Ezra Pound - The Poet As Anti-Semite; Section One
It was 1943, right in the middle of World War Two. In Italy tens of thousands of Allied troops were fighting and dying as they clashed with German and Italian armies. Over 7,000 Canadians were killed in battles on Italian soil. At the same time, while this was going on, an American-born poet, Ezra Loomis Pound was broadcasting on Italian radio. He praised the Italian fascist dictator Benito Mussolini and poured scorn on the U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
"This man and his government," Pound claimed in effect, "are under the control of Jewish financiers." As Pound spoke his noxious propaganda, American troops were being killed by German and Italian troops also, just like the Canadians and other Allied troops. Ezra Pound was one of the great modern poets. Yet at the same time he was a racist, an anti-semite and a traitor to his own country.
He was also a great critic. "During the crucial decade, approximately 1912 to 1922," said another great poet who was a friend of Pound, namely T.S. Eliot, "Pound was the most influential and in some ways the best critic in America."
Pound was born in Hailey, Idaho in 1885. His father then moved the family to Philadelphia where Pound spent most of his youth. In his early teens he started to write poetry. He then went to two universities and tried to be a teacher. It didn't work out for Pound. So in 1908, he headed off to Europe with about $80 in his pocket. that would be worth over $1,000 to-day.
At first Pound went to Italy. Then he went to England where he met many of the great poets of the day. He helped found the modern poetry movement called 'Imagism'. It did to English poetry what basically Pablo Picasso and Braque were doing to painting.
"Do not retell in mediocre verse," said Pound, "what has been done in good prose." Pound attracted many followers but then he left this movement. Yet Pound was still active in the modern literary world. He published and/or promoted some of the earliest and greatest modern writers. People like Roberta Frost, Ernest Hemingway, 'H.D." or Hilda Doolittle, James Joyce, William Carlos Williams and D.H. Lawrence benefitted from Pound's advice and help.
Ezra Pound helped create modern Anglo-American literature. Yet then came the First World War in 1914. This terrible event changed many people's lives, including Pound's. He wasn't the same afterwards. (To be continued).
Monday 29 February 2016
Monday 22 February 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Thirteen, The Poet As Feminist by Dave Jaffe
The Poet As Feminist - by Dave Jaffe
The young woman stood firm in her beliefs even though her parents poured scorn on her. They were both poets and they mocked their daughter's new poem that was written in free verse.
Yet Nazik Al- Malaika didn't give in. "Say whatever you wish to say," said the young 20 -something woman to her father. "I am confident that my poem will change the map of Arab poetry."
Nazik al-Malaika was right. Her poem did change Arab poetry. Up until the early 20th century, nearly all Arab poets wrote poems in a classical style that dated back to the 7th century, 1400 years ago. Yet al-Malaika changed Arab poetry. In 1947 she heard over the radio, news of the terrible disease of cholera. It was sweeping through Egypt killing thousands of people.
Al-Malaika wrote a poem about this disease and its effects in Egypt and ushered Arab poetry into the modern age. Al-Malaika faced some brutal criticism for what she had done. Arab countries back then were often frozen in their traditional ways, and Iraq where al- Malaika was living, was a very
conservative country.
And worse yet, al-Malaika was a woman in a time when Arab women were severely repressed. Men literally ruled the roost back then and dominated Iraqi society. Others claimed that al-Malaika wasn't the first Arab poet to write free verse. According to some, a male poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab had written poetry in a free verse form, a year or two before al-Malaika had turned out her free verse poem.
Yet whatever the truth was, al-Malaika had forged a new path for Arab poets and Arab women. As someone said about her, "She closed the door behind her, after the whole world ignored her." Al-Malaika was an educated woman. She got an M.A. in literature in Wisconsin in the United States. Then she studied music and learned to play Arab musical instruments. She called for women to stand up and free themselves from the oppression and stagnant life of the Arab world.
She wrote a memoir of her life and in the Arab world of the 1960's. This too was an amazing thing for an Arab woman to do.
Al-Malaika, like many rebels, paid a price for her struggles for social justice. In 1967, she went back to writing poetry in a traditional way. She married and had one son. Yet at one time she helped set up a group of women who said they would remain single.
