born to that society was taught right from a tender age how to appreciate the beauty of poetry. This was done through lullabies. This however strongly emphasized the fact that poetry developed naturally, for example, a mother could recite a poem to a very young child who did not understand the language, but could still get the message through rhythm.

Language of poetry is universal and these figures we curve and call words will never absolutely reflect the language of poetry. Language of poetry speaks clearly for everything and every society the world over. History has it that the connoisseur of poetry in our traditional society could win himself the most beautiful lady on the land by using his talent. It did not end at courtship, but extended to married life, when couples sang praises to one another, for example when a man brought home some game, or in a bed making love. From this, we also see that people lived with poetry. In some way, poetry was a bank of wisdom for posterity. To decode the message loaded in the armpits of verse, it requires great interest and commitment to one's culture. Despite it being a universal language, the universality somehow happened to have some boundaries drawn by tribal origins. Aliens found it difficult to digest some chip-offs from any given society's poetry bank. A very good example is of many ethnic groups in Somalia where it is widely believed that a lot of tribal secrets and wisdom are embodied in poetry, but unfortunately many people cannot gain access to them because the local languages have not been standardized and put into print.

Slowly and painfully our store of language and tribal secrets has been suffering murderous blows of trial from foreign influence since the coming whites to Africa. The virus thus slowly but surely gnawing at our poetry has resulted in people's taste changing as well as the subjects being diagnosed under the poetry microscope. Colonial rule did not only result in indigenous people losing control over the land, but culture as well. Whites strongly and correctly knew that unless people were made to throw down their culture, they would not be able to effectively colonise them. As a result of this, introduction of schools saw blacks kids being taught that African history was barbaric, a thought that has firmly anchored itself in present-day 'civilised' students. At that time some of the toughest English poets like Andrew Marvel, John Donne, William Shakespeare, to mention but a few, were introduced to the already confused black students. Had the confusion been among the students only, it could have been better, but it was strongly prevalent among the teachers too, so much that both parties piteously failed to dig deeply into the core of poetry.

Failed as they did, they then went round spreading the false gospel that poetry was untouchable, difficult and 'literary food' for the insane. Here in Zimbabwe, we are lucky to have a very good example of Dambudzo Marechera who till his death, nearly everybody, including the most erudite believed that he possessed a very unparalleled degree of insanity because he delved and ripped through the world's most tough poets with such indescribable avidity. Worse more, the type of poems he churned out seated on a bench in Cecil Square (now Africa Unity Square). To all that, the white silently and secretly celebrated because we rebuked the form of art that gave us some identity, the form of art through which we could speak clearly and audibly, not only to ourselves, but also to those who resided in the supernatural world, who somehow played a very pivotal role in our day to day lives.

As we mourn the gradual death of our genuine poetry that had some meaning to our lives, amongst us, we have poets who are producing what they call poems. From these products, one element that strikes me painfully is the higher degree of artificiality. Personally, I agree with Dambudzo Marechera and William Wordsworth, that ' poetry is an attempt by a poet to find an equivalent in words to whatever feelings that are tearing within them'. In addition to this, Marechera also stressed that a war, a quarrel, etc, are not necessarily the right subjects for a poem. This however, is what has become the norm in the world of poetry nowadays. A budding poet walking down a street, sees a couple of feigning lovers practicing some illicit love. He rushes home to put his pen to paper and grapples with words which he only neatly stacks into uniform lines and stanzas, creamed up with what I would call forced rhyme. He would then smack his lips in appreciation for the new literary baby he has given birth to, oblivious of its devoidness in content and that important ingredient which gives poetry a concrete meaning, that is feeling (s), which should develop naturally.

From my research and study, I have however come to believe that noone is a poet in this world, but those whom we have for some reason named so are people who are good listeners to their 'feelings' language'. Our feelings are the great poets, hence they should always be given the important and front seat whenever people are seated in any literary summit. To complement the point I am driving home here, below is a short poem entitled "POEM" in which I tried to illustrate how poetry should be nothing, but a chain of images and feelings:

Lick these lips rather
Get her taste brother
Feel her breasts' brush
Oh no, no don't rush
Peer under her long skirt
And see her ever-clean pant
It's colourful and has no vent
Open widely your noses' doors
And let in her sweet odours
She is my mind's scribble
Though to soul's eye legible
She is Mister Feelings' painted form
Ha-a ha-a she is a poem.

I used sexual connotations mainly to emphasize the strong feelings that should go with poetry, because many people only begin to perceive strong feelings when deeply sunk in love. Therefore what I have done is merely drawing the parallelism that exists between strong feelings of love and poetry.

To be a great poet, one has to possess that rare quality of patience to sit down and attentively listen to one's feelings recite poetry. Not a single word should be forced into the piece merely because the word is good sounding, for it automatically renders the work artificial. Usually this artificiality in present day poetry is brought about by too much dissection of literary works, mutilating them into bits and pieces given a host of horrible names, for example alliteration, rhetoric questions, assonance, iambic syllables and many others. The modern poet has blindly fallen victim to the snare of writing with a preoccupation to exhibit his acquired poetic techniques. Evidently, what would be on the lead is not the subject (feelings), but techniques and the former is just stumbled upon. Usually what comes out of this exercise becomes difficult to put into any distinguished class of literary works. The piece would be seen painfully attempting to put on a poetic robe, whilst at the same time forcing on a prosaic overcoat. In the end the works dismally fall short of either class. The traditional poet knew no such techniques, but could produce very nice pieces of verse. Again, modern poets seem concerned about pleasing the reader on paper, but basically poetry was meant to be recited and not read, therefore more emphasis was on language---imagery than on neatly dividing lines into stanzas that is visual poetry so to speak.

It is quite unfortunate and disheartening that everything being done in our present society is done after economic returns are critically analysed. Unlike the era of our ancestors, these days the only way people can gain access to poetry is by buying anthology of poetry. This has proved difficult again because all people's trust in poetry is being destroyed by the way in which this form of literature is introduced to students.

EXAMPLE: An expertly shaven teacher, clad in a very expensive outfit pops into a classroom with anthology of poetry written and published in a land millions of kilometers from home. Poetry written by people who had and still have different experiences and whose standard of life is in no way similar to ours. After clearing his throat with a slight air of importance, he would say through his noses, ' students, its high time you be introduced to what we really call poetry, not all the other trash you might be having in the pockets of your minds. Open your books on blah blah blah. We would like to read a poem by John Donne called blah blah blah'. With these words, the teacher would start to spell out the pattern of words to the otherwise disinterested students. The more he continues reading, the more their minds are wrecked. The teacher reads with so much feigned understanding and appreciation of the poem. Here and there, he would exclaim 'great', 'super', 'John father of English poetry', ' Oh surely no man in this world could be half as good' and so on.

This is generally the way poetry is introduced in schools not to prepare the student to accept it as part and parcel of their present and future lives, but temporarily arm them for examinations. The syllabi are blind to real life examinations such as courtship, marriage, birth, death and many others. As a result of this unprofessional approach, poetry has become very unmarketable and consequently unpublishable.

A lot still needs to be done to promote this form of literature, through sponsoring competitions and subsidizing anthologies of poetry so that it becomes affordable to virtually every literate person. For the benefit of both the literate and illiterate, radio stations should also give reasonable time to poetry recitations. It would be superb again if all newspapers and magazines contain one or two poems that have a cultural relevance.
Poetry is treasure. It is cultural gold.




Maxwell Mutami is a poet, short story writer and a freelance writer whose works have been published in both local and international newspapers and magazines. He is based in Harare, Zimbabwe.

Want to comment on this Blogs? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Blogs and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...