/.ambezia (1978), VI (ii).ESSAY REVIEWPOETRY IN RHODESIAIN THIS REVIEW I try co give a brief survey of the poetry written in thiscountry from settler days up to the present. This means treating a wide rangeof themes, styles and temperaments. The qualities of a pioneer poet willobviously be different from the qualities of the latest Black protest verse. Orwill they? Reading the verse produced in this country reveals a common andpervasive mood in which the poet identifies himself with the country inabstract, almost mythological, terms, in this identification differences dis-appear and leave a great empathy between the poet and his land. H is not toofanciful to say that the country is his muse. This should not be surprisingconsidering what a beautiful country this is, and how for most of its recenthistory ii. has been fought over in one way or another. This has resulted inthe people feeling that they were, to use Doris Lcssing's crucial phrase, 'avestigial people': the Whiles because they are expatriated; the Blacksbecause they have been subjugated. In this situation it is inevitable that asense of identity is to be discovered primarily in an attempt to belong,physically, to the country. Jf there is such a thing as Rhodesian poetry orZimbabwean poetry, possessing its own inherent characteristics, it will bediscovered elucidating and affirming that relationship.From the early settlers to the present day, the most pervading emotionof White versifiers is the strangeness of Africa which in turn immediatelyinvokes a sense of loss for the homeland. The habitation of these poets, forthe most part, has been less an inspiration than a taunt and they have repliedby transforming the landscape into a suburban garden. They have respondedby emphasizing, often unconsciously, their Englishncss. in more perniciousways this is the fatal arrogance of the colonial, and it has spoilt many aprodigious talent in the arts. The quality of a poem in this context canalmost be judged by the freedom it strives for in the face of this over-bearingethos Š the ethos of the provincial. For the provincial in being estrangedfrom the cosmopolitan tradition goes to great lengths to prove that he ismore urbane, more civilized, more genteel, in short more traditional, thaneither the natives of ihe province or the residents of the metropolis. Pro-vincialism is 4nsular and ingrowing and results in mannerisms and tricks ofstyle rather than a mature style itself. Its energy goes in forcing every aliento become as they are. Provincialism is arrogantly exclusive, often anachron-istic, and uses aesthetic chauvinism as the vanguard of imperialism.This, however, does not create a sensibility which might transform thewriting into an African art; instead it remains the wistful, even pathetic,longing of the exile for home. Because there is no surrender to experiencethere is no innate sense of local tradition. The impcriousness of theimagination does not allow for it. Robert Frost has written a poem onAmerican colonialism, 'The Gift Outright',' where he says 'The land wasi'1'hc Poetry <>/ Robert Frost (London, J. Cape, 1971), 348.T87188ESSAY REVIEWours before we were the land's'. So the land remains 'unstoried, artless,unenhanced'. The poet must be possessed by the land. To do so, accordingto Frost, people must give themselves up to the land without reservation:'The gift outright'. Provincialism holds out against the 'spirit of place',2settles it, transforms it in his own image, but keeps itself inviolate, no matterhow heroic the struggle for the land may be. Regionalism, which is adifferent thing indeed from provincialism, is a gift outright of self: thesurrender to a gradual process of transformation. There is humility notarrogance, and it needs time. Perhaps the earliest verse from this countrywas prematurely provincial; as N. H. Brettell wrote in 1958, poetry 'doesseem to require a more ancient and stable soil than that provided by a societyof pioneers'.3 But the White Pioneers had their eye on Utopia; the Blackswho were taught our language were content, like Caliban, to use it to curseus. But now after almost a century there are signs that the settler is nowbeing possessed, and the Black poet who has always been so is at lastfinding something to sing about.The first collection of poetry published in English from Rhodesia wascompiled by John Snelling in 1958.4 The volume is uncannily reminiscent ofthose volumes of Georgian poetry written before the holocaust of the FirstWorld War, full of optimistic poetic awakenings heralding a new great age.So much does it fly on gilded wings that its colonial esprit de corps seemslittle more offensive than if it had been uttered by a Girl Guides' rally inSurbiton. The stately Foreword by the then Governor, Sir Herbert ]. Stanleywith his dedication to 'the glamour of courage, tenacity and achievement',5is as quaint as hearts of oak. The reader who dips into this dusty collectionmust resist the impish urge to cry 'famous last words'. For their world is notours. As the politics of the volume arc outmoded, so are the aesthetics. Theobdurate Preface by Snelling asserts, 'it is only a modest little bunch of wildflowers picked from the Rhodesian countryside at random'.6 The Introductionby Arthur Shearly Cripps is unashamedly belletrist. The worst that could besaid for the volume according to him was, 'It was imitative and sapless, butnot preposterous'.7 Thus he would send it to purgatory not damn it to hellwhich he reserved for preposterous 'Eliotesque' experiments. The scorn ofthat epithet is all the warning the modern reader needs: Eliot who now isthe Establishment to be reacted against, was in some ancient days, in somealien colony, still the 'drunken helot'. Rhodesian verse began two generationsbehind the times, isolated in some distant province of the Empire.Being lost in time, like some frozen mammoth with a daisy in itsmouth, does not necessarily result in poetic failure. There are traditionalistsadhering to poetic values which never vary: Robert Graves is the splendidexample in our time. But it would be a mistake to believe that he knew littleor nothing of the experiments of modernism. For to write as if nothing hadhappened in the arts in the fifty years which the anthology covers is wilfullyphilistine. Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot all happened Š although one meetszThr phrase belongs to D. IL Lawrence, Selected Literary Criticism (London,Hcincmann. 1973), 301*3"Three. Rhodesian poets', Rhodesiana (1958), III, 29.aFiftv Years of Rhodesian Verse, ed. J. Snelling (Oxford, B. II. Blackwcll, 1938).slbid.. 7.elhid.. 9.7 Ibid., 14.R. GRAHAM189* rmany Sunday artists who wish that they had not. Gentility alienated fromthe centre of cultural change, whether it be Europe or New York, results ingaucherie and ignorance. And to be in 'exile', as these Rhodesian poets feltthat they were, makes them all the more defiantly conservative. Cripps'sadvice to readers coming to Africa would be to bring the Bible andTheocritus! This 'desert island disc' approach to literature is too precious.'Provincialism', in the words of one modern poet, 'is the enemy'.8 This hasdebilitated, but worse, cheered up, the writers in this first anthology. Theyfall back on the pride of their achievement which, however justified sociallyor economically, does nothing for art. Pride nourishes rhetoric not poetry Šand insular rhetoric at that.The impression of life in Rhodesia, if we are to believe the anthology,is of Rhodes statuesquely gazing 'northward where the wide Zambezi gleams',while the leather-faced Pioneers spend their whole time in bended-kneedreverie at nature's mystery. Like the Georgians before them, nature poetryis all. Roy Campbell satirized the Georgians with this catechism:1. Have you ever been on a walking tour?2. Do you suffer from Elephantias of the Soul?3. Do you make friends easily with dogs, poultry, etc.?4. Are you easily exulted by natural objects?5. Do you live in one place and yearn to live in another place?6. Can you write in rhyme and metre?9And unfortunately the Rhodesians in this volume answer unashamedlyin the affirmative. Nature here gives impulses from a vernal wood asincessantly as alternating electrical current. 'Lend an ear to Nature'sdeeper call'10 say these poets; 'Are you easily exulted by natural objects?'There seems a considerable effort to insist that African nature can be at leastas spiritually uplifting as the Lake District. Nineteenth-century poetic afflatusis active in the veld where 'Nature sweeps away life's carping littleness.'1'Or, in Cripps's more famous poem, it is the veld 'That gave me my lostmanhood back.'12 But it is all too consciously literary; you cannot see the veldfor the vellum.The worst poems in the volume fail in feeling Š through a pride whichis too diffuse and all-enveloping, and through sentimentality, and worse,through a factitious heroicism. It may be invidious to point out the veryworst poet in the volume, N. H. D. Spicer, who is bad by any standard,except that he is commended by Cripps in his Introduction. He has a poemelaborating on the motto 'Play the Man' of Milton School, Bulawayo, whichsNo backward look thy spreading fame has marred.'13 The adjectival rash, ahomage one imagines more to the poet than to the school's founder, is asymptom of reliance on patriotic rather than poetic emotions, on impulseswhich one lost generation may have considered apt for poetry but whichnow fail hopelessly. But thankfully and mercifully, the volume is redeemedsEzra Pound, Selected Prose 1909-1965, cd. W. Cookson (London. Fabcr, 1973),135.9'Contemporary poetry1. Scrutinies, By Various Writers (London, J. Cape, 1928),161-80.iQpifty Years of Rhodesian Verse, 116,"Ibid., 36.izlbid., 22.i3lbid., 