To Make Poesis

Caine Prize Shortlist: Stanley Kenani

Fri, 25 May 2012 09:02:01 -0400

Stanley Kenani’s “Love on Trial” is best described as its protagonist, Charles Chikwanje, himself: “a walking encyclopaedia”. The story is a veiled piece of reportage, drily relating the discovering of Charles’ homosexuality in a public lavatory, the ensuing scandal, court case and subsequent conviction. Charles’ arguments for sexual equality are redundant, if eloquent. The message is one-dimensional: The fictional world of Malawi is homophobic, Charles is a hero and a martyr, the reader should reprimand Malawi and sympathize with Charles. Too much telling, too little showing.

There are two passages in particular that I did enjoy though and I’ll limit my thoughts to these.

Lapani Kachingwe discovers Charles in the lavatory. Kenani writes that Kachingwe would recount the events to anyone who buys him a drink, although “in principe his story is for free.” The irony is, however, that, the more Kachingwe drinks - in other words, the more he is paid - the less he is able to remember the events of the story he is narrating, so that in the end nobody really hears the “juiciest parts” of the story. With the publishing industry’s increasingly hegemonic, business-like, money-comes-first attitude towards storytelling, what is to be said in favour of free fiction? Could “Love on Trial” be a perverse example of print one must pay to read, offering only the boring bare bones, while the potentially passionate story of an illicit love affair in an intolerant environment is retained for friendly, uneconomic ears only?
At the end of the story, after Charles has been imprisoned and the world has turned its back on Malawi, a character tells an allegory about a mouse that asks a cock to help him undo a mousetrap. The cock replies: “That’s not my business. It’s a mousetrap, not a cocktrap.” Apart from the fact that the cock is later cooked, punishing one bad deed with another, I’m intrigued by the possible pun in “cocktrap.” In a story about sexuality, and especially about male homoeroticism, the idea that “Love on Trial” as a whole is not a “cocktrap,” brings home the fact that, although the reader is trapped in pages of one-sided rhetoric, Kenani’s words do hold broader significance for mice and men…

Other reviews of Kenani’s “Love on Trial”:

Stephen Derwent Partington
Backslash Scott
Cashed-In
aaahfooey
Black Balloon
City of Lions
Practically Marzipan
Ikhide

Caine Prize Shortlist: Rotimi Babatunde

Thu, 10 May 2012 14:42:00 -0400

The 2012 Caine Prize for African short fiction is upon is. Thank you to Aaron Bady from Zunguzungu who has invited me to participate in the Caine Prize blogathon. Over the next weeks I’ll be commenting on the five shortlisted stories, starting with Nigerian Rotimi Babatunde’s “Bombay’s Republic”.

It’s a pleasure to read Babatunde’s consistently clear prose. He follows an Aristotelean literary model with beginning, middle and end, and leaves few narrative gaps. This strategy results in a linear account, starting with Bombay the protagonist’s recruitment into the Burma Campaign during the Second World War, his hellish experiences of war, concluding with his return to Africa, ascent to renown, and descent into insanity.

From the outset Babatunde titillates the reader with the promise of Bombay’s metamorphosis: Bombay left for war “as a man and came back a spotted leopard.” The catalyst for the transformation is not only the war, however, but more specifically the racial integration brought about by the wartime conditions. It is during the war that Bombay is confronted with the absurdity of racial prejudice - that he has a tail, or that Africans are cannibals - and himself accepts racial equality - coming to terms with the white and black man’s equal vulnerability in the face of violence. Bombay himself comes to stand as a symbol for racial integration as his skin quite literally becomes mottled with battle scars and dark stains where he burned off leeches. His skin is now a “leopard’s coat,” an intricate weave of light and dark, white and black.

