Poets and their visions 22 – Emily Dickinson

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Emily Dickinson, Harold Bloom, Henry James, Nobody, poems, Poetry

Emily Dickinson was yet another idiosyncratic New Englander, remarkable for her poetic innovations. If Gerald Manley Hopkins introduced a concept called sprung rhythm, Dickinson engaged in what might be termed sprung language. A simple but delightful example of her technique occurs in Nobody

I’m nobody! Who are you?
Are you nobody, too?
Then there’s a pair of us — don’t tell!
They’d banish us, you know.

How dreary to be somebody!
How public, like a frog
To tell your name the livelong day
To an admiring bog!

The technique is delightful, using words and phrases (too, pair, us) to involve the reader with the writer. The conspiracy is entrenched by the startling use of ‘frog’ for those in the public eye, followed by the splendidly illuminating comparison of their activities to croaking to an admiring bog,

Reconciliation through Poetry

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Ariyawansa Ranaweera, Belihuloya, Eastern University, Jaffna, K. Satchithanadan, Kamala Wijeratne, Mirrored Images: An Anthology of Sri Lankan Poetry, poems, Poetry, S Pathmanathan, University of Peradeniya, University of Sabaragamuwa

Kamala Wijeratne

Can poetry reconcile people of different ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds to each other? Can poetry heal the wounds left behind by conflict and wipe away the tears? Can poetry build bridges and bond people together?

Professor K. Satchithanadan of Delhi University, one time secretary of the prestigious Sahitya Academy of India, had no direct answers but made it clear that poetry gave voice to the voiceless, power to challenge injustice and oppression and pricked the conscience of humanity. This massage of humanity was conveyed by him and a team of Sri Lankan poets, So Pathmanathan from Jaffna, Ariyawansa Ranaweera from Colombo, and myself from Kandy. Led by him, we visited three higher institutions of learning- namely the University of Peradeniya, the Eastern University and the University of Sabaragamuwa, Belihuloya.

The three poets represented the three languages used in Sri Lanka- Sinhala, Tamil and English. Significantly, they were bilingual and bonded with each other culturally and aesthetically. Above all they shared the enthusiasm to reach out to each other and facilitate others to reach out to them and to each other. The three contexts in which this sensitizing and humanizing activity took place were well selected in terms of background, audience and response. They also formed a cross section of the Sri Lankan population Sinhala, Tamil and Muslim. At the University of Peradeniya something akin to this session had been done by Professor Rajiva Wijesinha when his book ‘Mirrored Images’ was made familiar to the academic community and the alumni there. But this session had vertical proportions in that the participant audience comprised senior academics, academics and students. The audience was participatory and as was to be expected critical. Professor Satchithanandan took them on intellectually as well as poetically. He raised awareness through his very erudite lecture, taking the audience through the ages from Ramayana to Faustus, from Neruda to modern poets who write poetry of violence. He charmed with his recital of his own poetry. He showed without doubt the power of poetry.

The Moonemalle Inheritance: From DAYS OF DESPAIR – Part 2

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Days of Despair, Moonemalle Inheritance, The Moonemalle Inheritance

Somehow she must finally have fallen asleep. When she awoke the crown was gone, and Tom was lying innocently beside her, his eyes tight shut. They opened slowly as she looked at him, and for an instant she thought she glimpsed a trace of guilt in them, and then he smiled and began to behave just as he had done during the last few months.

But something had changed. Little by little it began to show. Perhaps it was not his fault, she told herself, and therefore not hers, the increasing violence in the North and the East even while he and many of those he had summoned to his Round Table Conference, including many of those who had marched with her, tried to find a solution to the racial tensions that had led her to march. It was not his fault, she repeated, when first one and then another of the terrorist groups, the Tigers and Wolves and Bears in the North, the Lions and Shadows in the South, as they called themselves, declared that they would not accept any solution that emerged from the talks; in her heart of hearts however she had for some time now begun to feel that, if Tom had finalised an agreement on the basis of the discussions and shown himself determined to implement it, the sheer relief of the vast majority of the population would have strengthened him and all would have been well.

