West Indian Poetry

Reading through the two main anthologies of West Indian Poetry1 is a dispiriting experience. So many poems and yet so little poetry ; so many voices and yet almost no one with his own voice ; under the seeming heterogeneity, a monotonous sameness. In part this springs from a widely held view of the nature of poetry. A poem, one imagines, is an elevating thought, or an aspiration, or a pretty landscape, or a confession, clothed decked out one might often say in highflown language. The essential banality of the thought or aspiration, the predictability of the response to the landscape, the conventionality of the confessing mind don't seem to matter providing only that the words are eyeor ear-catching enough. The result is that in place of an experience communicated in terms of its integration with the resources of language, we too often get more description of experiences, verbal gestures substituting for the real thing, and fake rather than genuine poetry. A second limitation may be suggested by a disturbing awareness one has of the self-consciousness of so much of the verse. It is as if the poet were all the time aware of himself being a poet, with one eye on his performance, one eye on his audience's reaction, and none to spare for whatever it is he is trying to express. Allied to this is the literariness of some of the verses mainly of the older generation of poets. As though having read and responded to other men's poetry, they want to show they can do the same thing. Too often they want to write a poem rather than having a poem to write. This leads them to an attempt to react to their own experience in terms of someone else's sensibility (as characterised by a personal movement or rhythm) or to a sterile preoccupation with poetic forms. Thus Mr. J. E. dare McFarlane's fondness for the English Romantic poets overpowers his individual sensibility to the extent that his verse is sometimes Shelleyan language married to Wordsworthian movement : And I have sought, Uneasy with thy hidden pain, the woods On summer nights, to listen to the leaves Whispering in solemn conclave, or to scan Their black and golden tracery, images And symbols of thine own mysterious fate, Dark with forebodings, golden with lure And promise of thy matchless loveliness ; And baffled, I have lifted searching eyes Unto thy mist-veiled mountains, where the peace And majesty of heaven linger yet. (My Country)

Ancient history · Art · Literature · Poetry · History · South Asian Studies and Diaspora

• In Search of Creative Expression

  Open Access•Uri Dorchin•Creativity Studies•2017

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