88.190ESSAY REVIEWpolitically by Spicer's impish alter ego, L. M. Hastings, who satirizes thevalues which Spicer adulates. Hastings is like a cheeky Rupert Brooke in themidst of an older, more staid generation, trying to shock and shattercomplacency. He has a true gift for the comic as he mocks the mad-dogs-and-Englishman Jones:Now if a lewd night shape moaned at JonesOr an eagleTen times larger than lifeFell like a boll out of the sky upon him,He would faint:He would have angina pectoris, nasal catarrh,Bright's disease, congested liver,And duodenal ulcer.His blood pressure would go up horribly,And he would die of a strokeAbout five in the afternoon,Leaving his wifeAnd all the rest of his mouldy relativesScrabbling among the policies.14The best poets in the book are those who recognize the interplay,often at times inscrutable, between human, one would almost say English,values and the alien nature of Africa, And in this volume it is a surprisinglyrare phenomenon. There are very few figures in the landscape. Most poetsare too busy endowing nature with their own exulted emotions and intentlyconning its inscrutable face for a glimpse of themselves. The exceptions areCullen Gouldsbury and Kingsley Fairbridge. The latter, I suggest, has agood case to be considered the first White poet we may want to call 'African'.Saying why is difficult and controversial, for it is a response to somethingpervasive yet unmistakable, it means more than using Africa as a subject, oreven having African paraphernalia in the poetry. I can only use Frost'sphraseology: he is 'possessed by' Africa. The country was certainly underthe skin of Fairbridge, who in the following poem has all the pathos of W. H.Davies, but the exotic startling quality of newer, stranger work. The poem is'Burial', recalling the burial of a child without ceremony:Alas! 1 am old, and you are the lastŠMwanango, the last of me, here on the hillside.The dust where you play'd by the edge of the kraalIs sodden with rain, and is trodden to mud.The hoe that I use to fashion your dwellingis caked with the earth that is taking you from me.Where now is Dzua who ripes the rukweza?And where now are you, O mwanango kaduku?Alas! Alas! My little child!I bury you here by the edge of the lands.!S"Ibid., 122.islbid., 69.R. GRAHAM191Such poets see more, and sec more clearly than their contemporaries. Andthey do so because they have responded directly to their environment andstayed honest to their own experiences. The melancholy twilight of nineteenth-century Romanticism is not disguised by blue skies and brown veld. The worstdefect of the volume is a debilitated antiquarian diction which is a sure signof a debilitated response to an intimidating land, which Fairbridge hasavoided through his tenacious empathy.The scenario of a typical Rhodesian poem of the time is !a glad springmorning', usually with a 'crimson dawn1; or, if the poet is a later riser, a'blazing sapphire sky'. Sometimes we are asked to believe 'skies of blue' shinewhere 'green grass grows'. Then among 'leafy glades' or leafy combes', 'silverstreams' flow to 'elfin grots'. The unwearied sojourner may find 'shady grots*with 'sudden rills', or ''murmuring streams* where the musing bard catchesglimpses of 'nymphs of fount or spring*, or even an occasional 'elfin chain'.All of this to the accompaniment of 'heavenly singing birds' who sing from' feather'd throats'. While these 'sweet birds jostle' the 'jocund* poet is in'deepest wonder steeped*, or, after lunch, in 'abject dread' or 'wan hope3 heindulges in a 'witching thrill'. And at all times in 'reverie' his 'spirit wended*its way to find rhymes for 'Nature's guerdon' and "silver birches burgeon';or for 'deign' and 'twain'. It is all some sickly sweet confection made upfrom the degeneracies of Spencer, Milton and Wordsworth. The poetry ischoked with these parasitic literary weeds as if the very sun and the rain hadstimulated them. At times the impertinent green fingers of the critic itchesto weed out the true blooms. 'Only A Pheasant Calls"'6 by Spicer reallybegins quite well; the reader senses an almost Lawrcmian directness:The pool lies calm and peaceful;On its faceNo ripple stirs to break the traceryOf trees reflected in its amber deep.Take away 'peaceful' from the first line; omit the personification by havingsurface not face; tracery is good; so far it is salvageable:Silent the worldBetween the noisy moon ŠI am not sure about the haunt of Miltonic rhetoric here, but to continue:Shrill with the hum of myriad insect wings ŠAnd that sweet hour when all the countrysideIs glad with song and melody of birdsNew waked from shaded slumber 'mid the leaves.Here the critic throws up his hands in defeat when the cliches and thebanalities come thick as myriad insect wings. The cargo of poeticisms whichthese poets carry on their trek through the bush finally exhausts them, andthey lie dying among their family jewels and trinkets to find they have hadno room for quinine or mosquito nets.Arthur Shearly Cripps has seemed to inherit the title of Rhodesia's poetlaureate and, to be sure, he has something patrician and zealous suitable tothat office. But his poetry remains darkening like some ancestral portraitwhich has hung in the sun too long. His eminence comes from his attempt toid., 38-9.192ESSAY REVIEWgive words to the fundamental strangeness of the African landscape, itsintimidating 'this-ness' which sends the poet into his own reverie as the lightsends cockroaches scurrying:How shall I paint and how personifyHer close-lipp'd land?How will you best her secrets understand?First learn to love and live with her as I?Then leave for exile. Ere you come again ŠTrust her to make each wistful secret plain!17It is a 'close-lipp'd land', but as to a silent companion we talk all the morevolubly to hide the embarrassment, so do the poets in this volume. And theytalk of themselves: the natural backcloth is only a painted curtain. Theculture of the English language overpowers any regional locale and historyproves more potent than place. An adjective can be the agent of imperialism.In Cripps it is seen as a fatal fascination for the adjectival compound; he islike some frantic sub-poetical Hopkins. Poets can be sent back to experi-mentation in language by experiences which are strange and intimidating.Hopkins needed the compound adjective to describe his guilty ecstasy; Crippsseems motivated by a similar paradox: as if he were aware he was anglicizingthe landscape but could not resist doing so. But at least it is Hopkins andnot Wordsworth or Milton. He is also totally obsessive Š a sign, as it is inHopkins, of an inability or nervousness of matching word to thing: 'tough-shelled', 'sunrise-ruddied', 'thunder-gloom', 'harsh-rayed', 'noon-thirst','breast-high', 'rain-mellowed', 'wind-carven', 'plough-soils', 'brown-tussocked'.One poem 18 especially is an orgy of incestuous coupling: 'hoe-head', 'hoe-shine', 'eye-shine', 'sun-shine', 'fire-shine'. Of course he is trying too hardbecause he knows he will fail; or worse, he was afraid of succeeding. Othersdo not even see the problem. But Cripps has nothing as successful as 'TheSong-Maker' or "'Burial' by Kingsley Fairbridge.In 1948, Snelling presented A New Anthology of Rhodesian Verse,*9though still prefaced as that modest nosegay of veld flowers. But on thewhole the new book is a great improvement. Gone are the Sunday, if notWednesday afternoon, poets, in favour of a more comprehensive selectionfrom the better known. Gouldsbury and Fairbridge remain essentially as theyappeared. Hastings, who stuck out in the former anthology like a raggedurchin among choirboys, shows a marked extension and deepening of histalent. Still the wry and mordant satirist, especially in 'Snapshot of Menelaus',he has all the breezy irreverence of Auden or classical jauntiness of MacNeice.Yet absence from Africa does not always make the heart grow harder as thefine lyrical poem, 'Waterloo Bridge' makes clear. Here the poet moves fromthe Thames to Africa:Dawn on the river, the dark river, the darkshining river of AfricaWhere in a live silenceFlamingoes swing in rosy circles,"ibid., 33.'slbid., 66.'M New Anthology of Rhodesian Verse, cd. J. Snelling, Oxford, B. PI. Blackwell,1950).R. GRAHAM 193And in reedy poolsThe crocodile, the everlasting,Dreams marshy voluptuous dreamsOf long-dead citiesThat fell flaming amid the assegaisAnd stank delectably in the marsh.20We have come a long way from 'elfin-grots' to the "marshy voluptuousdreams' of the croc.The aberrant anthology, Thudding Drums, by G. M. Miller, publishedin 1942, was intended as a school's anthology of the traditional poets likeChaucer, Milton and Wordsworth, but which incorporated Rhodesians likeCripps. Fairbridgc and Gouidsbury and South African poets like FrancisCarey Slater.21 It is the immigrant's old Victorian china. Here most clearlyis the expatriated view of poetry in the colonies. The need for local colouradded, to the ausicrity of history: the silver tea service glinting in the tropicalsun. it is cursory, quaint and ridiculous. But it has been the tone of everyanthology from Rhodesia. Brettel) wrote in 1975:Nearly all our poetry so far has been, like the daffodils in ourgardens and the horse-brasses in our parlours, the poetry of exile,tinged with the nostalgia that is the symptom of a young and un-certain culture.22And he is being generous. The mistake anthologists have made is to try tobrazen out the uncertainty and strangeness of exile with a British stiff upperlip. So the anthologies are all bravado Š like the bianco on the tennis shoeson which was founded an Empire.The anthology by D. E. Finn (the poet D. E. Borrell), Poetry in Rhodesia:75 Years,2-3 is ten years old. And already it is as dated as a house-boy's whitegloves. Cripps, Hastings, Fairbridgc manage fine, but they are all taking teawith spinster school-teachers and retired civil servants. It is cosy andterribly, terribly genteel. It is all 'African Tea' under 'The Tall JacarandaTrees'. Far too many poems are vitiated by a sentimentality towards oneselfand a patronizing 'slap on the back' familiarity with Africa. There is a self-congratulatory feeling about the volume which is more than patriotism, it isthe arrogance of the provincial. Especially the arrogance of the provincialwith an 'heroic' past. I doubt whether anything as vulgar and banal as OliveRobertson's poem has been written since the cataclysm of 1914 scourgedpoetry of the heroic nationalism of the will:That hard, indomitable will,That passion to possess aloneSo vast a land, dominates stillThose who have claimed it as their own.24.. 