Contribution Of Eric Roach And Martin Carter To The Anglophone Caribbean

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I.D.: 806007430 University: University of the West Indies, St. Augustine. Faculty: Humanities and Education Department: Liberal Arts Academic Year: 2007-2008 Semester: II Course Code: LITS 2507 Course Title: West Indian Poetry B: Selected Poets Course Lecturer: Dr. L. Regis Course Tutor: Dr. L. Regis Tutorial Time: Wed. 11-12 Title: By close reference to their poetry discuss the contribution to the tradition of Anglophone poetry by Eric Roach and Martin Carter. Date Due: 14th March 2008.

Anglophone poetry is not simply poetry in the English language. Neither is it bound to a specific geographical area such as the Caribbean. Anglophone poetry therefore refers to a cultural link in the form of poets that transcend geography and creates a familiarity with English 1

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speaking readers. Eric M. Roach and Martin Carter are two Anglophone Caribbean poets that have contributed to the tradition of Anglophone poetry in the last century. Through verse, the two have given rise to nation language and protest poetry, defined the parameters of Anglophone poetry, made the Caribbean and its people a viable subject of poetry and publicised the use of personal reference. Nation language is the language of a particular territory, in the Caribbean it is the Creole as opposed to the Standard English. Both Eric Roach and Martin Carter utilised the nation language of Trinidad and Tobago and Guyana respectively to convey the themes and concerns of the poet. “Probably the most important development during this period of writing was Roach’s return to folk forms and speech patterns, utilising oral techniques which had begun in varying degrees in his earlier work” (Gianetti, 139). This is evidenced in “Littering Earth’s Centre”, where Roach expresses his dismay and disillusionment with the newly independent Trinidad and Tobago, the failed West Indian Federation and to the emerging literary form. It is vividly seen in “Verse in August” which is considered Roach’s poetic final will and testament. Roach writes, “knock drum / draw bow / on fiddle strings / let rhythm jump / and catgut screech / let all time jig / a kalinda and reel / these august freedom days / let dead bones rise” (1-9). Roach uses Creole for his final plea for the native culture which he sees disappearing from the younger generation who live “in this uprooted suburb” (21). Martin Carter too utilises the nation language in what is described a political poetry. However, Carter is not simply political but a pioneer in the Guyanese literary tradition. Roach described Carter as a poet whose work must not be limited to political classification. “The poems are political. Carter is nothing if not political, but they are so deeply human, so fine that their quality transcends the reality and the immediacy of politics” (qtd. in Gianetti, 28). Carter made the conscious decision to write primarily for the masses, hence his poetry is generally 2

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characterised by clear language. “Such writing is essential to any popular movement; its purpose is not to explore beneath the surface of reality to new spiritual and imaginative dimensions it puts its back to the wall and inspires defiance”(Louis, 67). Validation of nation language occurs in Carter’s “Shape and Motion Two”, Carter writes: Jump of the ground Pull down a star Burn till you bleed Far

far. (12-15)

“The turn to take “dialect” seriously involves a turn to indigenous sources for forms as well” (Breiner, 178). It is also shown in “Cartman of Dayclean”, however, the Creole title is misleading as there is no Creole in the poem itself. The explanation could be that Carter attempts to be both linguistically and socially transformational. “It is a descriptive poem of labour at dawn, written in Standard English, but the Creole title-word, ‘day-clean’ (meaning dawn), is used transformation ally not neutrally: cleansing the day and-by implication-the ‘broken land’ of Guyana, constitutes a revolutionary act” (Breiner, 27). Carter’s use of Creole is his way of linking the personal hardship of the Guyanese worker to the international proletarian experience. Roach and Carter legitimise: (1) the development of poetry into indigenous rather that metropolitan standard Englishfor this the discovery that Caribbean creoles are to varying degrees African in origin was crucial, providing a coherent basis for nation language. And (2) the exploration of “orature,” an oral aesthetic of written poetry, which is intimately related to the (re)definition of audience. (Breiner, 14) However, it must be noted that though the use of nation language exists there is no destruction of poetic form that sparked the ‘Savacou debate’ which characterised Roach’s career. 3