In later life she became a recluse and avoided most people. She and her family fled Iraq when the Baath political party came to power. The family moved to Kuwait. Yet in 1990, she and her family moved to Egypt after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
She died in Egypt in her 80's. She is remembered as a brave pioneer of women's rights.
"Why do we fear words," she wrote in her poem 'Love Song For Words'.
"When they have rose-palmed hands
Fragrant , passing gently over cheeks and glasses
of heartening wine sipped one summer by thirsty lips?"
The young woman stood firm in her beliefs even though her parents poured scorn on her. They were both poets and they mocked their daughter's new poem that was written in free verse.
Yet Nazik Al- Malaika didn't give in. "Say whatever you wish to say," said the young 20 -something woman to her father. "I am confident that my poem will change the map of Arab poetry."
Nazik al-Malaika was right. Her poem did change Arab poetry. Up until the early 20th century, nearly all Arab poets wrote poems in a classical style that dated back to the 7th century, 1400 years ago. Yet al-Malaika changed Arab poetry. In 1947 she heard over the radio, news of the terrible disease of cholera. It was sweeping through Egypt killing thousands of people.
Al-Malaika wrote a poem about this disease and its effects in Egypt and ushered Arab poetry into the modern age. Al-Malaika faced some brutal criticism for what she had done. Arab countries back then were often frozen in their traditional ways, and Iraq where al- Malaika was living, was a very
conservative country.
And worse yet, al-Malaika was a woman in a time when Arab women were severely repressed. Men literally ruled the roost back then and dominated Iraqi society. Others claimed that al-Malaika wasn't the first Arab poet to write free verse. According to some, a male poet, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab had written poetry in a free verse form, a year or two before al-Malaika had turned out her free verse poem.
Yet whatever the truth was, al-Malaika had forged a new path for Arab poets and Arab women. As someone said about her, "She closed the door behind her, after the whole world ignored her." Al-Malaika was an educated woman. She got an M.A. in literature in Wisconsin in the United States. Then she studied music and learned to play Arab musical instruments. She called for women to stand up and free themselves from the oppression and stagnant life of the Arab world.
She wrote a memoir of her life and in the Arab world of the 1960's. This too was an amazing thing for an Arab woman to do.
Al-Malaika, like many rebels, paid a price for her struggles for social justice. In 1967, she went back to writing poetry in a traditional way. She married and had one son. Yet at one time she helped set up a group of women who said they would remain single.
In later life she became a recluse and avoided most people. She and her family fled Iraq when the Baath political party came to power. The family moved to Kuwait. Yet in 1990, she and her family moved to Egypt after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.
She died in Egypt in her 80's. She is remembered as a brave pioneer of women's rights.
"Why do we fear words," she wrote in her poem 'Love Song For Words'.
"When they have rose-palmed hands
Fragrant , passing gently over cheeks and glasses
of heartening wine sipped one summer by thirsty lips?"
Wednesday 17 February 2016
The Poet as Mental Patient - Part Twelve of 'Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health' by Dave Jaffe
The Poet As Mental Patient by Dave Jaffe
If there is or was an American aristocracy, Robert Lowell belonged to it.
The tall, slightly over six foot tall poet was born to two parents who could both trace their ancestry back to some of the earliest white settlers in the United States.
Lowell's mother Charlotte Winslow, knew that her ancestry went back to early 17th century Massachusetts. His father also named Robert could do the same. "You didn't land on Plymouth Rock," the African-American leader Malcolm X. once told a group of his black brothers and sisters in the early 1960's. "It landed on you."
In contrast, some of Robert Lowell's ancestors probably did land on Plymouth Rock. Lowell grew up in a privileged but not too rich household in Massachusets. He was born in 1917 and died in 1977.
He married three times. First off he wed Jean Stafford, a talented writer. Next came Elizabeth Hardwick, another gifted author. They had a daughter together. Finally Lowell married a multimillionairess, an English woman named Lady Caroline Blackwood who also was a writer. She and Lowell had a son.