80.Drums, ed. (.'Ł. M. Miller (IHIrkW, Kent, Univ. of London Press).22'Thc place of poetry in Rhodesia's history". The Rhodesia Science News (1975),IX, 352-7.23Poetry in Rhodesia: 75 Years, ed. D. E. Finn (Salisbury. The College Press,1968)."Ibid., 17.194ESSAY REVIEWTo make my point absolutely clear let me contrast her 'Inheritance' with thatwise poem of Frost's:But we were England's, still colonials,Possessing what we still were unpossessed by,Possessed by what we now no more possessed.25You do not possess the land; Africa, whatever Olive Robertson thinks, is nother 'inheritance'. The meek it is, who inherit. As Frost knows, it is in givingof oneself, 'The Gift Outright', that the land possesses. Regionalism, therespect of place, comes from humility not 'indomitable will'. It is archaicarrogance to feel and write of the will to possess; it is probably vicious topublish it. Whatever political message it has, it slanders poetry; it slandersart, which is also a gift outright, not a demand.The blatancy of the anthology is easy to trace back to provincialismand dilettantism. The more isolated and exiled one becomes, the moreintimidated one becomes by an alien environment, then the more attractiveinsularity looks. So the more determined is the effort to nurture a 'littleEngland'. Bridge-parties, Gilbert and Sullivan, gin and tonic: the lost cultureof the expatriated. It is defensive and paranoic. Too many poets in the bookare complacent about themselves and wilful about others. And invoking 'law'not 'love' makes rhetoric not poetry. This is a shame, for there are goodpoets here: Douglas Livingstone, Hastings, Brettell; and honest ones:Fairbridge and H. Finn. But an anthology is like an apple barrel.At the bottom of the barrel, at the back of the book, are a few fairlyundistinguished Black writers. Henry Pote is the only one who seems toshow any real vein of poetic feeling, 'To a White Child'26 is a touching andguileless address to a friendly alien:Will your trust vanish when you grow older?Will you think you alone can order?It cannot be: you're already too wiseTo somersault and move anti-clockwise.To most readers this anthology will be merely drab. It is, I suppose, not animportant failure. But a bit more austerity in art and generosity in feelingmight cultivate a better literary climate for a true poet to emerge: for it isoften the case that a true poet Š a Wordsworth Š emerges from the poet-tasters of this world.The Poetry Society of Rhodesia, which is made up of many of theversifiers in Finn's anthology, is not untouched by the provincialism theyhave inherited as inevitably as their grand-parent's doilies and cake-plates.But it has turned over the soil regularly so, if a poet should come along, hisfirst tentative shoots will not be strangled by weeds. Since 1952 it has putout a biennial pamphlet, Rhodesian Poetry, the 1976 issue of which is thethirteenth.27. This volume is introduced by the chairman, Vernon Crawford,and for once there is creeping into the ambiance of our verse the politicalgroundswell which is rolling over Southern Africa. But in effect the piece isPoetry of Robert Frost, 348.2-BPoetry in Rhodesia: 75 Years, 61."Rhodesian Poetry (1976-7), XIII, 36 pp., Rh$2,00.R. GRAHAM195Ł Łno more than a reassuring whisper in the poet's ear (there is a separate Pre-face for 'readers'), that such events do not really concern us. Crawford'swords are a response to the Preface by Douglas Livingstone who congratulates'Today's selection, mercifully sans overt politicising, which does Rhodesiaand its people credit.'28 Perhaps a little smug? Livingstone, I suspect, ismotivated by a generosity, which is absent in his poetry, perhaps becausegenerosity is the hand-maiden of condescension.The faults of this collection seem different from the faults of the past.Modern verse is generally somewhat anarchical and the critic is on lesscertain ground because the dispensation of the best poets insists that anythingdoes, indeed, go. In an age of frantic experiment, who bothers to wait aroundto see if the litmus paper turns blue or not. This collection is full of tentativeand strident experiments which show some kind of awareness of something.But my litmus paper remains as stubbornly pink as when I put it in. MaybeI am doing the wrong tests, in fairness, however, most are ambitious failures.D. E. Rorrell (D. E. Finn), despite her wilful honesty, 1 find a littleprecious; Brettell as tough and crabbed and haunting as ever. But why goon, the poets are all very conscious, educated in the latest techniques, andindeed interesting in their manoeuvres. But there is something missing in mostof them that is only found for example in the poems of Charles Mungoshi,which are the most feeling and felt of the whole volume.It becomes clear that Rhodesian poets are trying to master the experi-mental and sophisticated, but that technique is turning against them, ft is notenough to construct the artifact; it needs a spirit of its own. Poetry, saidEmily Dickinson, is 'a house that wants to be haunted'.29 There are manynice modern bungalows here but the only haunted house belongs to Mungo-shi. If I cannot describe a ghost, let me show you one:Dotito is our brother.He is strange . . .He could walk for hoursin a heavy downpour and never notice.Father caned him for it once and now whenit rains he just sits by the window looking out,sometimes talking Š opening his mouthand saying strange noises to the rain.When he is tired of talking to the rainhe blows breath onto the glass paneand draws the same weird things as on the scraps of paper . . .We are a little afraid.Strange people point and stare at us on the street Ševen when Dotito isn't with us. We know" what theyare saying too even when we don't see them open their mouths.We can't go anywhere without meeting them.They are talking about how we are Dotito's people.30Poetry needs no veneer of verbal sophistication if it simply has this rightness,this ability to go straight to the heart of the matter. I think that 'Goodbye, 4.^Selected Poems and Letters, cd. R. N. Linscott (New York. Doubleday, 1954). 15.zoRhodesian Poetry (1976-7), XIII, 25.196ESSAY REVIEWPoem' by Enetia Vassilatos3' has the same simple ability to frighten, thoughit is a more friendly ghost. Words can scare away the power they are meantto invoke.Unfortunately, the most recent number of Rhodesian Poetry, for 1978,shows a great decline in quality, lacking any of the vigour of the previousvolume. This is more sad since the Preface begins with these words: 'Thisshould prove an historic issue of Rhodesian Poetry, since it is quite possiblythe last that will bear the name.'32 And the book does have something vale-dictory about it: unfortunately it is painfully ironic that this should vitiateits mood. Many, too many, of the verses arc trite evocations of the 'pity ofwar'; 'Night Patrol'; 'The Briefing"; 'Night Deployment'; 'Wartime/Timewar'. In poems like these the writer relies too casually on the event anddoes not work hard enough at dislocating it into art. The result so often ispartisanship or failure to communicate. The volume also has its old chestnutslike Phillippa Berlyn's 'Botswana Border', or Broughton Gingell's crankymystical poems. What seems most absent is any personal force of feeling.Most of the verses seem like little remorseless rhetorical machines churningout their iambics. And it is surely no coincidence that this volume pays lessattention to younger writers or Black writers. Of its 38 pages, only 6 are byBlacks. Politics apart, recent alternative publications suggest that this is noadequate reflection of the local poetry scene.I think it is time for a truiy selective anthology of Rhodesian verse whichwould emphasize the poets not the versifiers. It would begin with, nervously,Cripps, then continue more certainly with. Kingsley Fairbridge, CullenGouldsbury, and L. M. Hastings from the settler generation. It might jumpthen to Brettell and H. Finn, and appropriate early Douglas Livingstone onthe way. it would come up to date wilh only the very best of contemporarywriters like Mungoshi. Here 1 tlrink we would have enough for a respectablevolume which might equal South Africa, Australian and Canadian antholo-gies; and this would be a respectable summing up before the changes whichare surely on their way. The days for dilettante window-dressing are wellover.The need for such an anthology is more urgent than the individualvolumes now being published in the Mopani series. The first volume in theseries was The Simhathers and Other Poems by Hugh Finn.33 Finn is a poetwhose one essential preoccupation is to search among the insignificant forsignificance: he rummages through cliches hoping to find something whichhas come back into fashion. Hence he dwells perhaps negligently among theusual, everyday commonplaces where most of us dwell all the time, but fromwhere we often look for poets to lead us. Finn offers little to this hope: if wedo sense the mysterious, the arcane, it is among the obvious. So a woodenfigurehead fished up among the soles and the dogfish is suddenly identifiedwith during its repose on the seabed, to allow the poet to extract a frisson:"One could look with its eyes/Upward through the years of luminous greenoblivion . . ./One might see death in one's own face looking down'.34 Andthen seeing a beetle ravish a flower, the poet shifts his typical poet's reactionin surprise at discovering 'The beetle war far lovelier than the flower'.35 In31 ibid.. :so.32Rhodesian Poetry ( 11*78), XIV. ?