Where Babatunde breaks with linearity, is his refusal to offer any definitive moral lesson. On the one hand, the war’s violence is positively tinged in its ability to neutralize racial prejudice. Bombay later reduces the atrocities he endured, describing the conflict in passive terms: “We did them no harm and they did us no harm, we only tried to kill each other as often as we could.” On the other hand, by the end of the story he installs himself as a dictator of his imagined Republic of Bombay, and fabricates an etymology for the original city pivoting exactly on violence: “The city was called Bombay because its streets were littered with bombs through which pedestrians must carefully tiptoe.” As such, the story ends with ambivalent logic: Bombay endures violence in order to understand racial equality, but instead of sharing this knowledge back home, he founds his own tyrannical, violent state - after all, he urinates on and shoots at trespassers, and “always flew into a rage” when not treated as an absolute superior.

Yet perhaps in some roundabout way, Bombay does mean to share his wartime insights. Perhaps he hopes that the people around him will achieve his insights through a similar practical process instigated through firsthand contact with violence. Mirroring the white captain, initially “oozing superiority” then disintegrating under the military stress, Bombay also gives himself airs and elaborate titles, then appears to lose his sanity. Bombay might not lecture on racial equality, but he does enact a farce with his one-man republic, leaving the meaning of this farce up to his audience to decipher.

Fellow bloggers’ reviews:

Method to the Madness
The Oncoming Hope
Bookshy
Stephen Derwent Partington
Backslash Scott
Zunguzungu
aaahfooey
The Mumpsimus
Ikhide
Loomnie

The Reading Life
Inkdrops
Practically Marzipan
Cashed In
ndinda
City of Lions
Black Balloon
Soulfool

De Nouveau

Wed, 09 May 2012 09:08:46 -0400

Let’s phrase my hiatus as a longwinded silence, during which:

I completed my MA English Literature degree, finishing off a thesis entitled “Travel Broadens: Joanne Kyger and Rooted Cosmopolitanism.” Mostly, I hoped to navigate the tension between regionalism and travel in Kyger’s poetry. The section I enjoyed writing most close-read the layout of a poem as a landscape. My supervisor thought I was pushing my academic luck; luckily my second evaluator graded for passion, not only proof.
I moved from Montreal to Cape Town. There are now 10 boxes of books stacked in a friend’s stairwell, and a scanty row of poetry collections that made their way with me across the Atlantic. I said goodbye to invaluable friends and to the city of my birth. For now. The move has sparked many a correspondence, which, in literary terms, is a major plus.
I started writing full-time. As I type, I’m sitting at a trestle table strewn with printouts, scribbles and books, looking out onto a beautiful view of Table Mountain and its mood swing, right now it is sunny. I’ll be recording some of the projects I’m working on here. Since it’s the Franschhoek Literary Festival this weekend, I’ll talk about that soon. And I’m going to be offering some thoughts on the 2012 Caine Prize shortlist, together with a host of talented bloggers, more on that shortly…

Grotesque but YES! snprickett: Can I have these for my birthday...

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 18:14:17 -0500

Grotesque but YES!

snprickett:

Can I have these for my birthday and can my birthday be now?

"If you find yourself reading Chaucer for more than four hours seek immediate help from the Modern..."

Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:03:38 -0500

“If you find yourself reading Chaucer for more than four hours seek immediate help from the Modern Language Association.”

- Legal disclaimer to a hypothetical Super Bowl ad for the Norton Anthologies (via wwnorton)

musiclio: Composition by Clio MontreyPoems by Klara Du...

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 12:54:46 -0500

musiclio:

Composition by Clio Montrey
Poems by Klara Du Plessis
Anne Wieben, Soprano
Giuseppe Montesano, Conductor
Musicians: Lilla Szucs (flute), Stefanie Gansch (oboe), Sylvester Perschler (clarinet), Lindsey Huff (piano), Alessandro Malizia (violin), Anna Morgoulets (viola), Elisaveta Sharakhovskaya (cello), Maximiliano Igor (bass).

This is the third song from a cycle of five based on Klara’s poetry. The cycle (of poems as well as of songs) is in arch form. A mannequin/woman narrator tells her story, the expectations placed upon her, her fears, her hopes, her roles.