For all these women and for Lowell himself, life was often hellish. For Lowell was a manic-depressive. Or as we'd say to-day, "He had bi-polar syndrome." By his early 30's, Lowell or 'Cal' as he was known to his friends, suffered mental breakdowns. He sometimes spent weeks, and sometimes months in mental hospitals.
Yet Lowell also wrote some great poetry. He wrote sonnets, plays, and traditional verse. He also translated poetry by international poets. In the 1950's and 1960's he wrote what was called 'confessional poetry' which was often poetry about his personal life. Many other poets after Lowell and influenced by him, started to do the same.
"I am so tired and bad," he wrote after he went to Chicago in 1968 to protest the Vietnam war at the Democratic convention. At the time he was friendly with and a supporter of Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy was
a prominent U.S. Senator whose challenge in the Democratic primaries to then-Democratic president Lyndon Baines Johnson, forced Johnson to resign as president of the United States in 1968.
"cliches are wisdom," Lowell continued
" The cliches of paranoia. On this shore the fall of the high tide waves is straggling joshing
march of soldiers...on the march for me."
Lowell's mastery of verse was unique. He belonged to a generation of great American poets, many of whom like Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Randall Jarrell and John Berryman led troubled lives. Plath, Sexton and Berryman all committed suicide.
Lowell died peacefully in 1977 in New York City while riding in a taxi cab. He was was one of America's greatest poets.
If there is or was an American aristocracy, Robert Lowell belonged to it.
The tall, slightly over six foot tall poet was born to two parents who could both trace their ancestry back to some of the earliest white settlers in the United States.
Lowell's mother Charlotte Winslow, knew that her ancestry went back to early 17th century Massachusetts. His father also named Robert could do the same. "You didn't land on Plymouth Rock," the African-American leader Malcolm X. once told a group of his black brothers and sisters in the early 1960's. "It landed on you."
In contrast, some of Robert Lowell's ancestors probably did land on Plymouth Rock. Lowell grew up in a privileged but not too rich household in Massachusets. He was born in 1917 and died in 1977.
He married three times. First off he wed Jean Stafford, a talented writer. Next came Elizabeth Hardwick, another gifted author. They had a daughter together. Finally Lowell married a multimillionairess, an English woman named Lady Caroline Blackwood who also was a writer. She and Lowell had a son.
For all these women and for Lowell himself, life was often hellish. For Lowell was a manic-depressive. Or as we'd say to-day, "He had bi-polar syndrome." By his early 30's, Lowell or 'Cal' as he was known to his friends, suffered mental breakdowns. He sometimes spent weeks, and sometimes months in mental hospitals.
Yet Lowell also wrote some great poetry. He wrote sonnets, plays, and traditional verse. He also translated poetry by international poets. In the 1950's and 1960's he wrote what was called 'confessional poetry' which was often poetry about his personal life. Many other poets after Lowell and influenced by him, started to do the same.
"I am so tired and bad," he wrote after he went to Chicago in 1968 to protest the Vietnam war at the Democratic convention. At the time he was friendly with and a supporter of Eugene McCarthy. McCarthy was
a prominent U.S. Senator whose challenge in the Democratic primaries to then-Democratic president Lyndon Baines Johnson, forced Johnson to resign as president of the United States in 1968.
"cliches are wisdom," Lowell continued
" The cliches of paranoia. On this shore the fall of the high tide waves is straggling joshing
march of soldiers...on the march for me."
Lowell's mastery of verse was unique. He belonged to a generation of great American poets, many of whom like Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Randall Jarrell and John Berryman led troubled lives. Plath, Sexton and Berryman all committed suicide.
Lowell died peacefully in 1977 in New York City while riding in a taxi cab. He was was one of America's greatest poets.
Saturday 13 February 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Eleven -Section Two by Dave Jaffe
The Poet as Nice Person - Second Section
"It's a good course," a student I knew at McGill University told me about the course he was taking with Louis Dudek in the early 1960's. Dudek was known as a good teacher. He was also a nice guy who did many favours and good deeds for people.
Dudek was born in Montreal in 1918 and died in 2001. He came of age in the 1930's during the Great Depression, and like many people back then he was poor. His parents both came from Poland and they couldn't afford to keep their son in school.
