Feature

The Light of the Poetic Spirit

By Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali

Dr. Mtshali meeting with SGI President Ikeda in Tokyo, 1991  [©Seikyo Shimbun]

Poetry is the language of emotions and a medium for articulating feelings, opinions, ideas, thoughts and beliefs. Much more than an artistic pastime, it is the spiritual repository of human dreams which originate from the depths of the subconscious.

To understand these poetic verities and artistic functions is to master the whole essence of life. And that means true liberation from the shackles of convention which is synonymous with oppression and exploitation.

The poetic spirit enables us to rise above the level of other living organisms to use our mental, physical and spiritual endowments to deal with the complexities of our universe. The poetic spirit can immure both the practitioner of poetics and the acolyte from even the most extreme of external pressures.

The poetic spirit equips us with vital skills to deal with all types of conditions of life. A portrayal in words, sustained by the faculties of our five senses--as well as the sixth sense of balance and the seventh of imagination--sets us on an even keel, enabling us to face the demands of life and cope with the struggles of existence. Poetry brings us into unison with our surroundings, helping create a rhythm with the cosmos, so that we can live in harmony with other living beings in an ideal environment. We invoke the help of the sun, the moon, the stars, mountains and rivers.

Since time immemorial we have burst into song and dance and sung praises to the beauty of flowers and the abundance of fruits for our enjoyment. All this fecundity is encapsulated in the nutshell of the poetic spirit like a pearl in the belly of an oyster. How is it possible to capture the nimble-footed movements of the muse that infuses us with poetic spirit?
 

The Oral Tradition

Long before the written word was created, an oral tradition existed which blended with song and dance to convey meaning. This tradition played a vital role in the black poetry movement against apartheid, the system of brutal racial separation and discrimination practiced in South Africa until 1994.

The influence of oral tradition has been supplanted by the vagaries of the print media. I cannot stand at a street corner or subway and recite my poems. Although the first priority is self-expression, the purpose is communication and sharing ideas, opinions. In my poem, "Sounds of a Cowhide Drum," which is also the title of my anthology, the drum becomes the symbol of the transmission of vital information and important news, good or bad. The "boom! boom! boom!" sound was a wake-up call to the complacent white minority to heed the cries of the oppressed black majority. The "boom! boom!" sound was also a rallying cry for all the oppressed people to rise up and fight the evil system of apartheid.

As in all fields of human endeavor which involve emotive language through the use of creative skills that invoke the muse, poetry has a whole range of presentation from the most sublime to the most militant and radical.

Consider this untitled meditation on the poet from James Matthews, whose collection Cry Rage stands as a balancing beam of the imaginative mastery of realism, presenting poetry as a potent contrapuntal force--a weapon of righteousness--against evil.

By contrast, most of my poems are satirical and humorous. This portrait of "The Poet," for instance:

Matthews was born and raised in the colorful District Six of the city of Cape Town. I come from the tiny rural town of Vryheid, from the village of KwaBhanya, where life was still steeped in custom and tradition, until the missionaries came to proselytize to the various indigenous peoples, dividing us into different churches and denominations.

Apartheid was the epitome of divisiveness. Its antithesis is the poetic spirit, a spirit that transcends boundaries and crosses all the borders of culture, ethnicity, race, color, creed, gender. Even in the dark belly of the system, the apartheid jail, I experienced how apartheid blurred the lines between the jailor and the prisoner. The former was imprisoned by fear and insecurity of his own undoing. The latter, though physically shackled and thrown in the dungeons of despair, was spiritually still free to rise above the pain of confinement that was meant to destroy the strength to fight for freedom.

As long as the flame kindled by the poetic spirit remains alive, hope will always spring eternal, enabling us to triumph over the forces of darkness.  
 

[©Otto Lang/Corbis]

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