in terms of existing Shona preconceptions andbeliefs. But sudden and complete changes in apeople's way of life are unknown, except perhaps,during a military revolution, and consequentlythe missionaries failed dismally: 'The naturalresult of attempting to suppress by force deep-rooted customs held dear by the people was todrive the practice underground' (p. 21). TheShona converts finding it impossible to abandontheir traditional religion, for instance, practisedit behind the scenes.Peaden shows that there were in fact a numberof practices that were irreconcilable with Chris-tianity such as the kuzvarira system, polygyny,divination and possession. The missionaries, how-ever, thought all Shona culture anti-Christian.They, therefore sought to bring about the neces-sary changes through education. Schools andhospitals provided the means for this. Againstthis background, one sees the logic of the Shonaresistance and resilience to Christianity describedin this book.Peaden is not alone in this. Hastings, writingon 'The African Church: from Past to Present'observes in the same tone, 'Christian doctrine canhardly be got across to Africans who have notreceived any appreciable amount of Westerneducation ... if the missionary has not firstunderstood something of their own thoughtworld . . . The only way to avoid this is by adeep understanding of existing African precon-ceptions and beliefs and by the explanation ofChristianity in terms related to them, while atthe same time making clear the absolute newnessof Christian faith and life.'1I disagree with Peaden when he says, 'TheShona had no tradition of the Western practiceof courtship as a preliminary to marriage'. Thepractice of courtship among the Shona is as oldas the hills, and is well documented by J. F.Holleman in Shona Customary Law.In conclusion one might pose two unansweredquestions: What should have been done in theearly days of early mission? What should bedone now?REFERENCE1. HASTINGS, A. 1967 Church & Mission in Modern Africa. London, Burns & Oates, pp. 59-60.GweloREVD. J. C. KUMBIRAIMAXWELL-MASON, W. D. and BEETON, D. R. eds. 1970 Poetry at the Grahamstown Conference: UNISA EnglishStudies, 8 (iii), 56 pp.'No age or condition is without its heroes,the least incapable general in a nation is itsCaesar, the least imbecile statesman its Solon,the least confused thinker its Socrates, the leastcommonplace poet its Shakespeare' (G. B.Shaw, 'Maxims for Revolutionaries: TheRevolutionist's Handbook', Man and Super-man).The poems chosen by the English Academy ofSouthern Africa to be read at its conference inJuly 1969 have now been published but withoutany critical comment from the editors:Our purpose has been simply to provide arecord of what was read. We have not seen itas our task to delete from, or in any way com-ment on, the work that has reached us. Thepeople represented have all been acknowledgedas writers of sincerity and standing by the factof their invitation to Grahamstown (foreword).As Professor Beeton has for some years beenPresident of the Literary Committee of theEnglish Academy of Southern Africa, the explana-tion has a certain circularity, but is accurateenough. Certainly the seven poets sincerelybelieved they were writing poetry and that theyachieved it. Equally it would have been hard tofind better poets than those included, a fact whichbodes ill for 'The Progress of Poesy' in SouthAfrica.The main general impression is the striking, andalmost complete, abandonment of rhyme andmetre; Free Verse is everywhere but most of thepoets seem to have forgotten T. S. Eliot's dictumthat no verse is free for the man who wants todo a good job. Most of the poets representedseem little concerned with the cadences of theirlines or their appeal either to the sense or the eye.Chopped up prose, as we so often have here, isneither verse nor good prose.One also notices a constant striving after meta-phorical expression. It is an endemic fault inmuch of the latest poetry arising possibly from afear of paucity in the poets' thought or an attemptto give that thought a profundity both specious98and unnecessary. On contemplating whale-skeletons Mr. Adams (p. 25) gives a fine exampleof this language that uneasily combines the con-crete and the abstract:their empty bodies' inexhaustible brailleyielding to the mind's fingersthe architecture of silence,the blue-print of timelessness and weight.The mixture of metaphor (braille; architecture)is symptomatic and whilst 'blue-print of weight'works quite well a 'blue-print of timelessness' ishard to conceive. The justification for the elabor-ate use of metaphor is hard to find and a perusalof the entire poem, 'The Leviathans' fails to showany correlation between its use here and the other,unrelated, metaphors used elsewhere. At its worstthis habit leads to a sort of hermetic impression-ism that appears with