Here lies Dame Poetry, idolized by Ronsard,
Hugo, U’Tamsi, and the others,
forsaken by ungrateful and profligate heirs . . .
Poetry, last rampart of the soul in all its profundity, may thus be at death’s door. This bedridden dowager, for whom all surgical interventions have failed, is still surrounded by a few diehard devotees who cling to her until the final breath. Just as the poet Abdellatif Laâbi speaks of the “dying Sun,” poetry is dying, and as a consequence, we may be guilty of one of the most shameful infractions of the penal code: failure to render assistance to an endangered person—I was going to say, to endangered poetry . . .
Nowadays, writing or publishing poetry seems an act of resistance, like sporting a mohawk. The space devoted to poetry has eroded over time.And so poets, from the refuge of their islets, look at this world that has turned its back on them and wonder from where this disaffection arose.
Did the prevailing confusion, the temptation of mediocrity, end up stacking the deck? Unless it’s the very definition of poetry that’s at stake? But can we define a notion that lends itself to the real world, rather than to the realm of conjecture?
Pedestrian Poems and Inspired Poems
It’s true that the malaise is real. We can’t hide this frightening reality. Even so, who among us, readers and poets, wonders what caused the dethroning of poetry? We console ourselves, especially as poets, believing that better times will soon return when poetry will be restored to its former glory. When that day comes, the novel had better watch out. What arguments haven’t we heard to that effect? We are told the novel has never been as prominent as it is today. It was once, if I may be so bold as to oversimplify, a means to put food on the table, and was serialized in the daily papers before it was eventually published in traditional book form. Poetry was then the preferred discipline, the genre of seduction, enchantment, etiquette, and emotion.
We take comfort where we can.
Many observers blame the Surrealists for creating poetry’s current malaise. Apparently, they drove away the audience for this literary genre by imposing knee-jerk and unconscious automatic writing, thereby forsaking music, emotion—the very quintessence of poetry. Form may have killed substance, but who cares about substance, as long as there’s form!
We forget that traditional poetry, without denigrating it, was hampered by a proliferation of rules that reduced the poet to a counter of syllables, a scout for beautiful alexandrines.
We came up with perfect stanzas, verses that were accurate and flawless in prosody. But they had to be inspired. Here, I believe, lies the main reason for the divorce between poetry and its readers. There’s a strident difference between a pedestrian poem and an inspired poem. The former originates from humans, and solely from humans. Admittedly, the latter originates from humans as well, but they feel they are serving as intermediaries, scribes, couriers. It is poetry, the kind that simultaneously belongs to and is able to dissociate itself from humankind, that keeps its virginity and watches the years go by without losing its substance.
Pedestrian poetry is what Annie Lebrun rightly describes as language poetry. She believes such poetry, “being only worth its weight in paper, discourages us a little more each day from still banking on words.”
That’s why it’s not surprising to hear it said that poetry is not what it used to be. There are no longer any rhymes. The writing is unreadable. What do they want to say?
Why Write Poetry? What Function Can It Fulfill?
Judging from a few contemporary publications, I realize that assigning a function to poetry is not so easy. Each poet sounds the alarm in their own way. Reading between the lines, we quickly detect despair, pessimism. Take Belgian poet Gaspard Hons, for whom poetry is a “blade of grass that thrives despite a scant amount of water.” There’s a touch of resistance and much resignation in this definition. The grass may thrive despite “this scant amount of water.” In other words, in spite of the shortage of water, poetry is here, settling for whatever cramped space is left.
On the other hand, Cuban poet Eliseo Diego’s viewpoint is less extreme, though it conveys a certain sense of withdrawal:
A poem is nothing but happiness, a conversation in twilight,This perspective reminds me of the Polish poet Julian Tuwim, who nevertheless broadens the discussion when he asserts:
all that’s gone and was replaced by silence.
When I know that the poem will be, I enclose the universe within parentheses, and I place the sign of the function upfront.It should be noted that Tuwim corroborates what was pointed out above, apropos of the inspired poem. Poetry comes before its function. The question of its utility, of its role, comes later. The fundamental mistake some poets make is asking about the function of poetry before even questioning the process of creation and the way poetry gushes out uncontrollably. These poets, of whom there are many nowadays, confuse the battle cry with the poem. As passionate propagandists, former trade unionists, experts on conflicts that give them something to sink their teeth into, mediocre self-proclaimed lawyers for war victims, or incorrigible nationalists, they embrace all causes. Incapable of producing a piece of writing worth its salt, they pretend to be the protectors of purity and authenticity and cultivate intolerance instead of taming their acrimony and envy. And then, what to tell them? At least have mercy on them, grant them the words they long to hear, the status of writer that they claim. As far as I’m concerned, I embrace the wisdom of Albert Cohen in Book of My Mother:
I have resolved to tell all the painters they are geniuses;
otherwise they bite. And, in general, I tell each one they are charming. Such are my daytime manners. But in my
nights and my dawns, my thoughts are not constrained.
