B.A III Literatures in English Semester V Poetry (Notes)

Collected From: Internet/ Websites

POETRY SECTION

Letter to Live Poets, I  by Bruce Beaver (1928 –)

Summary

A series of linked poems, published as they came out of the poet’s pen, were poetic products of an imagination which feared a collapse of its sanity.

Bruce Beaver, the Australian poet, addresses his counterpart in the United States, Frank O’ Hara, who met with his tragic end in a quirky accident: he was run over by a beach buggy. Critics compare these poems of Beaver with Robert Lowell’s Life studies. Living in Down Under, the poet complains about the slowness of the news in arriving at the Australian shores.

The truth reaches us slowly here,

Is delayed in the main continually

Or censored in the tabloids.

The poet presents us with vignettes of contemporary events which had a tremendous impact on people of his generation. Though he refrains from specifying the war, it is obvious he is referring to the Vietnam War, in which America, a mighty super power, attempted to crush a tiny but irrepressible country like Vietnam. The napalm which American used destroyed crops and everything else. It was a kind of scorched earth policy. Civilians, including children were not spared from this inflammable bomb.

The poet’s fevered imagination makes him take a closer look at his own home front. Australia has a shark-infested shore but the frontier spirit of the Australians not only makes it a sport but also a money-spinning industry. People come in glamorous cars to watch “the shark aquarium at the wharf”.

Expressing his sympathies for the fellow poet, Beaver says O’Hara too had enemies ranged against him; times were against the poet. He is shocked by the news of O’Hara’s tragic death “trampled by the machine beyond protest….” He resists the temptation to eulogize the poet but says he was attentive to the words of the poet. In the aftermath of the poet’s death, crushed like “an empty beer can,” Beaver wonders whether such an accident could have happened anywhere except in the great US of A. The poet’s death is significant of the materialistic times. But the poet has transcended his petty times by making his poems “talkative”; they are “living things” that no senseless culture could obliterate.

The poet identifies himself as “the young old factor of communications,” one who wants to concoct communication in order to feel alive. He has now become conscious of a community of “live, mortal poets”, ordinary folk who are sitting up and listening to things. He imagines himself as a conversationalist raising questions and trying to find answers. But increasingly he finds himself diminished.

The poet remembers a vivid scene close to home. There is an aquarium close to his home which housed quite a number of sharks. People thronged the place at feeding time, just to see the grinning sharks going on a feeding frenzy. The green water churned red. The people watched this macabre scene with delight.

The poet does not accept the values of a society which gives rise to such things, though he has to live close to it. And he realizes that such gruesome spectacle is common enough in most cities of the world, which made violence vicarious sport, but writing and talking to fellow poets keeps the sanity alive. The poet thinks it is his duty to remind people of truths, however unpalatable they are.  When parliamentary democracy is flouted by the president or when people are killed in Vietnam in hegemonic wars, the poet never fails to protest, even when his bodily and mental functions may cease. People will later recall that a poet lived here who was not afraid to speak his mind.

The Death of the Bird by A D Hope (1907-2000)

Summary

“For every bird there is this last migration,” so begins one of the most famous poems by the leading Australian poet, A D Hope. Quite casually, it brings to the reader the awareness of mortality to birds, indeed to every living thing. Using the migration of birds, the poet chronicles the death of a bird.

The season of migration arrives and the winter deadens the landscape and the birds understand intuitively that they must move to warmer climates for food, breeding. But this migration, so fascinating to ornithologists world over, is not without dangers to the bird population. Predation, poaching and unexpected changes of weather kill them in huge number but that does not stop the bird of A D Hope from undertaking one last flight from which it will not return.

What guides the bird unerringly to its refuge has been a mystery. Some say the magnetic pull of the earth guides them. Some others say there is a tiny mental map which charts their flight. It travels across the entire hemisphere, obeying a “summons…to come” It is only when the poet begins to talk of “exiled love” within the bird’s heart that one begins to understand that this nostalgic flight of the bird may include the exiled Australian too, whose home, England, packed him away to a distant and harsh continent to keep itself immaculate.

The next movement of the poem looks at the landscape from the aerial view point of the bird which skims over long tracts of land, oceans and man-made marvels like “temple or palace” in its seemingly unending flight. It joins the flock of birds migrating to better climes but at this time it is “single and frail” in the company of young birds winging their way across oceans. The sky has been the natural element of the bird, but not anymore. It has become an unfriendly space because of its weakness.

Now the bird understands that this flight is destined to be its last. The mind which has always unerringly guided it towards its destination is not able to do so.  As the poet says very well, “The guiding spark of instinct winks and dies.” It cannot find its way through. Its small wisdom cannot cope with the complexity of negotiating a long flight. The wind which guided it has now turned hostile, it buffets it. Unable to carry on any longer, the bird gives up and the earth receives this small parcel of death with no regret or malice.