The Moonemalle Inheritance: From DAYS OF DESPAIR – Part 1

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Days of Despair, Moonemalle Inheritance, The Moonemalle Inheritance

Phyllis is not on the lawn with the rest of her family. She is hardly ever at home now during the day, for she has thrown herself with vigour into the work of the Girl Guide Association, of which she was made Honorary President, and an Executive one too as it has happened, soon after her marriage. She is aware that her efforts in this regard are in some measure an attempt to expiate her guilt. Not perhaps entirely without reason, she holds herself responsible for the change in Tom, or rather for his reversion to old habits.

For a few months after the marriage, the country had been full of hope: it seemed as though normalcy, good relation between the races, freedom of speech, safeguards against corruption, and all that sort of thing had been restored. Though not in the least vivacious in his good humour once she had accepted him, Tom had also seemed to be restrained, indeed thoughtful, in his exercise of power.

All that began to change from the night when she allowed him into her bed. When she had agreed to marry him she had insisted on separate bedrooms, and though after a few weeks he had begged her to change her mind she had stayed firm. After a couple of months however, during which he seemed to her to have behaved extremely well, she wondered whether she was perhaps being unfair. Scrupulous in her honesty, she was afterwards to tell herself that her decision had perhaps as element of selfishness in it too, for she recognised that the developing pregnancy of her daughter had stirred in her feelings which had long lain dormant. Whatever it was, she told Tom one evening after he had been especially sentimental as they sat listening to old records after dinner, Indra and Diana being out, ‘Jeanie with the light brown hair’ and ‘Ferdinand the Bull’ and suchlike, that she would keep her door unlocked that night.

Poets and their visions 21 – Longfellow

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Carillon, Edgar Allan Poe, Evangeline, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Hiawatha, Longfellow, poems, Poetry, T S Eliot, The Arsenal

Longfellow, Poe’s near contemporary, was almost as well known at the other during their lifetimes, but he is now not taken very seriously. If he is thought of at all, it is as the author of Hiawatha, which was supposed to be the American epic – which I suppose it in fact is, which makes it all the more sad that the Indians were so thoroughly exterminated by the workmanlike and precise Puritans who dominated the country and its literary ethos for so long.

Longfellow was very much an exception for, like the greatest American writers, Henry James and T S Eliot, he escaped to Europe when he could. He did not however settle in England and become naturalized as those two did, rather preferring the continent on the pattern of the romantic poets he admired.

His most memorable poetry is escapist in nature, and celebrates what was for him the magic of Europe. Carillon is about the bells of the Belgian town of Bruges, and creates both their music and the wistful thoughts of those who hear this in the watches of the night –

The Moonemalle Inheritance: From ACTS OF FAITH – Part 8

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Acts of Faith, Moonemalle Inheritance, The Moonemalle Inheritance

All good things then must come to an end and, since we would like our story too to be included in this category, we must now bring it to a close. As the sun rises however on the bright Sunday morning that follows the events recorded above, there is a piece of news for the denizens of this happy land which must also be conveyed to our readers. It should be added that the more perspicacious amongst them, such as yourself for instance, may well have grasped it already.

This is the news that Tom is to marry Phyllis. He had put out feelers on the previous afternoon itself, and though at first she had been horrified, all those whom she had come to rely on during the past few days, Indra and Diana and Paul, and Lily and Mumtaz and Veronica, and John’s womenfolk and the three boys from the beach, had all urged her to it so strongly that in the end she had agreed. Their argument was that Tom was quite incapable of exercising power himself any more, and there was no one else capable of succeeding, especially as no one else would be able to settle the forces that she had aroused. If she refused to fill the vacancy, the army or the navy would step in which would cause a great deal of confusion, or else the arrack renters and the ship chandlers who were once more beginning to organise themselves. She was assured that if she yielded they would all chip in and do their bit, and Tom would not be allowed to make a nuisance of himself, even if he showed himself keen to be one, which seemed unlikely in his current condition.