Copyright © 2010 Clio Montrey

"‘You are late.’ Late, late with forest edges to everything."

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 21:19:39 -0500

“‘You are late.’ Late, late with forest edges to everything.”

-
H.D., HERmione

(via sketchofthepast)

“Pink Angels” by Willem de Kooning is currently one...

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:27:53 -0500

“Pink Angels” by Willem de Kooning is currently one of my favourite paintings. If my laptop desktop wasn’t already a chaotic abstraction of documents, this would have been my daily inspiration.

I always want to read, but never get around to reading, this...

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 21:48:57 -0500

I always want to read, but never get around to reading, this book. In two weeks time, once I’ve finished (!) my Masters degree, I will start pursuing my own reading list again.

Need to get it off my chest - I love Matt Kish’s...

Sun, 27 Nov 2011 14:33:00 -0500

Need to get it off my chest - I love Matt Kish’s “Moby-Dick in Pictures” - a book with a multi-media illustration for a quotation from each page of his edition of Melville’s Leviathan. I also love this new trend of video clip ads for books - digital book? No. Mobile synopsis? Somehow Yes!

I close-read my life.

Sat, 26 Nov 2011 11:27:53 -0500

I close-read my life.

despat: iammyqueen: omg YES basically

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 17:49:58 -0500

despat:

iammyqueen:

omg YES

basically

Wai Chee Dimock

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 12:55:29 -0500

Wai Chee Dimock:

On Monday the critic Wai Chee Dimock gave a guest lecture at McGill University titled “Bodies at War: Dresden, Baghdad, New York.” I’ve been reading some of her work for my own research on cosmopolitan theory and am generally in love with her crisp style, non-linear content and way of breaking down chapters into one-page bite-sized teasers. During her short stay in Montreal a few grad students were lucky to join her for lunch. She introduced Brian Turner to me and I introduced Joanne Kyger to her - she wrote a short blog entry about it all, follow the link above…

As mentioned before I develop intense creative couple crushes -...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 20:27:52 -0500

As mentioned before I develop intense creative couple crushes - the newest centres on William and Elaine de Kooning.

poem by Joanne Kyger

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:08:22 -0500

Somewhere you can find reference to the fact that PAN was the

son of PENELOPE

Either as the result of a god

or as the result of ALL of the suitors

who hung around while Odysseus was abroad.

Happy Birthday

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 18:01:00 -0500

It’s Joanne Kyger’s birthday today. Over the last year and 1/2 I’ve been writing my MA thesis on the role of geography in/on her life and poetry and so I’ll take the opportunity of her special day to thank her for making my research fun - corresponding with me and offering me witty poetic images where Pan is the son of Penelope!

Also, the Allen Ginsberg Project posted a celebratory summary of online poems, interviews and such that’s worth checking out:

http://ginsbergblog.blogspot.com/

Joan Didion

Tue, 15 Nov 2011 18:55:18 -0500

Joan Didion:

I wasn’t in Toronto for the Joan Didion interview, but my friend was and she wrote an article about it you should read!

Charlie Vermont’s poetic portrait of Joanne Kyger. Very...

Sat, 12 Nov 2011 22:21:55 -0500

Charlie Vermont’s poetic portrait of Joanne Kyger. Very successful in my opinion.

Michael Lista

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 13:52:42 -0500

Michael Lista:

Worn magazine’s interview with poet Michael Lista is quaint, but I especially love this Q&A:

How (if at all) does fashion play into being a writer, or even your own poetry?
Poetry and fashion! There’s so much to say. Well of course it’s terribly unfashionable to be a poet. Most poets are terribly unfashionable. Ooh, I’ve got another one: a lot of poems bore — especially poems written by young poets— precisely because they’re trying too hard to be fashionable.

anticipatedstranger: Mary Abbott, artist; Barbara Guest,...

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 12:41:44 -0500

anticipatedstranger:

Mary Abbott, artist; Barbara Guest, author: Honey or Wine?, 1970