Why Poetry Anthologies Are Nothing but Rip-offs
A few African authors have lately been churning out a kind of facile poetry. Hamidou Dia, a former contributor to Présence Africaine, may well be their brilliant and energetic leader. It’s always quite an honor to be a leader. We must beware of not leading the flock into the abyss of mediocrity! Reading the lines from this “pan-African” school, you are dumbfounded. For these upstanding people, there are, on the one hand, the “good Blacks” who champion good Black-African poetry, and on the other hand, the sellouts: those who consort with the Whites, crisscross book fairs, savor champagne and petits fours. So one must close ranks, call in the genuine Black poets, round them up to bellow in unison, praise Césaire, Damas, and Senghor, even without having read them—it doesn’t matter! And Hamidou Dia has produced for us an anthology entitled Poètes d’Afrique et des Antilles, published by Éditions de la Table Ronde, in order to replicate what Senghor had done in his day with his celebrated Anthologie de la poésie nègre. The back cover of Hamidou Dia’s book speaks for itself once you know that authors often write these blurbs themselves, and the one below probably fell prey to such an exercise in conceitedness:
No new anthology of African poetry has been published since Senghor’s, and yet the creativity of Francophone poets is considerable. Hence this writers’ anthology conceived by Hamidou Dia, a poet of renown and an academic. His anthology is intended for the general public and traces the evolution of African poetry from the Negritude movement to the intimism that characterizes contemporary poetry, including the emergence of a new feminine lyricism. Hamidou Dia was born in Senegal. He studied in Saint Louis and Dakar, and was imprisoned for political dissidence. He earned a French literature teacher certification, and teaches at the University of Cergy-Pontoise. He has published numerous poetry collections with Présence Africaine.
So we are informed that Hamidou Dia is the reputed successor of Senghor on the subject. We also learn that he has published “numerous poetry collections,” that he is a poet “of renown.” Browsing through the catalogue of Présence Africaine, I found no more than two poetry collections published under the name of Hamidou Dia. Poet of renown? If he says so, let’s believe him—he knows his own worth!
What strikes me is that Senghor brought attention to poets who later became established authors, such as the Guadeloupean Guy Tirolien, while our “poet of renown,” Hamidou Dia, sets out to erase and truncate, shamelessly wielding the scissors of censorship. How else can we explain that this anthology ignores the voices of today’s essential authors, such as Nimrod from Chad, Waberi from Djibouti, Labou Tansi and Gabriel Okoundji from the Congo, and many others?
One may argue that I am resentful because I myself did not make the list. Good grief! That’s not the question. What I am condemning is all this demagoguery that hints of Stalinism. In the end, confusing the act of creation with blind obedience can only hurt poetry. Most of the poets excluded from this anthology are those who refuse to bleat in unison and transform creation into a federation of griots, epigones, and pale imitations of the bards of Negritude. These free-spirited poets know you can’t sing Le cahier d’un retour au pays a second time, so they let the singularity of their voices be heard, all the while acknowledging their kinship to Negritude. Is it a coincidence if one of the finest monographs about Léopold Sédar Senghor—Nimrod’s Le tombeau de Léopold Sédar Senghor (Éditions Le Temps qu’il fait)—was just published by one of the poets brushed aside from this partisan anthology?
Let’s return instead to the genuine poets, the genuine writers. Tuwim recognizes that the poem must come, but he doesn’t know when it will come. Then what to think of poets who write to order on such and such a topic: hunger, Rwanda, civil wars? Is this really creation? Creators must have doubts about everything. Their abilities to outdo themselves. Inspiration. Will it or won’t it come, if ever? I don’t mean to say that the literature of urgency is a bad thing in itself. Some writings are timeless. I’m thinking of Victor Hugo’s Les Châtiments or Aimé Césaire’s Le cahier d’un retour au pays natal. But not everyone is a Victor Hugo. Not everyone is an Aimé Césaire.
What about the poetry of urgency? A number of African poets have grasped this nuance. For them, poetry shouldn’t lose its social function. Indeed, Babacar Sall writes: “Everything must be precise/death/charity/good works/philanthropy/crime/also the word must be precise like a knife.” This literature of urgency is often tied to the poet’s personal journey. How many of these “militant” poets have a personal journey? It’s only at this price that poetry avoids the pitfalls of writing on command, of writing poetry that is perfunctory, soulless, and devoid of genuine feeling. Thus, we have heard some writers calling on their colleagues to “take care” of AIDS, to fight the disease through their writing. In any case such was the opinion of Malagasy writer Michèle Rakotoson at the New Congress of Writers from Africa and the African Diaspora held in N’Djamena last October. Next, they’ll also call on writers to fight cancer, sleeping sickness or multiple sclerosis! The writer is nothing more than the firefighter of African societies.