Ruins of a Great House by Derek Walcott

Summary

On a sojourn with a poet-friend, Derek Walcott, the Nobel-prize winning West Indies poet, finds the ruins of a colonial house with a panoramic view of a lake in front of it. He starts with a reference to Thomas Browne’s “Urn Burial” which also contains remains of a human, in the same way the ruins of the colonial house represents the bygone age of colonialism, whose vestiges still remain with us. All that remains now are the stones, what the poet calls “disjecta membra” (scattered fragments) of a great house. The girls who used to do the secretary’s job of filing papers have mingled with the candledust  and they could file nothing  now, except the nails of the overgrown lizards of the house. The angels who were carved on the gates have their faces smeared with bird droppings which gives them an appearance of grimace. The remains of a wagon, which must have seen great action once, is broken, axle and wheel lying to one side. It has become “a leprosy of a house” with none except the three crows watching the spectacle from a eucalyptus tree.

The river around the great house continues to flow as it did in the olden days “obliterating the hurt.”  Exiled craftsmen were used to do ornamental grille work which is supposed to protect the great house but it is now powerless to do anything of the kind as rot had eaten into it. The woodwork is riddled with worms and the only cavalry, which used to inspire terror to the enemy, is now reduced to cavalry of mice which keep scurrying in the house. Kipling, the great poet of the Empire, couldn’t have imagined the fall of it as evidenced from the rustle of the lime tree. The English used the Bible or sword to conquer the ignorant native populace and Walcott feels a lot of pity for them.

The compound wall still encloses a garden and the plow now then strikes the bones of an animal or a human being, witnesses to crimes swept under the carpet. The poet thinks of those buccaneer-adventurers, those men who were instrumental in the spread of British empire, like Raleigh and Drake, whose main motive is to waylay the ships of Spain carrying golden galleons. They were all mercenaries, employed by an avaricious empire to expand itself. But the seeds of their evil deeds survives to this day, “blackening the mind” of the survivors. These men are juxtaposed with the writings of eminent men like John Donne who had a paradoxical existence with adventurers of this kind.

Though the poet is enraged by the abominable slave trade and British imperialism, he still has enough compassion to think that Britain itself must have been a faction ridden, frequently war-torn part of Europe before it got separated from the mainland. He set out to write the atrocities of the Empire but catches himself commiserating with it which must come as a surprise even the poet himself

The Negro Speaks of Rivers by Langston Hughes

Summary

The speaker claims that he has known rivers as “ancient as the world,” older than the blood that flows in our veins. His soul has grown deep, just like the rivers. He writes about bathing in the Euphrates at the beginning of civilization, and later, he built a hut along the Congo and listened to the river as he fell asleep. He looked at the Nile and watched the pyramids rise nearby; he heard the muddy Mississippi sing when Abraham Lincoln traveled to New Orleans. He repeats that he has known “ancient, dusky rivers,” and his soul has grown deep like the rivers.

Analysis:

“The Negro Speaks of Rivers” is Langston Hughes’s first mature poem. He wrote it in 1920 at the age of seventeen, while traveling by train to visit his father in Mexico. The young Hughes was inspired to pen this verse when his train crossed over the Mississippi River. It was published in 1921 in the journal the Crisis, which had a predominantly African American readership. Although Hughes did not technically write "The Negro Speaks of Rivers" in or about Harlem, he addresses themes that would later become closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Hughes dedicated this poem to W.E.B. DuBois a few years after its initial publication. It was also read out loud at Hughes's own funeral service in 1967.

When Langston Hughes was writing "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," he was most influenced by the work of Carl Sandburg and Walt Whitman. He particularly cited Whitman's “Song of Myself” as an inspiration for the longer lines in “Negro.” The poem is free verse but has the rhythm of a gospel preacher. Hughes utilizes anaphora, which is the repetition of words or phrases at the start of each line, like “I built,” “I looked,” and “I heard.”

In this poem, the speaker links himself to his ancestors, firmly placing them in important historical, religious, and cultural sites all over the world. The speaker begins by claiming a connection to the world's ancient rivers that predated human beings, and that has made his soul grow "deep like the rivers." This insightful and articulate description indicates the speaker's immense intellect, and allows him to make a definitive connection between people of his race and the rest of human civilization. In the early 20th Century, white Americans often viewed their darker-skinned counterparts as less than human, and here, Hughes offers concrete proof of historical equality.

The speaker mentions four great rivers, starting with the Euphrates, which historians and archaeologists often label as the birthplace of human civilization. Then, he mentions the strong and mighty Congo, along which many great African kingdoms have flourished. The speaker then cites the long, winding Nile and the great Egyptian pyramids. He witnessed the creation of these structures, which are amongst man's greatest feats of architecture. Finally, he writes about the muddy and golden Mississippi, which he links American slavery and Abraham Lincoln.

Although the speaker shares many of Langston Hughes's beliefs, he is a universal figure rather than an autobiographical depiction of Hughes himself. The speaker serves as a voice for all African Americans, as he traces their lineage to the cradles of civilization. Onwuchekwa Jemie extols the merits of the poem:

It is a sonorous evocation of transcendent essences so ancient as to appear timeless, predating human existence, longer than human memory. The rivers are part of God's body, and participate in his immortality. They are the earthly analogues of eternity: deep, continuous, mysterious. They are named in the order of their association with black history. The black man has drunk of their life-giving essences, and thereby borrowed their immortality.