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Eric Merton Roach has been described by Jennings as “endlessly trying to find a balance between protest poetry and high art... his poetry ranges over matters of an emerging...West Indian identity, the problem of audience and reception and the purpose of a poet” (23). Through Roach’s contribution to the magazine Savacou, the question of what is Anglophone or specifically Anglophone Caribbean poetry was bitterly debated. Roach did not simply argue through the role of a literary critic but produced poetry that attempted to display the form that can utilise the existing and inherited conventions and fuse these with Caribbean themes and concerns. The poet employs the sonnet, an inherited English form and historicises it. This is shown in the poem “She (for Basil Pitt)”. The subject is not a metaphysical one but the glorification of the Caribbean woman. Although Roach can invert the turn of the poem, this is not done and he adheres to the convention but makes the poem relevant to the Caribbean experience. The sonnet begins with images of destruction, such as “Of ruthless traffic, of dark uneasy peace” (3) and “of old continents, and the commingling / Of our blood with wanton, lustful ease” (5-6). It ends with images of “passion” life, birth and continuous renewal as represented by “Flame-flowered immortelle and flamboyant / Crimson hibiscus” (10-11). According to Jennings, it is “(a)n apt representation of the Caribbean people” (27). Roach ends the sonnet with an ironic twist. Jennings asks “(h)ow can a woman who has endured such shame, brutality and rape have “pride and passion kindling in her eye” (14)?” (28). The answer lies again in the resilience of the people, signified by the ever present immortelle flower. “Therefore, the “Green foliage and sheer blue of sea and sky” cannot help but “Surround her with their loves” (12-13). In fact, “they flaunt / The pride and passion kindling in her eye” (14)” (Jennings, 28). Through this, Roach illustrates that the Anglophone Caribbean poem does not necessarily have to destroy the poetic inheritance but assimilate it. Roach argues that the tradition

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in the Caribbean is too short therefore assimilation is necessary for the production of good verse. Roach writes in “Letter to Lamming” where he describes the then Caribbean situation: Why were we born under the star of rhyme Among a displaced people lost on islands Where all time past is knotted in time present? Here we are architects with no tradition, Are hapless builders upon no foundation (47-51) In “The Blind Weavers” Roach’s ambivalence turns to desire for the respect, admiration and fame given to writers such as Homer and Milton. Roach writes that “Blind Homer, blind John Milton / Are my masters” (16-17). It also alludes to a belief that a prophetic blindness or handicap by the poet is necessary for recognition and the people taking heed. “Here we clearly see his love for his people, but also his struggle with his role as a poet and his English literary traditions” (Jennings, 27). This is the reality of the poet that Roach tried to impart on the younger contemporaries. In the first verse Roach writes “I call you greeting to startle / Your blind weaving” (3-4). By greeting his “masters” Roach is placed in their literary tradition and also “offer(s) a new model for poetic writing. So his “greeting” is at once a gesture of salute and at the same time an expression of defiance” (Jennings, 28). "To Learie" (1939), “the first poem he published in the Trinidad Guardian and the first published under his own name” (Breiner). It is shaped as a Miltonic sonnet by Roach not as an elitist rendition but to demonstrate the value of the sonnet in the protest poetry that he produced. According to Breiner, “(t)his choice invokes not only the prestige of the sonnet form itself, but also Milton's characteristic use of the sonnet as an instrument of civic and even partisan utterance”. By this Roach gives a way to avoid hurtful poems. In “I Say It Was Woman” complains about form when he writes, “Hard poems bruise my mind / (you’re not one of them) / 5

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but I can’t write them” (1-3). “He is also referring to the new trends in form displayed by young poets who jettison all notions of standards and traditional convention in their urgency to communicate” (Gianetti, 133). However, it is not Roach alone that utilises the traditional form. ‘The Indian Woman’ As if in response to these experiences, the poems draw on a rural ballad tradition. Carter does not follow common metre, but reins the poem to an economy of narrative well-known in the ballad form. “Then he shifts from narrative to prophetic lyric in an attempt to bring a political analysis to the poem” (Robinson, 23). Carter breaks the tame flowing four versed stanza with the outburst: No! No! The misery of the years Against time gives birth to flaming wrath And wrath like fire, life’s demands Makes misery’s fuel, freedom’s flame. Roach and Carter both use the Caribbean as the subject of their poetry. While Roach uses nature and peasant folk, Carter uses the Guyanese worker. Nature poetry became politicised through “social realism (in effect, peopling the landscape as a way of assuring its value) or moralizing (causing the landscape to sermonise about human concerns)” (Breiner, 135). Roach did moralising when he wrote in “Corn”, “Look on the sower and the seed / That thrives between the rock and the rain” (28-29). Here the rock symbolises the infertility of the poetic experience he felt in Trinidad. In “Homestead”, Roach writes “Who are unsung but who remain / Perpetual as the earth winds pass / Unkillable as the earth’s grass” (44-46). The focus on the peasant is not only due to the peasant background of Roach. It represented “(a) new urge for some solidarity if not identity with the folk as a premise for what comes to be felt as the poet’s responsibility to speak securely of and for the folk, because they define national identity” (Breiner, 151). Carter 6