Is poetry only to be an accumulation of words? No, according to Ivorian writer Tanella Boni: “Words no longer make sense/ Murdered/ Gutted . . . ” Poets are aware of the ambiguity of words. They also invoke imagery and natural elements to define creation. Fernando d’Almeida, a Cameroonian poet, believes there will be poetry as long as “trees still root in the earth.” Paul Dakeyo, another Cameroonian poet, whose early work was very militant, later turned to the natural elements that only women are meant to master: “I dream about this river that is my land, and where currents drink up the sun that gushes from the highest peaks.” Finally, for Congolese poet Jean-Baptiste Tati Loutard, “the poet navigates between sky and earth like a sentient object between the two poles of a magnet.”
The Novel Comes to the Rescue of Poetry
No, poetry is not dead. It is sitting somewhere, ruefully watching the indifferent passersby. In fact, we must fetch poetry from wherever it has retreated. Poetry is no longer the prerogative of leaflets or collections. Many real-life stories, short stories, and novels perpetuate the poetic tradition. A few novels by writers from the new generation come to mind, such as the Cameroonian Gaston-Paul Effa, whose pages are undeniably poetic. The first sentence of his novel Mâ would make any poet turn green with envy:
Shadows have fallen, it’s already night, in the network of alleyways on the seven hills of Yaoundé, at the end of the world, at the end of the sky and, on the sharp edge of the moon, I, Sabeth, am weeping.
Jean-Luc Raharimanana, a Malagasy writer, is “wrongly” introduced as an author of short stories. His writings are pages of poetry whose lyrical brilliance baffles those who expect him to narrate a story in a straightforward way:
And the night sets in, dark hole in the day. And the day
sinks into the hole of the night, a spiral, succumbs there.
Here comes the darkness . . .
The novels written by the Haitian writer Louis-Philippe Dalembert, in a formal and unique register, evoke his homeland, sea crossings, exile. So too do the prose writings by Djiboutian author Abdourahman Waberi, who incidentally confesses:
I am, in fact, a trafficker. I write poetry, but as it doesn’t sell, I dress it up like a novel . . .Clearly, most of the novelists mentioned above nurture strong ties with poetry. Waberi talks about “making it look like a novel” to better “sell” poetry. For all these poets who have developed a reputation as prose writers, poetry has become a secret island from which gush themes they later develop in their novels, real-life stories, or short stories. I am tempted to say: if you want to read poetry, read certain novels instead.
So Goes Poetry
Perhaps poetry, far from being at death’s door, has only found a refuge. It has vacated its usual stomping grounds to follow in the footsteps of its heralds. There’s no point in sniveling, in bemoaning the bygone days of lyrical flights and declamations, when we made the beloved blubber from the tight embrace of enclosed rhymes. Poetry has a new look. It has turned into thematically organized storytelling which no poet will be able to escape any longer. It accompanies prose, takes it by the hand, seduces it, makes it solemn, profound, sinuous but virulent, so it can emerge from the morass in which the contemporary novel has gotten itself mired. Where some praise the orality of a passage, its philosophical dimension, I see true poetry—the kind that restores to writing its turmoil, its edginess—ingredients necessary for a successful work.
But why do we no longer read poetry? Wrong question! Is what is presented to us really poetry? That’s the question! Any piece of writing that dishes up free verse and freedom from rules now passes for poetry. We must join forces against such alarming permissiveness. Not that we demand the return of versification, but we expect that poets write inspired texts, unlike the cerebral impudence so dear to Denis Roche and his group of poets and friends who stabbed in broad daylight, in the public square, the last modicum of human language: poetry. Since then, poetry, covered in bandages, has been walking with a limp and suffers from a slew of other ailments: editorial cronyism, the proliferation of self-publishing, the lack of interest from booksellers and the media. Cronyism is the most widespread abuse in the Parisian editorial microcosm. Poetry collections—if any still exist—from Seuil, Gallimard, or Flammarion only publish their friends or the latest celebrities— Houellebeque, Roubaud, and the members of the Académie Française who empty the bottoms of drawers to make public their dusty verses about their teenage loves.
At the same time, Francophone poetry has never been as prolific but lacking in recognition: Abdellatif Laâbi, Tahar Bekri, Tati Loutard, Édouard Maunick, Jacques Rabemananjara, René Depestre, Jean Métellus, Nimrod, Gabriel Okoundji, etc.
And so goes poetry.