Dudek dropped out of school for a while and went to work. Later he went back to school and entered McGill University which he graduated from in 1939. Then he travelled south to New York City and ended up at Columbia Universuity. Here he got a Ph.D. in English literature.
"Optimism and anxiety flavoured the 1950's," wrote historians Robert Bothwell and J.L. Granatstein . "The economy 'boomed' and expectations 'soared'."
Still, many Canadians at the time streamed south to live in the United States. Others like writers Mordecai Richler and Mavis Gallant went across the Atlantic to Europe. Gallant went to live in France, while Richler ended up in London, England. Yet Louis Dudek came back to Canada to teach English literature at McGill University. He taught there for the rest of his working life.
Dudek came under the influence of the great American poet Ezra Pound and much of the poetry he wrote was impacted by Pound's poems. "Old Ez," as Pound used to call himself, was born in Idaho, lived in Europe for many years and helped found modern American poetry. Dudek loved Pound's poetry but there was a problem. Pound was a traitor who supported the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in World war two. He appeared on Italian radio praising Mussolini while the U.S. was at war with Italy.
After the war Pound was imprisoned in Washington, D.C., and Dudek often went to see him there. Dudek said a number of times in effect, "Pound wrote some great poetry especially his 'Cantos'."
Yet Dudek remained a liberal and certainly never supported fascism or the anti-semitism that Pound often expressed.
In the 1950's, he and poet Irving Layton broke off their friendship. A short rambunctious man and well-known poet, Layton attacked Dudek in some of his essays. Dudek didn't respond.
Dudek helped many poets and often praised younger poets. "There are dozens of writers and publishers who owe him so much," said publisher Simon Dardick of Dudek. Dudek was another poet who was a nice person who did good things for people.
"It's a good course," a student I knew at McGill University told me about the course he was taking with Louis Dudek in the early 1960's. Dudek was known as a good teacher. He was also a nice guy who did many favours and good deeds for people.
Dudek was born in Montreal in 1918 and died in 2001. He came of age in the 1930's during the Great Depression, and like many people back then he was poor. His parents both came from Poland and they couldn't afford to keep their son in school.
Dudek dropped out of school for a while and went to work. Later he went back to school and entered McGill University which he graduated from in 1939. Then he travelled south to New York City and ended up at Columbia Universuity. Here he got a Ph.D. in English literature.
"Optimism and anxiety flavoured the 1950's," wrote historians Robert Bothwell and J.L. Granatstein . "The economy 'boomed' and expectations 'soared'."
Still, many Canadians at the time streamed south to live in the United States. Others like writers Mordecai Richler and Mavis Gallant went across the Atlantic to Europe. Gallant went to live in France, while Richler ended up in London, England. Yet Louis Dudek came back to Canada to teach English literature at McGill University. He taught there for the rest of his working life.
Dudek came under the influence of the great American poet Ezra Pound and much of the poetry he wrote was impacted by Pound's poems. "Old Ez," as Pound used to call himself, was born in Idaho, lived in Europe for many years and helped found modern American poetry. Dudek loved Pound's poetry but there was a problem. Pound was a traitor who supported the Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in World war two. He appeared on Italian radio praising Mussolini while the U.S. was at war with Italy.
After the war Pound was imprisoned in Washington, D.C., and Dudek often went to see him there. Dudek said a number of times in effect, "Pound wrote some great poetry especially his 'Cantos'."
Yet Dudek remained a liberal and certainly never supported fascism or the anti-semitism that Pound often expressed.
In the 1950's, he and poet Irving Layton broke off their friendship. A short rambunctious man and well-known poet, Layton attacked Dudek in some of his essays. Dudek didn't respond.
Dudek helped many poets and often praised younger poets. "There are dozens of writers and publishers who owe him so much," said publisher Simon Dardick of Dudek. Dudek was another poet who was a nice person who did good things for people.
Tuesday 9 February 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Eleven; The Poet As Nice Person by Dave Jaffe
The Poet as Nice Person - Section One
What happens when a rich lady meets a former jailbird? Sometimes good things.
Here's Peggy Guggenheim in Venice in 1958, living close by to her museum full of modern art. The American daughter of a very rich man, she had married twice and lived with three other men. Nearly all these men were horible to her.
