Return of poetry to the people

Who are our poets? Are they the ones who publish in books and whom we study in schools or hear about in arts columns? Or are poets the spokesmen for an age? Are they even relevant? What is more, since we in the Caribbean are quite seasoned commentators of Nobel Prize winners having been the recipients of two Nobel Prizes for literature in the past three decades, and one for economics, we really do have a right to question who gets this prize.

The question is, what exactly is a poet? Are calypsonians poets? The poet Derek Walcott declared them to be so in one of his newspaper articles when he worked as a Trinidad journalist. But for most individuals poetry brings neither joy nor entertainment. It is something far from our everyday experience and that we study in school.

Of course there has been a resurgence of spoken arts in Trinidad and Tobago, which suggests a growing return to an idea of poetry as something that speaks to the people. But the divide between what is acclaimed and what is not remains. Poetry as it is currently viewed needs to be interpreted by those who have made a career of so doing.

Indeed, our Nobel laureate Walcott is notoriously difficult. I should know. I have been teaching his work for many years and the greatest difficulty for students is simply trying to unthread the meaning and the metaphor.

My students say “we hate reading poetry” and I say, but you listen to poetry every day. As children we grow up with nursery rhymes that teach us the beauty of sounds and melody. As teenagers we spend enormous listening hours glued to a CD player or its newest equivalent.

Parties are not parties without lyrics as well as music.

But somewhere along the line we have been brainwashed into believing that there is something called literature and that “literature” is to be associated with high intellectual achievement (ours and theirs).

But poetry was originally not meant to be part of an academic exercise. In fact poetry initially was not even meant to be read and Homer’s poetry was certainly not for the ear.

Those begrudgers who lament that the Nobel panel members have gone soft in the head or have fallen for performance and hype rather than good verse would do well to consider that much of what we now consider ancient classical poetry was a way of retaining stories for posterity and were meant for a general audience.

Poets speak for their age, but they do so in crystalline form. They are wordsmiths who have learnt their craft through years of study of rhythm and language. They know that a word is more than just a word and is in fact a sound that can be placed alongside other sounds to create music and meaning.

So let us be clear. All verse is not good poetry, just as all songs are not good songs. Poetry, whether for the ear or for the eye, is a craft that must be carefully executed. It must have relevance and, dare I say, universal appeal.

Bob Dylan as songwriter has managed to accomplish all of this over the past 50 years. He has written a substantial body of work that shows immense artistic integrity.

He has crafted new metaphors that have seeped into our consciousness and made us see war and those who create war as increasingly bewildering and illogical. Hate and the stirring up of strife are beyond comprehension, which is why we cannot fully unpin the meaning of Blowin’ in the Wind.

But what is more, his songs remain relevant. They are not just protest songs of the sixties, but speak increasingly to us as we see the carnage in Syria, Iraq, Africa and even the Caribbean. As hordes of refugees flee and are prepared to die to find freedom and the world of so-called developed countries dithers, his poetry sings to us of something called humanity.

But his songs also speak of the human condition and do so without clich? and with a freshness that sends ripples down our spine, as good poetry should. Who has not thrilled to poems and images such as I Am a Lonesome Hobo or Mr Tambourine Man? His words and his music are part of who we are. Like Shakespeare his phrases have become part of the vernacular.

Dylan, who incidentally changed his name from Zimmerman to Dylan in honour of one of the most acclaimed poets of the 20th century, Dylan Thomas, learnt his craft from music and from poets such as John Keats and increasingly from the blues.

Far from decrying the choice of Nobel laureate it seems to me that in a deeply surprising move, the Nobel committee has done a great service to us academics and literary critics and the public at large.

Of course in characteristic fashion, Dylan has not as yet responded.

But their choice of laureate has emphatically removed poetry from the ivory tower in which she has for so long been ensconced and given her back to the people