THE gist of last week’s column was to look at some basic elements of poetry and make a deliberate attempt to dissuade would-be writers of poetry from the pedestrian stuff commonly displayed in newspapers, schools, churches and public gatherings.
It makes little difference, if any, whether such ‘recitals’ are accompanied by much animation, shrieks of agony and thundering, twisted faces and melodramatic gestures—the regalia of cowhides, tattered clothes or masked woodenobjects notwithstanding.
The illustrations from the verse written my two friends, Nichola Kawinga and Alfred Mukanaka were appropriately elected to support this argument although I am not yet finished with Mukanaka as I stretch the conversation a little longer this week. I wish to draw lessons once again from hiswork as I belabor the point that poetry can be influenced by everyday life experiences but that it should be artistically packaged.
With close reference to Oswald Joseph Mtshali’s poetry, I will further demonstrate that verse can appear as simple as possible but conveying lofty ideas ofphilosophical, intellectual and socio-political proportions. In the early 70s Mtshali, a South African poet, publisheda collection of poems called‘Sounds of a Cowhide Drum’, an interesting collection of poetry which should be a must-read for any nascent poet. Meanwhile, let us listen to Mukanaka’s ‘Some Things Never Change.’
The Lusaka I first saw in 1974, is gone
The bus station in Kamwala
Where we slept waiting for UBZ buses
Intercity Terminus surpassed
Said to be modern, with more routes, buses
People still sleep there on the floor
The famous stores back then
Kingston, Kanjombe, ZCBC, Mwaiseni
Shopping malls have obliterated
Still some don’t shop in the malls
My brothers and sisters in shanties:
Malipole, Chaisa, Misisi, Chibolya
Trade at Soweto and City markets
Crowded, dirty, dump like home!
If these lines were a recital—so-called—at some gathering shrouded in misplaced sounds of drumming, emotive body- gesticulations and peals of thunder, it would pass for an ‘A’ grade verse and perhaps with a prize etched on it—a frenzied jubilation and a shout ofan ‘encore’ from a juvenile crowd.  Mukanaka is a close friend of mine, but I am afraid what we have hereis not poetry; the semblance of trite around it is a firm denial of it.The place itself, Kamwala, is potential material for poetry but the discrepancy lies in the failure to make itshockingly absurdso as to let a regular visitor see the place in a differently new light altogether.Apparently, this is Mtshali’s strength in his verse; he is able to use an ordinary daily life experience and turn it into a thing of beauty or an awfully ugly thing, begging the question, ‘Did I ever think about it this way?’ An illustration of this is this dazzling verse, ‘The Shepherd and the Flock.’
The rays of the sun
Are like a pair of scissors
Cutting the blanket
Of dawn from the sky
The young shepherd
Drives the master’s sheep
From the paddock
Into the veld
His bare feet
Kick the grass
And spill the dew
Like diamonds
On a cutter’s table
A lamb strays away
Enchanted by the marvels
Of a summer morning;
The ram
Rebukes the ewe,
“Woman! Woman!
Watch over the child!”
The sun wings up
On flaming petals
Of a sunflower.
He perches on an antheap
To play the reed flute
And to salute
The farmer’s children
Going to school,
And dreamingly asks,
“O! Wise Sun above
Will you ever guide
Me into school?”
Mtshali, who now lives in Soweto, was born in Vryheid, Natal, where he went to school and later began to write poetry. This collection of poetry was published in 1971 and is, therefore, part of the dark period in the history of South Africa’s apartheid where the blacks lived under oppression by a white minorityrule over the years. Despite the background, Mtshali does not pull punches at a regime that dislocated the black race.
His personas are not Uganda’s Okot p’Bteck’s   Ocol, Clementina or Lawino notorious for uncontrollable outbursts. And yet there is such bitterness behind their voices and sometimes extremelystriking sarcasm against an oppressive regime. But, notice the ingenuity in the first four lines where day- break is transformed into a subject of an indescribable splendor. The rays of the sun are likened to a ‘pair of scissors’ ‘cutting the blanket of dawn from the sun’ to announce a brand new day; this is a searing image. Notice also the ‘dew’ that ‘spills like a diamond on a cutter’s table.’
If the dew should drop like diamonds on a cutter’s table it should speak to us about just how cold the morning is for a bare-footed boy; but a morning good enough to excite a young lamb that canters away to the chagrin of theparent- ram instigating a reprimand to the ewe who should know better how to look after the child.This is great humor from an elastic mind of a seasoned poet.
But, ‘the sun wings up on flaming petals of a sunflower!’What an incredible image this is! The shepherd boy probably exhausted and hungry withdraws to an antheap with his reed flute only to salute the farmer’s boys going to school. This should be his age- mates and like them he should be in school today.  In a subtle manner the poet throws butts at a deplorable system, abject poverty and utter inequality and disillusionment for the young generation symbolized by the black boy whose appeal to the heavens is only: “O! Wise sun above/Will you ever guide/Me into school?” What we have here is what Nadine Gordimer alludes to in her foreword to the book when she talks about an ‘almost surgical imagery.’ To further exemplify the point, here is another poem, ‘Boy on a Swing’
Slowly he moves
To and fro, to and fro,
Then faster and faster
He swishes up and down.
His blue shirt
Billows in the breeze
Like a tattered kite.
The world whirls by:
East becomes West,
North turns to South;
The four cardinal points
Meet in his head
Mother!
Where did I come from?
When will I wear long trousers?
Why was my father jailed?
The otherwise simplicity of the lyrics and the merry-go-round atmosphere is asource of interest for any child who has used a swing in a Park, let alone an adult.But there are profound thematic and philosophical statements that the poet makes in this simple act. The confused boy’s father is jailed and he wants to know the reasons behind it. His origin or the color of his skin is perhaps tied to his father’s incarceration.
The yearning for wearing long trousers is also a yearning for maturity, for adulthood which perhaps might lead to understanding some of the rhetorical questions that plague his childhood mind. It could also be a starting point for a determined action in response to inequalities in apartheid South Africa. I should hasten to add, however, that Mtshali’s themes are universal.
These two poems should help us appreciate that poetry is an enjoyable art both for the writer and reader but it takes vigor and time. No single poem can be written at one sitting; such poems are rare but for most of them they undergo revisions and this is true even for the best of poets. Others take months and years before they show up in public.
One moreword of advice to writers is that if a poem hits you as surprisingly exciting, the reader’s experience will most likely be the same. If it is genuinely dull, it may as well strike a similar cord in a reader’s mind. So, do ask yourself the question: do I enjoy this piece of work or not? This week, take time toexamine what it is that makes imagery in Mtshali’s poetry and learn to practice it in your writing.
–poetspoems@g-mail.com–