At Legon in Ghana, shortly after the Soul to Soul event - at which I met Carlos Santana, backstage, immediately after he had finished playing the Soul Sacrifice set, ( we watched the sunrise together as someone was singing some gospel ) it was a great show, it was on Ghana's Independence Day and on my wife's Names Day – only good memories and a few days later I was given Rene Maria Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet by George Crowell ( an African American dance student). I just want to say that poetry is poetry. Just as philosophy is philosophy, a question is a question and there are also good and bad answers, just as there are good and bad manners. As the saying goes, "manners maketh man". There too, it's cultural – as the other saying goes, "You can take the monkey out of the jungle but you can't take the jungle out of the monkey", no matter how hard you try. So, sometimes you just have to forgive. That too, and all those awkward situations is the stuff of poetry.
My own understanding now is that because post-colonial Nigeria is still very much a semi-literate society in which less than 50% of the population are not comfortable with the Buckingham Palace Language, those who believe themselves to be comfortable with it, naturally, see themselves as the nation's "luminaries" and sometimes as my personal luminary too, – ironically to the extent that they feel more concerned about the English Language than even those who have it as their mother tongue, who think and sleep and drink and dream in English. Why English is such a big deal is beyond my comprehension. Well, they've got a lot of work to do, teaching the 1. 3 billion Chinese and so many more corrections to make if they think of Ebonics as " bad English" not to mention Sam Selvon in Moses Ascending…
Once upon a time ( when I was about fourteen years old) , I practised singing this serenade, "Overhead the moon is beaming" and some of the other songs from "The Student Prince") , I thought that the lyrics were sort of poetic and beautiful…
Chidi,
Personally, (what else can I be?)
I love poetry.
I love your poetry
Sometimes your poetry hits me directly –
Clearly, because it is so direct and honest –
Without the sometimes discrete/ indiscreet fluff, bluff & embellishments, the stiff upper lip cum coitus Erectus of the pretentious sons of perdition who don't understand that it is in poetry ( and some kinds of prose) that the English Language which they worship so much, is reinvented, some will even say invented , certainly created and ALIVE and therein finds some respect. As Don Kenneth Harrow says elsewhere just recently, the hybrid is a continuous process and that is what the poet is, the poet in the present continuum with that long trail behind him, the long trail of all the poets before him, including those who he has never met, heard of or known ( in the spirit).
The poet is a hybrid continually in process, so there is no pure Italian – pure Latin, yes, so permit me to greet you Chidi, Dominus Vobiscum and please continue to reflect and enjoy the journey ad infinitum and ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem , as the cherub choir boys say when they serve sideways alongside some holy , unctuous, servile, paedophile poet-priests and some of our people from the so called academies and English Departments ( there are so many ) but what's the use if you have no muse but still, want to be a "poet"?
BTW these are "the wannabe"
So, what to say about divine poetry. – for example, some of the Hebrew Prophets?
Is whatever document we have before us not subject to literary criticism and even language analysis? What about X, Y and Z's blog pieces?
In " Axis Bold As Love" Jimi Hendrix ( also a great poet sings, "Just ask the axis - he knows everything"
Just one more word about " embellishments" - right now I'm thinking of music which also has its own poetic conceits - has its own language/languages - of course, a soloist or composer embellishes, that's part of the beauty of music…and music is also something that a man should not boast about - although we have a guy like Jelly Roll Morton who is reported to have said, "I invented jazz" - jazz - another hybrid, so how dare Cornelius " correct" someone's solo? I can't even "correct" my own – it's a one-time thing… like the bird that flies out of your moth and doesn't return, or the arrow that is released from the bow. A man a cool man does not boast about English, poetry Music or Sex. I dare not even suggest that you could use more of the "language of the street." The rap and hip-hop lyrics are some of the great protest poetry
Boasting and boasting. Thou shalt not boast – In Sweden at least it is a sin. It doesn't matter how many Nobel Prizes you've won, how many panted inventions you have to your name. However, every time I go down Drottninggatan I smile with quiet satisfaction because there 's a silver placard slap bang in the middle of the street with a quotation from S Sweden's greatest Strindberg in which he proclaims, "min eld är den största i Sverige " ( My fire is the GREATEST in Sweden" from a longer sentence in which he said, "Jag har icke det skarpaste hufvudet, men elden; min eld är den största i Sverige" ( I don't have the sharpest mind, but the fire; my fire is the greatest in Sweden." (Just imagine Chidi, if you said, "My poetic fire is the greatest in Nigeria!" The fallout would be immense - but George Bernard Shaw is credited with having said, I'm quoting our English teacher Von Bradshaw from memory, that GBS said, " I can think of no writer in English Literature, not even Sir Walter Scott who I more despise than Shakespeare, when I match my intellect against his own. "
May God save us all from conceit.
It's just occurred to me (thinking of Baba Kadiri just now, true, sometimes we are of one mind and that's probably why you might think that it was me and not he that said: "Down with corruption!" -
Let's imagine that the OMNISCIENT Who by virtue of being THE ALMIGHTY, is perfect and is thereby by definition the greatest poet - I imagine that if Baba Kadiri says, if the Almighty is serious about saving Baba Kadir's soul then the Almighty should address Baba Kadiri in Baba Kadiri's most comprehensible Yoruba dialect. For you, I suppose it would be 21st century Igbo Language, maybe even the Igbo that they speak ay the Owerri Motor Park , the Street Igbo , not the elitist Igbo - for me it would be English; I would feel most comfortable with British English, less so with any other English. The Almighty knows that even if the Almighty prefers to speak to his servants in the Lashon Hakodesh. Now imagine some Besserwisser who doesn't know any better and as we know (and this is not poetic) because "empty buckets make most sound "he might want to correct the Almighty's vocabulary o, the Almighty's poetic diction, the Almighty's conjugation of verbs! Well, as the Torah Scholars know, in Hebrew prophecy, sometimes the present tense can be indicative of what has happened in the past or even what can/ will happen in the future, and of course, no matter what tense, God, the " I am that I am - I will be what I will be" uses, it's for us to dive deep-ly into the matter with all our heart and since we are so clever, have such a great IQ, with all our minds. You don't expect the Almighty to do the diving for you, do you?
As the bard Dylan asked, and that was a deep charge question,
"You think He's just an errand boy to satisfy your wandering desires? "
Indeed, when it comes to language comprehension, there's something like the relationship between Man Friday and Robinson Crusoe as taken up at the beginning of Coetzee's Nobel Lecture
Some music:
Van Morrison: Queen of the Slipstream ( from the Album " Poetic Champions Compose")
Please, keep on doing poetry…..
I write poetry of protest because I came from the streets, unlike colleagues who came from the academia/intelligentsia.CAO.
--Chidi Anthony Opara is a "Life Time Achievement" Awardee, Registered Freight Forwarder, Professional Fellow Of Institute Of Information Managerment, Africa, Poet and Publisher of PublicInformationProjects
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