Article
Editorial: April 2004
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January 18, 2006
For instance, in another 9/11 poem, {id="3617" title="September 2001. Maddalena Archipelago, Island of S. Stefano"}, our new Italian poet {id="3541" title="Antonella Anedda"} deals with this major historical event in a similarly roundabout, subtle way:
This small island riven underwater by U.S. submarines,
where my great-grandfather planted citrus fruits and vines,
built cowsheds and brought ten cows from the mainland.
Their trembling hoofs on the boat, the wind on their backs
only struck till then by rain from the north.
For Anedda, poetry can act as a haven from the pain and violence in the world: “Reality is not an enduring thing, it needs our protection,” she has said. “Buildings collapse, entire worlds disappear. Language can from time to time dig a hospitable hole, in which nothing is superfluous, it can put up a perimeter fenced within which things and people can breathe side by side, enjoy the light, and survive.”
Another poet who is deeply concerned with the impact of politics on daily life is Zimbabwean {id="5760" title="Musaemura Zimunya"}. While he started off as a lyrical poet, his later work carries a more biting, sardonic note, criticizing the cynicism of politicians in his home country:
After nine years of braving price rises
and vanishing minimum wages
bus queues and bread queues and meat queues
and salt queues and passport queues
a voice from the crystal palace
warns us still against grumbling
and teaches us the golden African patience.
Hooray for freedom!
In {id="5737" title="a long scholarly essay"} written especially for PIW, Kizito Z. Muchemwa takes a look at major themes and influences, such as colonialism and ancestral memory, in Zimunya’s work.
{id="4657" title="Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen"}, one of Portugal’s most important twentieth-century poets, has been involved in social causes and politics at various stages of her life, as a staunch critic of the Salazar regime who continued to speak out after the 1974 Revolution. Yet it is mythical, rather than political, thought that forms the inspiration for her poetry. “Poetry,” she says, “is something inexhaustible, something vital. It begins with our relationship to things, to daily living, and this relationship is mythic. Without mythic thought, man is unable to inhabit the world.”
Finally, from Colombia comes {id="1273" title="Jorge Gaitán Durán"}, founder of legendary magazine Mito, and a legend in his own right. Although he died young, in a plane crash in Martinica in 1962, in his poetry he “battled and lived”, as he wrote in {id="1476" title="Death could not beat me"}:
I do not surrender:
I want to live in war every day,
as if it were the last one.
The hotel restaurant closed tonight
at 10 o’clock for lack of guests.
I watched the news at the bar and drank a beer.
Isn’t it Thursday? When everyone goes out?
These lines, taken from {id="2392" title="September 2001"} by new German poet {id="2220" title="Uwe Kolbe"} (though it could equally well be titled ‘March 2004’) illustrate perfectly what is not only a major theme for Kolbe, but also for most other poets published on PIW this month: the political implications to be found in everyday life.For instance, in another 9/11 poem, {id="3617" title="September 2001. Maddalena Archipelago, Island of S. Stefano"}, our new Italian poet {id="3541" title="Antonella Anedda"} deals with this major historical event in a similarly roundabout, subtle way:
This small island riven underwater by U.S. submarines,
where my great-grandfather planted citrus fruits and vines,
built cowsheds and brought ten cows from the mainland.
Their trembling hoofs on the boat, the wind on their backs
only struck till then by rain from the north.
For Anedda, poetry can act as a haven from the pain and violence in the world: “Reality is not an enduring thing, it needs our protection,” she has said. “Buildings collapse, entire worlds disappear. Language can from time to time dig a hospitable hole, in which nothing is superfluous, it can put up a perimeter fenced within which things and people can breathe side by side, enjoy the light, and survive.”
Another poet who is deeply concerned with the impact of politics on daily life is Zimbabwean {id="5760" title="Musaemura Zimunya"}. While he started off as a lyrical poet, his later work carries a more biting, sardonic note, criticizing the cynicism of politicians in his home country:
After nine years of braving price rises
and vanishing minimum wages
bus queues and bread queues and meat queues
and salt queues and passport queues
a voice from the crystal palace
warns us still against grumbling
and teaches us the golden African patience.
Hooray for freedom!
In {id="5737" title="a long scholarly essay"} written especially for PIW, Kizito Z. Muchemwa takes a look at major themes and influences, such as colonialism and ancestral memory, in Zimunya’s work.
{id="4657" title="Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen"}, one of Portugal’s most important twentieth-century poets, has been involved in social causes and politics at various stages of her life, as a staunch critic of the Salazar regime who continued to speak out after the 1974 Revolution. Yet it is mythical, rather than political, thought that forms the inspiration for her poetry. “Poetry,” she says, “is something inexhaustible, something vital. It begins with our relationship to things, to daily living, and this relationship is mythic. Without mythic thought, man is unable to inhabit the world.”
Finally, from Colombia comes {id="1273" title="Jorge Gaitán Durán"}, founder of legendary magazine Mito, and a legend in his own right. Although he died young, in a plane crash in Martinica in 1962, in his poetry he “battled and lived”, as he wrote in {id="1476" title="Death could not beat me"}:
I do not surrender:
I want to live in war every day,
as if it were the last one.
© Corine Vloet
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