>8 pp., Rh$1.50.33}{ Finn. The Sunbathers and Other Poems (Salisbury. The Poetry Society ofRhodesia. 1977 h 44 pp.. RhSU5.34lbid.. G.R. GRAHAM197rummaging in the dusty lumber-room of commonplaces for wisdom and truthFinn reminds us of Auden but he lacks Auden's fierce panache.His poetry lives stolid and comfortable, and with the determination ofthe middle class, in the suburbia of Helicon. He is a modest and domesticpoet; and very successful too within his discreet aims. He lives in this sub-urban attic, going through dusty trunks searching for what he will neverfind: the unremembered postcard, the old sailor's suit of childhood, hismother's yellowing ballgown, the discarded balding teddy bear, which couldbring back the past. Finn is a poet of loss and therefore of nostalgia: 'thosetimes gone by,/Gone by,/Gone by'.36 Unlike Brettell, however, whose gazeis also often backwards, there is no regret, no sell-questioning and not evenself-laceration. Finn is content and graciously indebted to his muse for thesudden illumination, the lost souvenir, which his searching reveals. In the titlepoem, a finely recreated return to the Cape, the poem gives back the poet'spast to him by seeing six black cormorants:as 1 watched them . . .The fluid memories crystallizedInto home ŠIn those six black strokes of the bright remembering brushOn the waiting worldA whole sea-enchanted childhood blossomed again.37Mnemosyne is the mother of the Muses: she offers a cosy hearth, ahome-cooked meal and a homely affection. She is not the capriciousAphrodite; the poet is secure and assured, if awkwardly aware that she is abit frumpish. Finn is the modest poet of a modest muse. There is a poemcalled 'After a Surfeit of Tennyson' where the poet reluctantly admires in thelaureate 'magic in his sighing'.30 Finn would seem to know his own suscep-tibilities which point the faults and the achievements of his verse. ButTennyson is a dangerous master in his langour and in his coy verbal,feliciliousness. Finn has his mannerisms of sentiment: 'And knowing thesingle heaven that's life/Is gone', or 'the loveliness I'd somehow lostforever'.33 He also has Tennyson's tricks of style in attempting to startle withcliches transformed into triple compounds: 'brandy-bottle-hcavy', 'travel-brochure-blue', 'blue-gum-mernoried'.Having said that, it is necessary to affirm that there are many localtriumphs to be acquired from security and a sense of the certainty of one'sgifts. The serenity of Memory's hegemony allows the poet self-assurance. Sohe can look at life from his quirky angles, from his eccentrically clichedviewpoint. Like Gulliver, the archetypal bourgeois. Finn watches thingsthrough a mania for modesty which distorts reality. In 'At Grass Level'40 hewatches 'ants samsoning a poleŠ/Two inch-twig'; like the Lilliputians thisinvakens a satire on mail's desired omniscience:ibid.. ;;i.20.198ESSAY REVIEWAnd here I sit, on white-ant hill.By vastness grown invisible ŠOmniscient god, whose questing eyeCan yet not read his destiny!To give the poet his due, he is supremely aware of himself. If at times hisexpression is arch or his adjectival ebullience clever, his sense of self is agenerous compensation, in the poem, 'Brown with a Dusting of Green',41 helikens his verse to growing vegetables from the mulch of dead roses, 'itsonion by-rose/Reflect my verse's virtues . . . pollen as much as perfume luresthe bee'. But I. feel the reader will go to him for roses from onions and thehumble values of a Sunday afternoon's pruning: for peace, contentment, withjust the hint of the sadness of the passing of the seasons. Though sometimesthe reader might feel, the reserve is a mask and cry out 'well moused lion'.For Finn is tempted to become Sir Oracle: 'I will not tell how lonely Man"nubt be.'42 So many poems end with gratuitous sententiae: 'With nothing leftbue love at the end of all.'43 These may be the lessons of the past andexperience is, as someone once said, a hard school but the only one whichfools will learn in; but 1 prefer the wry to the wrathful. Finn's mouse ismuch more attractive than his lion for it does not tempt him to derivativeAudencsquc stoicism:the recurring itchNamed lust, that man must humbly ownCan sometimes make him less alone.44Finn ends his first collection with eight poems from the Afrikaans ofN. P. van Wyk Louw. In one sense it is invidious to have a poet with avision placed next to a poet with merely a point of view, but Finn's meticulousfilligree proves more than apt to its task. Van Wyk Louw is obviouslyhag-ridden, his Muse is no fire-side frump. Every reader should be gratefulfor these wonderful translations. What could be more grotesque or fiendishlyfearfully African or Afrikaner than 'Satan-Helios'?Suddenly on to the wall of the kraalblack and white a he-goat sprang up;lightly skipped up from the stone enclosureand carelessly fitted hoof to chink,looked round a little, and with beard askewshifted his cud slightly against his cheek;then with his scabby knees on the wall he kneltworshipping the light of the noonday fire.45Season and Pretext by N. H. Brettell is the second in the Mopani series,and it is well overdue.46 Brettell has been a much admired poet since 19504i Ibid..42lbid.,43 Ibid..44lbid.,45lbid.,4sN. H28.34.7.35.41.. Brettell1977), 62 pp., Rh$i, Season and Pretexts,60.(Salisbury, The Poetry Society of Rhodesia,R. GRAHAM199when his first volume, Bronze Freize, appeared.47 This new volume shows acertainty and focus which was submerged under detail in the previouscollection, though there are some fine moments in the first book in poemslike 'War and Peace'. What the curious reader misses in this new book is asense of chronology of the poetry. This is not an impertinent biographicalwhim but a response to a marked difference in mood and precept betweenthe poems grouped 'On Leave' for instance, and the sequence of 'Season andPretext'. The former is suave and nonchalant, while the other poems are shotthrough with regret and compassion.'Threnody in Spring',48 the first poem of the book, is in memoriam ofA. S. Cripps:You chose the time well to die:Our air still tingles with the latest frost.It is the southern hemisphere's spring, the time is ironically apt for it is theseason of generation, so making death less poignant, more heroic, as itimperatively must be in Brettell's earlier verse:The cassia's golden cupLifts its shrill monstrance to the brooding sky.In contrast to a Rhodesian spring, Brettell places a Kentish 'high summer' ofCripps's boyhood. The fulsomeness of that season and harsh African spring'go hand in hand' in the third poem. Here the dying falls of a KeatsianAutumn is slandered by Africa's 'opulent spring'. The violence of life andof birth are in these poems a reproach to death:Watch us, and understandSpring, surging in us, quickens the seed at last.Brettell puts into words the halting stupefication of the exile in such a newand strange land. At last Rhodesia has a poet possessed by his country; butamazed, almost reluctantly possessed.Brettell in these poems wills himself to be the poet of fecundity, vitalityand priapic ambition. In 'Columbus' 49 he contrasts the insouciant and glumintent of the emigrant to Africa: 'If we don't fancy it, need anyone care?/You can get back, they say, in eighteen hours by air'. Against this is thereckless heroism of Columbus:Pinning his life to the just possible miracle,He stares across the empty star-board sea,With hair blown back, the arrogant Admiral.Brettell is the celebrant of what he calls in one poem 'Cataclysm'.50 At timeshe is seduced into stridency: in 'The Children'51 when he invokes the reproachof 'the monstrous mushroom, cauliflower-topped' over Hiroshima. But he isa richly contradictory poet. Rather the poems present the struggle in the poetbetween the revolutionary heroic egoist like Columbus, and the modest*~fBronze Freize (London. Oxford Univ. Press, 1950).**Season and Pretexts, 6-8.49lbid.. 10.Boibid.. 