Laurence Vail was a writer and an artist who used to insult her in public. Then came John Ferrar Holms who also used to put her down and took her money. After Holms died, Douglas Garman showed up. He too was an abuser and saw himself as a Marxist.
"Garman and I had a row about Communism," Guggenheim said. "And I got just so bitchy that he hit me." Just as bad as any of these three men was the German Surrealist visual artist Max Ernst. He took Guugenheim's money and had affairs at the same time with other women.
Yet then Guggenheim met another American in Venice named Gregory Corso. He was only 23 while she was in her late 50's. And unlike the other men she'd been with, he understood her and was nice to her - at least for a while.
"Very strange marvelous lady," he wrote to Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet about Guggenheim. "She is really great. I told her painters were making her into a creep (and) she laughed." Now Corso hadn't always been a nice guy who treated people with respect. His mother and father split up not long after he was born in the United States. He spent most of his childhood years in foster homes. He ran away from his father at a young age, stole things to survive and spent most of his teenage years in tough prisons.
Yet in prison his life changed. He started to read poets like Shelley, Thomas Chatterton, and Christopher Marlowe. In his early 20's he met Beat poet Allen Ginsberg who introduced him to modern poetry. He moved to Boston and started to put jazz rhythms in his poetry. "My music is built in," he said. "It's already natural."
In any case Corso and Guggenheim got on well together at least at first. Later Corso fell in love with Guggenheim's daughter and trouble ensued. Still, he didn't beat Guggenheim up or take her money. Corso was a poet but also while in contact with Guggenheim he was a nice guy.
What happens when a rich lady meets a former jailbird? Sometimes good things.
Here's Peggy Guggenheim in Venice in 1958, living close by to her museum full of modern art. The American daughter of a very rich man, she had married twice and lived with three other men. Nearly all these men were horible to her.
Laurence Vail was a writer and an artist who used to insult her in public. Then came John Ferrar Holms who also used to put her down and took her money. After Holms died, Douglas Garman showed up. He too was an abuser and saw himself as a Marxist.
"Garman and I had a row about Communism," Guggenheim said. "And I got just so bitchy that he hit me." Just as bad as any of these three men was the German Surrealist visual artist Max Ernst. He took Guugenheim's money and had affairs at the same time with other women.
Yet then Guggenheim met another American in Venice named Gregory Corso. He was only 23 while she was in her late 50's. And unlike the other men she'd been with, he understood her and was nice to her - at least for a while.
"Very strange marvelous lady," he wrote to Allen Ginsberg, the Beat poet about Guggenheim. "She is really great. I told her painters were making her into a creep (and) she laughed." Now Corso hadn't always been a nice guy who treated people with respect. His mother and father split up not long after he was born in the United States. He spent most of his childhood years in foster homes. He ran away from his father at a young age, stole things to survive and spent most of his teenage years in tough prisons.
Yet in prison his life changed. He started to read poets like Shelley, Thomas Chatterton, and Christopher Marlowe. In his early 20's he met Beat poet Allen Ginsberg who introduced him to modern poetry. He moved to Boston and started to put jazz rhythms in his poetry. "My music is built in," he said. "It's already natural."
In any case Corso and Guggenheim got on well together at least at first. Later Corso fell in love with Guggenheim's daughter and trouble ensued. Still, he didn't beat Guggenheim up or take her money. Corso was a poet but also while in contact with Guggenheim he was a nice guy.
Wednesday 3 February 2016
Writing Poetry Can Endanger Your Health - Part Ten Section Two The Poet As Agitator
The Poet as Agitator - Section Two
For centuries, women's menstruation has been demonized, shamed and insulted. 'The curse' some people call it.
Yet in the 1970's, an African- American woman came along who tried to change all that. Thelma Lucille Sayles was born in upstate New York in 1936 and passed away in 2010.
Two massive social movements swept through the United States in her lifetime. One was the great Civil Rights movement that started in the mid-1950's and lasted until about 1965.
Here African-Americans and its white allies tore down the barriers of racism and segregation that condemned African-Americans to second class citizenship. "I have a dream," the famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior said at the great civil rights march in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1963.
