The Poetic Heart: Connecting Humanity
January 2008
Banner photo: ©Natural Selection Craig Tuttle/Design Pics/Corbis
The Light of the Poetic Spirit
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.
Freedom owns the poet's soul
He shall not be garbed in
A cloak of ideology
His voice not laced by
Legislation
His voice, the voice of
Birds: a robin heralding hope
A nightingale lyrically lamenting pain
An eagle emoting the people's
Power
On a bird-wing he will streak
From freehold to the dungeon
His songs-freedom songs filled
With fire; the words flaring
Flames
The poet's fervor fueled with
Strength gained from the draughts of
Intoxicating water drawn from an
Oasis of deep dank poisoned
Wells
By contrast, most of my poems are satirical and humorous. This portrait of "The Poet," for instance:
Through the night
The typewriter sounded
Clatter-clatter-clatter
Like the sonorous ring of an auctioneer's bell
The heedful owl hooted hilariously
The birth of a new bard,
"Hail! A poet is born."
The mole stopped
To listen under the bedewed soil,
But the frumpy frog
Full of malice croaked a curse
Through the whispering of dreamers
The writer wrote and wrote
Deaf to the nocturnal chorus
Of pompous praises and raucous curses
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.
Sounds of a Cowhide Drum
Boom! Boom! Boom!
I am the drum on your dormant soul,
cut from the black hide of a sacrificial cow.
I am the spirit of your ancestors,
habitant in hallowed huts,
eager to protect,
forever vigilant.
Let me tell you of your precious heritage,
of your glorious past trampled by the conqueror,
destroyed by the zeal of a missionary.
I lay bare facts for scrutiny
by your searching mind, all declarations and dogmas.
. . .
Boom! Boom! Boom!
That is the sound of a cowhide drum--
The Voice of Mother Africa.
(Sounds of a Cowhide Drum, published by Oxford University Press © Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali 1971)
Dr. Mbuyiseni Oswald Mtshali's anthology Sounds of a Cowhide Drum (1971) was one of the first books of poems by a black South African poet to gain wide distribution, offering a rare view of the experiences of black South Africans in the apartheid era. After living and teaching in New York for many years, Dr. Mtshali has recently returned to South Africa.