11.si Ibid., 30.2OOESSAY REVIEWbourgeois come to 'have a shot at Building Manchester/In Africa's far andvaguely promised land'. In a poem which comes from the latter part of thebook, 'New Year',52 the poet presents himself torn between two extremes,like a 'petulant stream' which has been tamed by a weir:Between the green pool and the cataract,I wait with Janus, chameleon, the swivel-eyed:Before, the savage catclaws of the rapids,Behind, the sullen measurable flow.He is a poet annoyed at the sullen, and one imagines afraid and aghast atthe savage. And he is a poet who has found in the nature of his homeland acontrast to that of his habitation. The ideals of each are contradictory andparadoxical, it has been the poet's task to hold himself to this dilemma bythe force of his will.A recurrent self-imposed identity of the poet, especially in the earliersequences is 'the necessary clown': Feste in Twelfth Night, or the clown inKing Lear; not often the hero. He is too tentative, too phobic. But like theclown, you must "pick your ditties out of the wind's teeth'.53 With a hey,nonny, hey, nonny, no. But by this submission to the climate of Africa heis not cheering himself up. as a whole generation of Rhodcsian poets beforeBrettell had done. His love of the veld and Africa is not a whistle in the dark.In 'Deri-Deri',54 poems are like the wild flowers which thrust their fragilebut insistent beauty through the "tumbled slockpit rank with ancient rubbish':Called deri-deri: why, I wonder?Not the insistence of the old refrain,When the gay nonsense of the prancing bloodFumed upward through the crevices of words.Brettell is a poet of disappointment. Unnecessarily stoic, betrayed, but aboveall disappointed. This is perhaps a little cynical out of its matrix in 'Seasonsand Pretext' but looking backwards in 'Envoi',55 he talks of 'Brave wordsI'll never use again'. But the majority of poems in the volume aspire to begayer and more urbane; typical of this mood is the poem, 'The CabbageSeller', which is wry and slick, as it remembers the English savoy cut in two:'curled/Petticoat on petticoat archly tinged with rose'.50 He is a master ofnatural description which means he is masterful of an eccentric diction.His section of 'Beasts and Birds' is a virtuoso performance of charmand celebrated innocence: an innocence which is to be displaced by fortitudein his later poems: 'Our innocence can hold the trick/To solve what oddarithmetic/Spins the incalculable earth'.57 Giraffes are beautifully andscrupulously caught forever in Brettell's description: 'Innocent, epicene . . .grave quaint harlequins'.58 So in the 'Duiker Doe' the poet emblazons withglory these animals, unicorns of a tropical latitude. He is againstszlbid.. 46.=3lbid., 24.S4lbid.. 58.sslbid.. 62.selbid., 22."ibid., 55.sslbid., 35.R. GRAHAM201The beasts of truth, the wolves, the scavengers,The surly rams of CapricornSee lion, falcon, unicornDragged from their scutcheons, stripped of their blazonry.59Not that he dare expect too much of us, or of himself, 'Weathercock'60 is apoem remarking the fact that 'The Cathedral of St Mary and All Saints inSalisbury is now surrounded by skyscrapers'. The winds which should directthe weathercock are now "thwarted and craven'. Like the frustrated vane:We veer and flinch and hedge the consequence;fashions inveigle, assurances recede.The poet's values and needs should be apparent by the contrasts he makeswith 'the brave cypress on the cloister lawn'; like another fabulous creature:Phoenix talons clench in the secret soilPhoenix plumes flare green against the blue.Brettell is querulous about the city of civilization; he is a poet, of the'metabolism of the ancient salts:/The fire, the spire, the faith, the evergreen'.The poet's voice is quietened though not defeated in the later sequence,'Quartet: Ex Libris'.61 The past haunts with remorseless regret; the futurepotential, disappointing. The sequence of four poems is contemplative andwise. Here the Autumn nightfall, 'after drought', summons up a great senseof loss and irrevocable hope:The first star stabs the west awakeAnd day discards what the moon takes over,Enormous murmurings that next year's seedCan never again recover.'The colours of Autumn come too late.' In 'Winter', the wind 'jostled withthe sky,/Straining the tight big-top to splitting point'. The poet goes back toa primeval scene as he dozes with his cat before the camp fire. He imaginesancestors on a painted cave wall:We've come a long way, cat and we,He from the roaring forest, we from the caveWhere once our fancies pranced across the wallsIn rust and ochre profile: primp of toeAnd pendulous of buttock, nimble as sparks,Dancers, hunters, mourners, stream across the friezeImposed upon the eland's succulent bulkTarget and tally of the lost venators.This is perhaps the poet's most ambitious attempt to impose a kingly senseof order upon "the gay nonsense' of the mystery which, as a clown, he sees.The climax is modestly but frighteningly apocalyptic when:, 26.iIbid., 47-52.20*ESSAY REVIEWthe ultimate wrenchSnap the last guyrope, andThe billowing canvas splitBetween us and the infinite.The poem ends complacently, however, by invoking Hamlet's word to hisfather to be at peace; the past and the future are redeemed by now: 'True-penny, peace; ihis is my afternoon'. The long poem has tremendous dignityand solemnity which for once stills the questioning, restless, deeply concernedideals of the poet.Other poems 1 would like lo have had space to quote at length, are:'Skid' about a vivid and ecstaiic moment when life in the face of death isfrozen and enticing; "Felled Wattle' another poem typical of the way Brettellcan. make tremendously authoritative statements about life in the grandmanner by concentrating on the eccentric. Here woods which are tooinaccessible to be taken as firewood, so without 'fire, frenzy, no fume ofinnuendo":But with the cold huriicss fire of corruptionSmoulder in innocence away."2It is obvious and hcarii'eU that in many ways Brettcl! feels this abouthimself: the earlier poems of heroism and idealism are in a way unfulfilled,Unbelievcdiy one feels his own 'j..nse of failure. But the poet achieves thesolemnity of innocence which, loo, has its dignity. There is certainly no needof disappointment or frustration in the eyes of the reader. Brettell haswritten some of the best, most heroic, poetry to come from Rhodesia. What ismore he has written in ihis book a few poems such as 'Eavesdropper','Quartet: Ex Libris" and 'Wind and an Eagle Owl', which should be read byall readers of poetry in this country for as long as they read. I wish I couldquote ail of the last poem for \ou for it is a finely wrought achievement. It isa poem of guilt and regret beyond words. I feel, even with my admiration,that I do not know how good it is.To do shameful injustice to the subilciy of the details and the orchestra-tion of the mood: a couple quarrel over iiottiing and turn from each other inbed 'like sullen girl and boy,/Denying all, denying all'.63 After a night ofstrong wind, the dawn brings reconcilement 'And you were kind, and youwere kind'. The couple go riding and find an 'eagle owl' trapped and dyingblown by the wind onto their fence: the last: verse, marvellously lucid andcrystal clear goes:1 tic my timid filly upTo get a stick to kiil you with;With pity brimming like a cupI come deliverer in disguise:Your great beak gaped in savage grin,Your great stare narrowed to a frithOf gleaming horror and surprise ŠAnd oh the wells of hatred inYour wildwood eyes, your wildwood eyes.Brettell's sad and wonderful poetry,"Ibid.. 59.., 60.R. GRAHAM203Rhodesia seems to have appropriated the startlingly peremptory talentof Douglas Livingstone who lived here for about five years while writingsome of the poems of his first volume, Sjambok,64 which are familiar andimmediate through their strong allegiance to Africa. Far less wilful thanBrettell, he is more naturally devoted to a sense of place. Ironically, histheme is fear of the land and the White man's retreat. He is always beingthreatened: to be carried off by some Pteranadon; or shamed by the carcaseof an elephant; or made to move out of a She-Jackal's place in the sun; orswallowed by Leviathan. In the title poem of his first volume, we feel for thefirst time the truly acrimonious note of disgust and shame for the excesses ofcolonial zealousness. The poet, ironically, is possessed by the land, though hecannot possess it. And the landscape, its flora and fauna, are vividly andsurprisingly captured: the stork ready to migrate with the flush of anAutumn morning:The dawn struck and everything,sky, water, bird, reedwas blood and gold. He sighed.Stretching his wings he clubbedthe air; slowly regally, so very tired , , .6EOr the She-jackal which embodies for the poet the hostility, and exoticshabbiness of Africa:Evilly passing and smiling, a jackalstood near: razor ribs, warty shrivelled dugs,hourglass loins and lean wire legs quivering;The plump feeding ticks studding her bare flanks.66The vulture approaching his prey:Slack neck with the peckedskin thinly shaking, hesidles aside, then stumpshis deliberate banker'sgait to the stinking meal.*17Here is Africa, the spirit of place seen by an outsider but seen all the moredeliberately and astonishingly for that. It is all that we are likely to get, forno insider will be more struck by its strangeness. It should not be surprisingthat there is no Black African poet who we can legitimately say is concernedwith the visual manifestation of the imagination. African verse has beeneither rhetorical or metaphysical: in either case it is man's hesitant findingof his voice. Perhaps the imagisiic approach is attenuated and somewhatdecadent; or, which means virtually the same thing, more sophisticated anddetermined.The 'aided gentility of colonialism is captured by Livingstone in 'TheClocks'; the coercive arrogance and mystique of independence: 'If you earncsibid., 1.eelbid.. 