Death is one of the main themes in the poem, although it is subtle. Critic Arnold Rampersad writes:

With its allusions to deep dusky rivers, the setting sun, sleep, and the soul, [the poem] is suffused with the image of death and, simultaneously, the idea of deathlessness. As in Whitman's philosophy, only the knowledge of death can bring the primal spark of poetry and life. Here Langston Hughes became ‘the outsetting bard,’ in Whitman's phrase, the poet who sings of life because at last he has known death.

Meaning of the Poem

Throughout Langston Hughes’ poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” the theme of roots is prominent and this theme gives rise to the ultimate meaning of the poem,  even though the word “roots” itself is not used in the text. The textual details of the poem invoke strong imagery related to veins, rivers, and the roots of trees and give the reader a sense of the timelessness of these objects. Furthermore, through his use of language and images, Langston Hughes is able to create two meanings for the theme of roots since on the one hand they refer to the deep roots like trees have as well as “roots” in the historical and familial sense. Through these images and details, the reader begins to understand the complexity of the poem and it is clear that it addresses themes that are much larger than simply rivers or human veins—it is a statement on the whole of African-American history as it has flourished along rivers, which gave life and allowed “human veins” and firm historical roots.

In the short first stanza, the speaker in the poem by Langston Hughes states that he has “known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood in human veins.” From this early point in the point in the poem, images of the canals of veins that run throughout the human body as well as similar images of rivers that wind around and are shaped like veins form our understanding that this poem is about more than blood or water, it is about roots and circuits. Like veins or rivers, roots run deep and twist irregularly through the medium in which they are planted. The ancient rivers the speaker talks of are like the blood in veins or the roots under trees because they provide sustenance and can give and support life. This is later supported when the speaker discusses early civilizations that thrived off the river system, thus the theme of “roots” has a dual meaning.

Although that will be addressed later in this analysis of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes, it is important to point out that after the first stanza there is a sentence that stands by itself for emphasis that simply states in one of the more important lines in “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” by Langston Hughes, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers.” This stand-alone line prefaces the issues that will be discussed in the following lines and makes the reader see that rivers are not like the long probing roots of a tree or human veins, but rivers are similar to the soul and, like Hughes’ quest for identity, never ending. When the speaker says that his soul is deep like the rivers, he is saying that because of this almost organic connection with the earth, he thrives and can understand. It is also significant that he says his soul has “grown” deep like the rivers since the idea that it “grows” further emphasizes the organic nature of knowledge and one’s soul. Like tree roots that extend far into the earth, the speaker is “nourished” by roots, both in physical terms (the rivers and human veins) as well as in the metaphorical sense.

This poetry analysis of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers” shifts gears along with the poem by Langston Hughes in a new section. The third section changes the tone of the poem since it reverts to the first-person perspective. Although the reader knows it is impossible for one person to have lived in so many places and time periods at once, it is understood that the “I” being used is meant to represent hundreds of thousands of voices from the past to the present. The speaker says, “I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young / I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled it me to sleep” which makes the reader aware that the “ancient rivers” spoken of before are the “roots” both in terms of history as well as physically. The theme of rivers is continued in the following lines where the speaker details looking along the Nile and then hearing singing in Mississippi and New Orleans and it is clear that these are locations of particular importance in African and African-American history. The speaker seems to be equating survival with the rivers since, like veins and roots, the rivers provide nutrients (also in the metaphorical sense) necessary to survival and growth. Underlying all of these statements about rivers is the theme of roots. These rivers are all in separate locations and though they are like individual trees with separate root systems, they are of the same variety and can support and give life. Along with this idea is the fact that the roots of African and African-American history are not only within the people or the overarching soul of a group of people, but that they are within the souls that “have grown deep like the rivers” they have thrived along for centuries.

After the speaker has highlighted the many rivers important to the “roots” of the souls of people, there is another line break, which seems to be separated for added emphasis. The speaker states, “I’ve known rivers / Ancient, dusky rivers” and the whole theme of the roots of knowing and understanding are brought full circle. Just as when the speaker said his soul had “grown” deep, in this separated section when he says, “I’ve known” rivers he is making a reference to the roots of knowledge. Trees have been associated with knowledge from as early on as the Bible (the Tree of Knowledge) and the theme of roots he invokes here not only addresses the roots of history, circuits, and the soul, but also of knowledge and understanding. This knowledge he refers to is more akin to omniscient cultural knowledge and identity and the roots, which are fed by the metaphorical river and maintained by the human veins and bloodlines of generations. The speaker ends the poem with the repeated phrase, “My soul has grown deep like the rivers” and after reading the stanzas that followed after the first time he stated it, the meaning is both clearer and more complex since we realize so many issues of history, the soul, culture, and understanding are being discussed.