King was shot dead in 1968, but his dream of equality never entirely vanished. And on the heels of the great upheavals of the late 1960's, new movements emerged to challenge the white male-dominated status quo.
One of these movements was feminism which demanded total equality for women. This was called 'The second wave of feminism'. "The first wave of feminism," a women's studies teacher said, "was born in the U.S. in the nineteenth century and concentrated on winning the right to vote for women." The second wave of feminism, she points out, went way beyond this demand to vote, which was finally achieved in the 1920's.
By the late 1960's, Thelma Sayles had married a professor of philosophy who was also a sculptor. His name was Fred James Clifton. Thelma dropped her first name and called herself Lucille Clifton. She had been writing poetry since her teens or earlier.
Now she was swept up in the civil rights movement and the second wave of feminism. She wrote many fine books and poems. Yet one poem she wrote puts her in the cultural history of the U.S. perhaps forever. It's a short poem called ' poem in praise of
menstruation'.
'if there is a river' the poem begins
'more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river..'
Near the end of this poem clifton says about her menstrual flow'
'pray that if flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave'.
This fine poem challenges all the horrible things said about menstruation and the women who menstruate. It celebrates women's bodies and being. And Clifton writes beautifully.
This is a poet who used her talents to agitate for equality. Lucille Clifton was another great poet who was an agitator.
For centuries, women's menstruation has been demonized, shamed and insulted. 'The curse' some people call it.
Yet in the 1970's, an African- American woman came along who tried to change all that. Thelma Lucille Sayles was born in upstate New York in 1936 and passed away in 2010.
Two massive social movements swept through the United States in her lifetime. One was the great Civil Rights movement that started in the mid-1950's and lasted until about 1965.
Here African-Americans and its white allies tore down the barriers of racism and segregation that condemned African-Americans to second class citizenship. "I have a dream," the famed civil rights leader Martin Luther King Junior said at the great civil rights march in Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1963.
King was shot dead in 1968, but his dream of equality never entirely vanished. And on the heels of the great upheavals of the late 1960's, new movements emerged to challenge the white male-dominated status quo.
One of these movements was feminism which demanded total equality for women. This was called 'The second wave of feminism'. "The first wave of feminism," a women's studies teacher said, "was born in the U.S. in the nineteenth century and concentrated on winning the right to vote for women." The second wave of feminism, she points out, went way beyond this demand to vote, which was finally achieved in the 1920's.
By the late 1960's, Thelma Sayles had married a professor of philosophy who was also a sculptor. His name was Fred James Clifton. Thelma dropped her first name and called herself Lucille Clifton. She had been writing poetry since her teens or earlier.
Now she was swept up in the civil rights movement and the second wave of feminism. She wrote many fine books and poems. Yet one poem she wrote puts her in the cultural history of the U.S. perhaps forever. It's a short poem called ' poem in praise of
menstruation'.
'if there is a river' the poem begins
'more beautiful than this
bright as the blood
red edge of the moon if
there is a river..'
Near the end of this poem clifton says about her menstrual flow'
'pray that if flows also
through animals
beautiful and faithful and ancient
and female and brave'.
This fine poem challenges all the horrible things said about menstruation and the women who menstruate. It celebrates women's bodies and being. And Clifton writes beautifully.
This is a poet who used her talents to agitate for equality. Lucille Clifton was another great poet who was an agitator.
Monday 1 February 2016
Writing Poetry can Endanger Your Health Part Ten by Dave Jaffe
The Poet As Agitator by Dave Jaffe -Section One
In the 1930's, a young black poet wandered the busy city streets of France's major metropolis. His name was Aime Fernand David Cesaire. He had come to this huge city of Paris on a scholarship from his birthplace of Martinique. It was a tiny Island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea and was a colony of France.
Growing up in this French-ruled land, Cesaire ran head on into white racism and condescension. A brilliant student, he won a scholarship to France and went to the elite Ecole Normale Superiore in Paris. Here also he came face to face with white racism and French ideas of superiority.
"In France," wrote the English critic John Berger in the mid-1960's, "it is believed that there are no questions about art which have not already been fully discovered there." This was far more true in the 1930's and the French also assumed that they had answered the questions on many other topics besides the ones asked in the world of the fine arts.