21."Ibid., 24.And Other Pof.ms from Africa ;'Lond"n. Oxford X.'niv. Press, 1964).2O4ESSAY REVIEW£120/a year, or have cattle, or if you are/a pensioner, here's votes, the latestmagic'.68 Or 'The Peace Delegate' who 'leans back from the green baize tableswhere break/the nations' hearts like billiard play'.69 He watches man withas cold an eye as he does zebras galloping:through the thorny lasts of liberty,soulless and without humour,as if they knowas if they made it sothis meat is rancid.70Look at the modulation of rhyme and half-rhyme all to create an urbanity, aclinical distance from the lion, from 'The King':Can catch them still of course,the horny old claws combing crimsonfrom the velvet flanks in long scores,here in the game-park's environs;71No matter how observant and accurate the description, it is distanced, quitedeliberately. It distances because Livingstone accepts that he cannot belongto the land. It is the considered expression of the exile aware that the refinedresources of his poetic heritage are as inappropriate to Africa as a pin-stripesuit and a bowler hat. Here is a diffidence which is the opposite of the im-perialism of the imagination which Cripps and the first generations of Rho-desians used to impose Victoria on the veld.He loves eccentrics and loonies in the animal kingdom and in the humanworld, and he treats them all as a lepidoptrist does the Clouded Yellow: hesticks a pin into it and mounts it. His poetry is anthropomorphic and dignifiedby an ancient polytheism. His later volume, Eyes Closed Against the Sun,7*written after his move to Durban, has a different context. It is urbane andcosmopolitan; like Scott Fitzgerald's hell, it is always three in the morning;there is a cool blue sax playing; the South African champagne is a little flat;prostitutes and sailors jostle the poet's arm as he gets on with his inexorablecataloguing. He is certainly one of the cruellest, remorseless poets writing inSouthern Africa. A tremendous talent, which has left behind in Rhodesia hisparochialism and his sense of exile.Times of crisis have always thrown up writers aspiring to transmuteinto art the searing of the soul and the perishing of the flesh. I am sureamong the ruins of Pompeii lie countless charred bards poised at their desks,empty scrolls in withering hands. Historical exigencies have, I must admit,made poets: witness Wilfred Owen. But more often than not, history traducesthe poet into rhetorical self-importance, and he stands around like Jesus inGethsemane. Political and social crises are poetic vehicles only in a mostunreliable sense. For one Wilfred Owen there are fifty Henleys. And toparaphrase E. E. Cummings, all the poet gets from jumping on and offbandwaggons is athlete's mouth. Inspiration like the wind bloweth where itlisteth. The Muse does not go whoring among the troops of either side."Ibid.70 Ibid.8.34.25.71 Ibid.. 33.Closed Against the Sun (London, Oxford Univ. Press, 1970).R. GRAHAM205The recent The Queen's Prayer and Other Poems by Broughton Gineii73is obviously a symptom of what the poet himself calls 'a beautiful andperilous time'.74 The volume is an unconscious reflex, like locking yourwindows at night. But poetry is never merely a reflex. So far as literaturegoes, is it the poetry itself which is interesting or only the occasion behindit? is it another occasion like the sinking of the 'Titanic" for the generousoutpouring of anodynic poetry meant to make us all feel better?Gingcll's message is a florid and extremely ornate genuflection, thoughthe poet is somewhat surprised at himself to find that the church has beenturned into a beer-hall. 'Show me the tracks of God'75 he keeps invoking.There are more 'surelys' in his invocations than there are in the Psalms. Thevolume is full of capitalizations of Lord Silence, Lord Passion, Lord Darkness,Lord Blood and Lord Love. Like medieval alliterations these serve thepurpose of keeping the scribe's mind on God instead of Fame. It must be veryrarely that a volume comes out in such purple and gold with such certaintyabout the world. There is none of that uncertainty or unease which in N. H.Brettell's words could 'activate the dough of national conscience'.76 Gingellhas a hot-i'nc to the Almighty:Since God's shining instrument of love ŠA two edged sword Š lies bright and nakedHere before me, I shall examine it.77He leaves no room for uncertainty: the author has Archbishop PatrickChakaipa introduce his work. After putting God straight, Gingell modestlyreprimands Blake, despite his genius, for 'having but small talent for life'.But he later forgives him because of ''Jerusalem':Be kind to Blake. O God, rememberWho wrote Jerusalem . . .78With Blake's morbid hatred of old Nobodaddy one wonders that Gingell isnot struck down by Blake's two-edged sword. 'The road of excess leads tothe Palace of Wisdom', however much we distrust it, is a rousing piece ofadvice for young poets.Quarantine Rhythms7'3 is the first volume by a young Black Rhodesian,Mudereri Kadhani, now living in exile at the University of York in England.It happens also to be the first single volume by a Black Rhodesian. Kadhanitoo, I suspect, has been forced precipitously into poetry by the politicalevents of his time: he was detained for 'riotous assembly' in 1973 when hewas twenty-one. Events can catch up quickly with a sensitive man of thatage, and this idea of 'We grow up too young, amigo,/Too young'"80 is an73B. Gir.gcll, The Queen's Prayer and Other Poems (Salisbury, Longman, 1977),55 pp., Rh$1.25.74Ibid.. 5.7sll)id.. :?6.7sBrottell, 'The place of pot1 try in Rhodesia's history", 354.77Gii]i.;ell, The Queen's Prayer and Other Poems, 22.78 Ibid., 12.79\t. Kadhani, Quarantine Rhythms (Aberdeen, Palladio Press, 1976), 53 pp.,£1,45.id., 34.203ESSAY REVIEWobsessive theme in the volume. In its reverse idea it emerges as a savagepride, a feeling of being 'called' which gives the revolutionary fervour tothe poetry. 'Housefly' which is about a second-coming, is Yeatsian andrhetorical, arrogant and bitter and confident:A fly shall be born!A fly shall be born!The scum of your householdThe filth of your belliesThe mucus of your nosesThe pus of your woundsShall be the territory of his sovereignty;81If the volume is over-full at times of emasculated loins, black tears, drum-ming hearts, 'insurrecting resurrections', and 'black dawns', it doubtlesswould have appealed to Blake the revolutionary.The problem is, as always, what may be legitimate politically, sincerelymotivated personally, may emerge as poetically obtuse. Though the poet maybe fired by admirable motivations, if these are supra, or sub-poetical, thenthe effect is sure to be inappropriate in some way. Though nothing couldseem further from the poetry of Gingell, it suffers from the same defect ofbeing provincially myopic. Kadhani, ol course, in different ways is thevictim of Rhodesian isolation.Self-involvement in an almost pathological degree is the first temptationof provincialism. Here is the old romantic desire to make the rest of theworld mimic the closeness of one's own society. It therefore tempts itsadherents to self-indulgence and stills the questioning conscience. It leads tonationalism, coercion, and finally tyranny: for anyone who is not as memust be made over as me. It is 'ignorance plus a lust for uniformity'. It isthe artistic limit which all writers of Europe and the United States haveresisted in this century. Politics may be concerned with nationalism, but artis international. Imperialism has been a more virulent aspect of provincialismand has behind it some nasty emotionalism. Racialism is the pathology ofprovincialism: Black and White. Provincialism perverts literature intopropaganda, and propaganda in its desire to save the soul has often burnt thebodies of those who objected to its methods.When the poet at last faces circumstances which make demands onresources not exercised by the somnambulism which provincialism nurtures,then the effect is a kind of rictus of expressiveness. Many of Kadhani'spolitical poems, like Gingell's, are misbegotten because the poet has not hadthe experience to mould and define himself. The effect is not new in Africanpoetry: it is a shrillness of tone, a distortion of communicative potentialwhich was common in early protest poetry or the poetry of commitment, orthe more self-conscious of the early negritude movement. It goes along witha reliance on the raw material of the poet's social identity at the cost ofignoring what the doing adds to the poem. In the final account it is preten-tious and gauche, and a scntimentalism or a romanticism of experience. Theinquisition in 'Reception' shows him being quizzed by the prison officer:eilbid., 26.R. GRAHAM2071 ŁTribe? Human being.Religion? Doing good.Occupation? Going to Prison.e2Here and elsewhere the question is noi whether it is good poetry, but whetherit is poetry at all. Peter Levi who introduces the volume is sincere andconcerned in words like this: 'Their material is the experience of life, andmost of that is in the strictest sense of the word terrible. Whet else are weto expect from n Rhodesian African peel at this lime?* Weil, we expectpoetry. ! suppose. Poetry is not content to be 'the experience of life', nomatter how horrible. It needs ;fs Lraru-nuUation which here it lacks. Thepoets of the First Wor'd War in Europe were faced with all the obscenityman is capable of, but they needed to find the method &i dealing with it.Such has been ihv case loo with poets in Africa Š Brutus in Letters to Marthaalmost created a new form to deal with new experiences. Kadhani docs not.Nor does Gingcll. Save us from propagandists, O God, damn Blake ŠRemember who wrote 'Jerusalem".judging from the number of books of verse which land up on thereviewer's de^k, Campbell "a description of the poetess: 'Housekeeping withher fountain pen/And writing novels with her broom' is still apt. MernaWilson's A Ring lias No End*3 i- another Sunday visit \o aunty spent amongthe memories and photograph albums. The book is. it nmsi: be said, whollyunobjectionable. There arc poems on mother's day, her children, the deathof friends. It is a very, even embarrassingly, personal collection of pieces,nearly all of which would be more fittingly left with the pressed flowers inthe family Bible. [ think i understand why they were written, but 1 do notunderstand why these, and countless other such books, are published.A person's right to exercise her soul is one we will, on Judgement Day,all testify to respecting. But it is an airing which is better done in private.Yet it is true, and it is a paradox which faces most of us, that at depressinglyregular times in our life, verse comes irresistibly and undeniably to our lipsas consolation and compensation. Unfortunately for poetry and us, the mostvoluble of the emotions are the ones we must be most sceptical of: 'the ladyprotesteth too much'. This is not a sneer. Verse, usually bad verse, is acomfort in the face of death. And death is a recurrent theme of this book.Flight of a BecSA by Colin Gordon-Farleigh is innocuous and unassuming:full of poems which are privately felt mementoes. In the harsher public lightthe cliches, banalities and sentimentalities seem more awkward. When thewriter wanders into the public realm, as he does with 'Terrorist Strike' hebecomes embarrassing.Heed not your Religion if it takes you from Christ,Ralhcr listen to the silent words of your conscienceAs my blood congeals on the parched brown grass.Sentimentality is an excessive amount of feeling when what is needed by thepoet is more hard work. The poet, the reader feels, is most saved by his work.ealbid.. 