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too believes in the proletariat as the foundation of the nation. Carter focuses on the workers of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP). Trotsky said that the “revolutionary literature cannot but be imbued with a spirit of social hatred” (qtd. in Robinson, 25). The focus on the activist and class hatred is seen in “Do Not Stare at Me”: Do not stare at me from your window, lady. Stare at the wagon of prisoners! Stare at the hearse passing by your gate! Stare at the slums in the south of the city! Stare hard and reason, lady, where I came from and where I go. (14-19) The personal reference used by Roach and Carter creates a unique bond between reader and persona in which the reader feels individually addressed and the persona speaks in the first person. Carter uses ‘you’ and ‘I’ in “Looking at Your Hands”: And so if you see me looking at your hands listening when you speak marching in your ranks you must know I do not sleep to dream, but dream to change the world. (17-23) According to Leo Spitzer, “ ‘You’ is a startling word; it calls up the dormant ego in every human being: ‘you’ is in fact nothing but the ego seen by another; it also suggests someone outside of us who is to say ‘you’ and who feels akin to ‘us’ as a fellow man” (qtd. in Roopnarine, 11). Both poets use the tragic “I” as seen in Roach’s “I Am Archipelago”. “There is the general, 7

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rhetorical tribal “I”, in which the poet sees himself as the spokesman for the group” (Rohlehr, 129). This allows for the creation of what Louis calls “lucid, vividly simple, free verse” (67). The ‘I’ creates the protest poems of the two poets and moves “from the poetry of “here we are” to its extreme, “here we are and what are you going to do about it?”” (Breiner, 163). Roach also uses ‘we’ in “City Centre ‘70” where he writes, “we cannot stand and wait: / our turbulence burst like bombs” (28-29). Gianetti explains this use: As a guilt ridden poet whose art is his only tool and weapon, he accepts blame for a silence which did nothing to help the suffering of his brothers, at the time being conscious of the of the impotence of “his threnodies, his blues” in doing much more than identifying them through the exercise of his effective gifts. He had already accepted collective blame for his generation with the use of a communal “we” when he declared

“we jailed them”... 12

Eric Roach and Martin Carter have left a mark on Anglophone poetry. Through their poems, both have legitimised the use of Creole in literature and showed that traditional forms can be maintained with new themes and concerns. In addition they utilised the Caribbean environment and people in poetry making the region no longer full of “exoticized natives” (Rohlehr, 125). Finally the personal nature of their poems created an inalienable bond between reader and poet that lasts till today.

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Works Cited Breiner, A. Laurence. An Introduction to West Indian Poetry. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Breiner, Laurence. “Life and Times: Laureate of nowhere”. 24 Feb. 2008. Carter, Martin. University of Hunger: Collected poems and selected prose. Ed. Gemma Robinson, Tarset; Northumberland: Bloodaxe Books, 2006. Gianetti, Danielle. “The Life and Times of Eric Roach.” Diss. University of the West Indies, 1984. James, Louis. “The Necessity of Poetry.” All Are Involved: The art of Martin Carter. Ed. Stewart Brown. Leeds: Peepal Tree Press, 2000. 65-70. Jennings, G. Lisa. “Renaissance Models For Caribbean Poets: Identity, authenticity and the early modern lyric revisited.” Diss. The Florida State University, 2005. Rohlehr, Gordan. “West Indian Poetry: Some Problems of Assessment.” My Strangled City and Other essays. Port-of-Spain : Longman Trinidad, 1992. 107-132. Roopnarine, Rupert. Web of October: Rereading Martin Carter. Yorkshire: Peepal Tree Press, 1986.

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