Cesaire had come to a white France that ruled colonies all over the world. This was true of many other countries at that time including Great Britain. Nearly all these colonies were full of people of colour and most white people back then believed that they and other white people were literally better and superior to all people of colour.
"We British should never have given up any of our colonies," a janitor from England told me in 1974." Coloured people can't run things the way we do."
Cesaire challenged this attitude head on. He founded a new school of poetry called 'negritude'. In this new school of literature, black writers examined their own culture and denied their supposed inferiority. "I am black and I am proud," African Americans declared in the 1960's. Negritude was a forerunner of these beliefs.
Cesaire got married to Suzanne Roussi in 1939n and they had a son together. They returned to Martinique to face French colonialism, censorship and white racism. Cesaire became a teacher but he also wrote a great prose poem. In English its title translates to 'Notebook of a Return to the Native Land'.
'The wheel is the most beautiful discovery of man and the only one," wrote Cesaire.
' there is the sun which turns
there is the earth which turns
there is your face which turns
upon the axle of your throat when you cry.
'Now I have come' Cesaire continued
' Once more to this limping life before me,
no not this life, this death without sense or piety, this death where greatness pitifully fails.'
Cesaire had written a great poem. He went on to write other books. He entered politics. He was elected as mayor of Martinique's capital city of Fort de France. Later he was elected to be a deputy in the French National Assembly. He joined the French Communist party but left it in the 1950's He became more conservative as he aged.
Still he remained an anti-racist until he died in 2008. By then white ruled colonies were nearly all gone.Still many black people faced white racism and poverty. Cesaire used his great poetic gifts to try and free what he called 'this unique people'. He did succeed. He was a great example of the poet as agitator.
In the 1930's, a young black poet wandered the busy city streets of France's major metropolis. His name was Aime Fernand David Cesaire. He had come to this huge city of Paris on a scholarship from his birthplace of Martinique. It was a tiny Island in the middle of the Caribbean Sea and was a colony of France.
Growing up in this French-ruled land, Cesaire ran head on into white racism and condescension. A brilliant student, he won a scholarship to France and went to the elite Ecole Normale Superiore in Paris. Here also he came face to face with white racism and French ideas of superiority.
"In France," wrote the English critic John Berger in the mid-1960's, "it is believed that there are no questions about art which have not already been fully discovered there." This was far more true in the 1930's and the French also assumed that they had answered the questions on many other topics besides the ones asked in the world of the fine arts.
Cesaire had come to a white France that ruled colonies all over the world. This was true of many other countries at that time including Great Britain. Nearly all these colonies were full of people of colour and most white people back then believed that they and other white people were literally better and superior to all people of colour.
"We British should never have given up any of our colonies," a janitor from England told me in 1974." Coloured people can't run things the way we do."
Cesaire challenged this attitude head on. He founded a new school of poetry called 'negritude'. In this new school of literature, black writers examined their own culture and denied their supposed inferiority. "I am black and I am proud," African Americans declared in the 1960's. Negritude was a forerunner of these beliefs.
Cesaire got married to Suzanne Roussi in 1939n and they had a son together. They returned to Martinique to face French colonialism, censorship and white racism. Cesaire became a teacher but he also wrote a great prose poem. In English its title translates to 'Notebook of a Return to the Native Land'.
'The wheel is the most beautiful discovery of man and the only one," wrote Cesaire.
' there is the sun which turns
there is the earth which turns
there is your face which turns
upon the axle of your throat when you cry.
'Now I have come' Cesaire continued
' Once more to this limping life before me,
no not this life, this death without sense or piety, this death where greatness pitifully fails.'
Cesaire had written a great poem. He went on to write other books. He entered politics. He was elected as mayor of Martinique's capital city of Fort de France. Later he was elected to be a deputy in the French National Assembly. He joined the French Communist party but left it in the 1950's He became more conservative as he aged.
Still he remained an anti-racist until he died in 2008. By then white ruled colonies were nearly all gone.Still many black people faced white racism and poverty. Cesaire used his great poetic gifts to try and free what he called 'this unique people'. He did succeed. He was a great example of the poet as agitator.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)