17.83M. Wilson, A Ring Has No End (Salisbury, Gazebo Books, 1977), 59 pp.,Rh$1.50.eiGolin Gordon-Farlc-igh, Flight of a Bee (Salisbury, Gazebo Books, 1977), 64 pp.,RhSl.25.208ESSAY REViEWG, S. Tynan-Blundun, however, in his privately printed A QuietCorner,55 docs offer unashamedly to his readers such banalities and clichesas:The Wrinkle from a SmileYou can keep all the whileTake care . . . TINYThere is no point, of course, in being purely destructive and negative incriticism of poetry which is privately conceived, and should be privatelykept. Yet the same faults, easy sentimentalism and spiritual enthusiasm affectsmore pretentiously aspiring poets. Two Tone is a quarterly of Rhodesianpoetry which began in 1954. The 'Jubilee Issue' of June 1977 tells us that'we have published 1 333 poems ... by 392 authors of whom 68 are Shonaor Ndcbele writers'.86 This in one way is an achievement, but in anothersense it is one of the most perverse things a society of poets will do. Forthese figures disguise the obvious fact that the journal is primarily an outletfor a closed minority of writers with meagre talent. And meagre talentsshould be guarded not flaunted. How ingenuous seems the comment that 'ourmost prolific author is none other than our own Board member PhillippaBerlyn whose 83 poems include eight Shona translations'. The completepoetical works of T. E. Hulme number five poems; Eliot's Complete Poemsnumber around sixty; according to Robert Graves the 'survival rate' of hispoems is 'five years'. If Two Tone has stimulated the facile and the cheapthen it has done a great disservice.The habit of having a rotating editorship only glosses the faults ratherthan corrects them. Kizito Muchemwa, who has just edited an anthology ofBlack writers, did the June 1976 issue, where he complains that 'Theestablished poets have dominated the literary scene in this country for a longtime . . . their voices are too familiar'.87 The accusation of insularity has beenforeseen. Vernon Crawford in an 'Editorial' in the September 1977 issuedefended elitism from 'Marxist' attacks.sa He argues that 'separatism andelitism' arc the assurances of liberty to 'foster imaginative literature'. So wemust promote 'a hierarchical structured society, where people are encouragedto hive off, forming enclaves, "elites", separate sub-groups'. This sounds abit shrill politically. But he assures us: 'An important point is that suchelites are not closed: they are not just Cambridge, or Bloomsbury, or evenTwo Tone'. Come now Mr Crawford, the argument has got nothing to dowith Marxism. It has to do with the idea that there ought to be somethingelitist about an elite. Bloomsbury had Meynard Keynes and Virginia Woolf;Two Tone has got Phillippa Berlyn and Olive Robertson, And, 1 am afraid,that makes all the difference.Two Tone through smugness and reluctance to be self-critical is servingthe mere fringes of a dilettante minority. It is all as cosy and as genteel ascan be, but is it stimulating real aspiring writers? It has usually been aninnocuous and harmless little magazine which has at times achievedmediocrity. This is not to say that some good poems are not included; they* 'ŁŁesG. S. Tynan-Blundun, A Quiet Corner (Gwelo, privately, 1976), 70 pp., no priceindicated.se'IVo Tone (1977), XIII, June, 19 pp., Rh$0,50; sec the editorial by V. Crawford."Two Tone il::'7(ii, XII June, f).esTwo Tone (1977), XIII, September, 18 pp., Rh$0,50; sec the editorial by V.Crawford, 1-4.r* 0R. GRAHAM209are, but they are choked by the dalliance of amateur anthologists. TheDecember 1977 issue is a so-called 'anthology' of war poetry.89As Dick and I drove backfrom Inyanga last week,along a road edged with thepale gold of wattle trees in flower,I had the chance to think.There is not often enough timeto think in today's rushed existence.90I wish I had said that! And this is only the introduction to the volumeby Phillippa Berlyn. But the reader gets the point. And the volume lives upto this meretricious philosophizing. It is puerile and banal and, worse,pretentious. It is really too bathetic to quote from.Even the more recent numbers,91 despite the changing political andcultural scene, remain patronizing in both senses of the word: it cosilysupports the White literati, and condescends to the really new energeticBlack talents. The last three numbers of 1978 have their token praise-song; orif they do include, by accident, a real poem like Bonus Zimunya's 'Zimbabwe',it is only because the double-edged irony is missed. The policy of Two Toneremains one of accommodating the thread-bare remnants of English culturalchauvinism. Small magazines are noble enterprises and the people who haveto run them must be a lough breed. But such enterprises can die: by losingtheir readership, or worse through self-indulgence. Two Tone avoids theformer by hoping 'that all contributors will become subscribers'. But theenervated elitism is surely creating a vacuum which will finally buckle.This all sounds a little ungrateful. The September issue does have sometreasures by Brettell, D. F. Middleton, Charles Mungoshi, Bonus Zimunyaand John Eppel. The last named poet seems to me to be the most authenticand promising of the new White poets struggling to be heard against theclamour of the clique. He has a tough modern diction and a sharp outlookon life which is toughened with biting irony. This is very apparent in hispoem 'Talking Weather':Remember how the rainsDestroyed the roads,Drowned a catAnd choked the laughter of the drains.When hooves of cattle burst like ticksToo blown with blood to dodge the boot.And now the dusty little boysAre lounging on the gravel "dumpsWith shrieking pockets fullOf Christmas beetles. And the lumpsThat bloat their hollow criesAre worms begot of maggot flies.9289Two Tone :1977), XIII, December, 25 pp., Rh$0,50.lbid., 3.solbid., 3.9iTwo Tone i 1978), XIV, March, 25 pp., Rh$0,50; June, 25 pp., Rh$0,50;September, 21 pp., RhEO.50.92TWO Tone (1978), XIV. March, 20.21OESSAY REVIEWTwo Voices93 is a collection of verses put out jointly by the prolificPhilJippa Berlyn and the dauntless Olive Robertson, two of the originalsponsors of Two Tone. The volume is puffed by a Foreword by Brettell whotalks of 'this courageous book': 'courageous not only because the authorsmust inevitably face the disappointment of a small circulation, but becausethey will be hanging out their hearts for daws to peck at'. Here, Brettellinadvertently brings out the characteristic failing of much of the currentverse: a naive susceptibility for baring the soul. What has putting one's heartout to do with poetry. To paraphrase W. H. Auden, the poet should wear hisheart: up his sleeve, not on it. Spiritual incontinence spreads like an epidemic.These two versifiers enthuse and drown their very subjects in a gush oflachrymose sentimentalism. It is pure and doubtless therapeutic blood-letting,but is it poetry? Here is Berlyn's 'Bullfrog':Unlovely beast,squat creature of the night,Mongolian-eyed, unseeing;you wait in all your slimy gloryto pounce on your insect meal,amphibian and green, and yetexactly like a very human being.94Only someone intent on the glamour of their emotions could miss the internalrhyme of 'green' and 'being', and the resulting comic deflation. 'Regardez-moi'say these poems. And they are as quaint and charming as performing seals.They are the result of an insular self-congratulation and a failure to criticizehonestly.But in Olive Robertson, Rhodesia has found its own preposterousMcGonagall. 'The Weathercock':Was it a jest Š or sober searchThat set you on your giddy perchHigh on the Presbyterian Church?You seem unknowing of defeat,To clutch the spire with gilded feetAnd shriek defiance up the street.95Even if Two Voices or Two Tone were 'the king's new suit of clothes', whatis the point of the reviewer shouting: 'The king, look at the king'? It is notto humble the king but to get rid of the court's pretentiousness and so allowthe honest tailors to make a decent living. It may be the case that it is poss.blefor a country to publish too much poetry, or at least to publish it prematurelyand without the due critical amelioration of time. I am aware of judgingastringently some gentle and timid poems. But I have done so only whenthey ask to be judged by the standards of published poets today. And indeedBrettell and Livingstone and others are obviously up to this. As for the morenumerous, less frangible work, can it be useful to offer apparently negativecriticism? But one also wonders can it be useful to continually condone the-4 Ł*\93 P. Berlyn and O. Robertson.1974), 112 pp.', Rh$2.0n.s^Ibid.. I !..eslbid.. 