little meaning from thewriter's private inner world. Ann Welsh (p. 13)writes:Light smarts in armouriesOf glassed-in-cities;Grit-laden red of smooth sunsetsBacks up globe orange swelledFrom batteries of windows to ring in nightWith high explicit brilliance.The confusion here of both thought and imageis obvious: an attempted violence of language,but no clear image or idea.Finally there is the application of a criterionwhich should perhaps be used only with the verybest poetry. There is little attempt to realize thegreater world of experience that exists outside thenarrow one of the poem itself. Fragments ofexperience exist in isolation, threadbare in arather pathetic meaninglessness. A particular ex-ample is a competent poem by Mr. Livingstone,'Under Capricorn' (p. 8). The poet drivingthrough a misty landscape encounters some goatsand their herdsman. In the mist they assume ademoniacal aspect and this is well conveyed bythe poet. The experience, however, is given nomeaning, it remains merely a rather vivid hal-lucination, interesting in its oddity but possessingno general truth.On the matter of individual poets a littleremains to be said. Professor Butler is represented(pp. 1-3) by a single poem marked by the modernvice of writing poetry about writing poetry, butdisplaying an accomplished ear and a clarity rarein this pamphlet. Mr. Livingstone as alreadyindicated, achieves one limited success (pp. 5-9),but his poems are vitiated by an uncertainty ofhow seriously he is to take himself especiallywhere sex is concerned. Ann Welsh (pp. 11-16)and Mr. Adams (pp. 23-30) stand as commonvictims of the impressionism mentioned earlier,from which little emerges but a vague haze ofwords.Mr. Macnamara on the other hand sins boldlyand takes no refuge in obscurity, writing in alucid chopped-up prose. He attempts the largestatement and to relate single experiences to agreater whole but his work is sadly lacking inevocative power. His poem 'Glass Dragon'(p. 20) may be taken as typical of his publishedwork both in this pamphlet and elsewhere. Thepoet encounters a glass-blower and requests himto fashion a dragon. Watching him the poet re-flects on the evil qualities dragons have symbol-ized in various mythologies, then the glassblowerintimates that the dragon need not be boughtunless desired. The conclusion of the poem isillustrative of its intention and quality:On the other handthe sacri draconles in the temple of BonaDea atRome were kindly serpents;a dragon guarded the golden apples forChe nymphean Hesperides;Norsemen carved protective dragon-heads onprows of ships;in China, the dragon was an emblem andfigured prominentlyin art.Experts have saidall these good-bad legends indicate a commonrootin far antiquity.I take the dragon.The list of pleasant attributes of the dragon couldhave been lifted verbatim from a mythologicaldictionary and are expressed with no sensuousforce. The gesture at 'the end whereby the poetaccepts the Janus-nature of the dragon andthereby, presumably, 'makes an affirmation ofLife' is facile and unrealized.The poems of Mr. Clouts are readable butmake no lasting impression. Ruth Miller, the lastpoet represented (pp. 43-50), is. in the writer'sopinion, by far the best. It is poetry in a minorkey at its best (when she attempts the major keyher experiences appear inflated and over-drama-tized as in 'Mantis'), with an honest craftsman-ship and statements of genuine importance.Some of her lines are memorable; in her poem'Spider', quoted by Professor Beeton in anobituary memoir of her printed poems at the endA i99of the pamphlet (pp. 51-3) she contemplates theactivity of the spider, confident and unthinking,and contrasts it With her own self-consciousactivity of writing:But when the poor cold corpse of wordsIs laid upon its candled bier,I, vindicate, will shed the tearThat falls like wax, and creep unheardTo weave in silence, grave and bowed,The pure necessity Š a shroud.In its humility this is moving but Ruth Millerwas seldom able to maintain such excellencethroughout an entire poem. It is tantalizing toponder how well she might have written had shelived in an atmosphere more stimulating andUniversity of Rhodesiacritically astringent than South Africa can pro-vide.On the whole the work included is poor stuff;a sad thing to note when the very existence ofthe publication indicates a desire for poetry. Thepoets represented do not possess even the Alex-andrian virtues of the productions emanatingfrom the academic writers of Britain and theUnited States. Their work has grown in anatmosphere not conducive to good criticism, anatmosphere inimical to talent in that it allowscomplacency with what is already achieved anddoes not encourage perfection of the work. SouthAfrican English Poetry has a long road to hoebefore it can aspire to claim the attention of aserious public.D. F. MIDDLETON100