17.Two Voices (Salisbury. Two Tone Publications,R. GRAHAM21 1Ł >puffing of negligible, perhaps non-existent, gifts? Elitism without quality ismerely a conspiracy against the good. And provincialism is a hot-house of'elitist' propaganda, which usually means no more than the dictatorship bythe lew of the many. And the smugness of the enclave can be a dispiritingbusiness if one is on the outside.But finally, the reviewer is left dissatisfied not by any technical limita-tions but by an absence of generosity of spirit. The emotions are crabbed andhave compassion only for the poet. When the sense of integrity and thestrangeness of other people and other ways of life is lost, then the sense ofwonder, which is the spirit of poetry is lost. Let me quote part of an earlyand naive poem by Doris Lessing to show what I mean:I would listen when the wiser blood deridesthe amnesties we make with time, the fencesthat we build to hold our days; defenceslest we see too close the flowers of hate.96This was written in 1945; it is one of twenty or so poems in The NewRhodesia, which came to light with A Bibliography of Rhodesian Writingpublished recently.97 It is a little jejune, of course; and Mrs Lessing is saidto have forgotten that she had published these poems. But it has all thedisinterested largesse of an art which is cosmopolitan in sympathy, it indictsmuch of Rhodesian verse for its parochial, rapacious demands on our lessliberal feelings. Doris Lessing knows, to quote another poem, that we 'mustkeep watch on our hearts'. 'The Song of a Bourgeois' puts her case againstthe provincial ironically:Let us draw our curtains, and pretendThat we do not hear the rising tides of lifeSwinging, beating against our walls,The walls we built.98In her hands the bourgeois seems pathetic because it is deflated by her irony.But poets are echoing these ideas seriously and sentimentally thirty yearslater. It is not a good poem for it fails for the same reason that more modernones have done, by approaching special pleading. There is no room in poetryfor polemics whether it is propositioning for politics or spiritual uplift.Doris Lessing knew that; her 'Fable' is a finely achieved work, whichdeserves to have the dust blown off it. The penultimate stanza returns to evokea warm mellow-lit room of childhood recalling The Grass is Singing:But for a while the dance went on Š(That is how it seems to me:Slow figures weaving, stepping unhurried throughThe pools of light, which lay in dim gold on the floor.)It might have gone on, dream-like for ever."If we want to talk about Rhodesian poetry, and of a uniquely Rhodesiansensibility, do we not have it here? It is disappointed rather than defiantmuted not arrogant. Above all it is a lyric sensibility, but surely reserved and96-Poein". The Xcw Rhodesia (21 Dec. VM5).sjRhodcsian Literature in English: A Bibliography 1890-1974/5, compiled by]. Pichanirk. A. j. Chcnnclls and L. B. Rix (Gwelo, Mambo Press, 1977).seThn X>ir Rhotlr* " Ł: 3 Mar. 1944), 17.»slbid. (3 Sept. 1943), 22.212ESSAY REVIEWabashed. The reader will find it in the best poets of this country: Fairbridge;surprisingly in Hastings; in the later poems of Brettell; hiding behind theimperiousness of Douglas Livingstone; it is virtually the oeuvre of a newpoet, Samuel Chimsoro, whose first book of poems Smoke and Flames hasjust been published by Mambo Press.'00 Here is the end of a love affair:The strength of the spun fibreHas been forgotten;The strain that broke the ropeHas been forgotten;They move through streetsLike litter in a whirlwind.Like sticks in a flooded valley,And everything about themLike the smell of the vanished smokeOf their burnt love letters,Has been forgotten.101If this Is the sensibility of Rhodesian Poetry, it is telling that it could havebeen written in any country at virtually any time.It should not be surprising to discover this same sensibility in the workof all new Black poets in this country. Mambo Press has also just publishedZimbabwean Poetry in English, edited by K. Z. Muchemwa.102 Though theeditor's Introduction is polemical and at times defiant, the poems, withcertain exceptions, are muted, nostalgic and full of poignancy. The dominatingtheme of the anthology is love of the land; she is mother, lover and muse.Charles Marachera, one of the more interesting poets in the book, contraststhe time when 'I was yours/and you were mine' with the disenfranchisedpresent:Now a manin exile from the warmth of your armsand the milk of your teeththe breath of your secret whispers in my earsshall 1 not stride back to you with hasterout all my enemies and bind the wicked husbandmenShall I not kneel to kiss the grains of your sandto rise naked before you Š a bowl of incense?and the smoke of my nakedness shall bean offering to youpledging my soul.103The political situation in this country is thus seen through a mythical andallegorical glass. Only in this way can the poet begin to cope with thedilemmas of his political situation.100 Smoke and Flames (Gwelo, Mambo Press 1978), 53 pp., Rh$0.85.101 Ibid., 8.T02 Zimbabwean Poetry in English, An Anthology, ed. K. Z. Mm-hemwa (Gwelo,Mambo Press. 1 '78), 150 pp., Rh$2.40.K'3 Ibid.. 20.R. GRAHAM213- *ŁExplaining the reason for the 'loss of love' in a letter to a Whitemissionary friend, Bonus Zimunya explains:a grandad from the backwoods,he knows not what Rhodesia is,what Zimbabwe is or what this war is all about!conscience lambasts youlike a gust of the August winddisappears like a wisp of cigar smokequestions unanswered block your thinkingfrustration fumes and fumesNow where is the roomfor love?104When 'questions unanswered block your thinking', there is only the drasticsimplification into myth. So in the collection there is little overt politicalpoetry. Yet it is probable that nearly all the poems have been written inreaction to White minority cultural oppressiveness. Reading between thelines, with the help of the Introduction, the reader can sense a kind ofpressure upon the poets to try and establish some kind of Black-Zimbabweansensibility. And when it emerges at its most convincing it seems ironically tosound the same note of devotion to the land in abstraction as we find inFairbridge, or Doris Lessing. When Zimunya, in his poem 'My Home', stopsberating the 'defilement' oi his own 'old chaste tradition', he returns to anacceptance and celebration cf home:Never mind sisterthis is our homehouses full of smokeand pendent sootfull of the odour of lifeyou see those umbrellas of tawny grass thatchpiping dark blue wreaths of smokefrom rowdy beer-fires?They shelter our peoplepoor in clothes and heartmoonshine cheerful in eyes and lipsand us too.'05This poignant bitter-sweet mood is also the dominant emotion of CharlesMungoshi's 'Sitting On The Balcony':Sitting on the balcony-fingering a glass of beer1 have bought without any intention to drink Š1 see a little boypoking for somethingin a refuse dump Šlooking for a future?'04 Ibid., 78.'O5 ibid.; 10-11.214 ESSAY REVIEWI am afraid, the stars sayyour road leads to anotherbalcony just like this onewhere you will sit fingeringa beer you have bought withoutany intention to drink.100Charles Mungoshi and Bonus Zimunya are by far the most accomplishedpoets in the volume: indeed they are proving themselves to be among thevery finest writers of this country.,They may, if the White poets have provedto be in effect expatriated British poets, be the first true poets of this country.Though Mungoshi and Zimunya share a common response to the social andpolitical events of this country, they are very different poets in temperament.Mungoshi is thoughtful and meditative: his poetry moves with a calmdeliberate poise. Zimunya, on the other hand, works much more throughdescription and image which are often startlingly original. Here is his poem'Old Granny':A little freezing Spiderlegs and arms gathered in her chestRocking with flu,I saw old Grannyat Harare Market;It was past nine of the nightWhen I saw the dusty crumpled Spider ŠA torn little blanketWas her web.107He shows how pathos and emotion can be caught simply by the right imageand is content to leave it so.Mungoshi, on the other hand, meditates over his images and points usto their significance. It is a much more conscious craftsmanship working ina more sophisticated form. But it is also potentially very moving and poignant.One of the most important poems in the anthology Š important because itre-affirms values in danger of being forgotten Š is his 'If you Don't Stay-Bitter for Too Long':If you don't stay bitterand angry for too longyou might finally salvagesomething usefulfrom the old countrya lazy half sleep summer afternoonfor instance, with the whoof-whoofof grazing cattle in your earstails swishing, flicking flies awayor the smell of newly-turned soilwith birds hopping aboutin the wake of the ploughin search of worms'O6 Ibid.. 55.>O7 Ibid., 79.R. GRAHAM 215or the pained look of your fathera look that took you all these yearsand lots of places to understandthe bantering tone you used with yourgrandmother and their old laughthat said nothing matters but deathIf you don't stay bitter and angry for too longand have the courage to go backyou will discover that the autumn smokewrites different more hopeful messagesin the high skies of the old country.108The poem is pointing to a personal, not a political, solution to thedilemmas of poets who would not be wrong in believing that they were, in asense, exiled from their homeland and their culture. It is a small victory insome terms but an important sign that the Black Zimbabwean poet can affirmthat he belongs to and is possessed by the land. And from there comes hisinspiration.Zimbabwean Poeiry in English, though uneven in quality, has manyhigh spots. And to remember that the poetry here is chosen from only thepast twenty years or so, it may seem remarkable that such a comprehensiveand worthwhile selection could be made. The book is really a landmark inthe literature of this country: a sign that people can and must find theirauthentic voice.University of RhodesiaR. GRAHAM107 Ibid..