AN INTRODUCTION TO WEST INDIAN POETRY, by Laurence A. Breiner. Rather than chronicling in the fashion of isolating successive historical formative events progressively leading to an ultimate resultant event, outcome, etc., Breiner asserts his is a focus on history’s dynamics that play actively in bringing about a distinctively West Indian poetry. Underlying this focus on dynamics is the search for “categories for thinking about this poetry,” Breiner states. Breiner is after locating a pattern of development and traceable similarities of themes and even similar (and “same”) poems in West Indian poetry. Temporally speaking, Breiner’s period of interest extends from 1920s to 1980s. Chapter 1 details and justifies Breiners settling for the 1971 Conference of the Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies (ACLALS) in Jamaica as the historical moment when a distinctive body of literary production is recognized as West Indian. Besides the content of the Conference talks dominating the panels, Breiner emphasizes the organizational specifics: a Metropilitan-sponsored conference held in the Caribbean region for the first time (thus, marking a shift of centers); a conference program managed and carried out by Caribbeans. Prior to this Conference version of the 1971, the panelists are dominantly Metropolitan scholars delivering their papers to an audience of Caribbeans. Conversely, in the Jamaican Conference, Caribbeans were the leading panelists. Moreover, the ACLALS was concomitant with the active circulation and rising popularity of performance poetry in the Caribbean archipelago. Performance poetry comes to be a hallmark of Caribbean literature; it has roots in Jamaica and associated with performativeness as a distinctive feature of West Indian cultural scene and traditions (and of help for poets hindered by poor publication facilities). Performance poetry elevates Little Tradition (local, regional) to a par with Great Tradition (Metropolitan). In passing, Chapter 1 sheds some light on the status of the genre of poetry in the West Indies and the appeal of performance aesthetics to poets of the region. Chapter 2 highlights and locates corresponding parallels between three crucial episodes in giving West Indian poetry its character and personality: (1) Haitian poetry of 1920s and 1930s which gave rise to Indigenism and envisioned the poet as “explorer”. The limitation of Indigenism remains, however. Despite its reliance on indigenous material, the poetic form is Metropolitan; (2) Cuban Negrista poetry (Afrocubanism) of the 1920s and 1930s. Afrocubanism was first hailed by white Cubans who celebrated the African component of white Cuba (by extension, of the whole Antillean cultural matrix). The celebration is adopted as a defense mechanism in face of the fall to come of the West (a perception adopted from German philosophers); and (3) the maturing of Negritude movement. Negritude came to existence out of the work of a group of Martinican students studying in Paris. The prevalent French tendency of Oedipal wholesale rejection of any and all that is parental played a role in bringing Negritude movement about at the hand of the young Martinicans. Unlike Negrista, Negritude entertained an international appeal and embraced a policy of negativity whereby Blacknesss and Otherness is assumed deliberately and with pride. The chapter closes with a brief outline of Creolization as the salient feature of Caribbean nations; themselves mulatto peoples. Ironically, this hybridity of identity stands behind the rejection of Negritude in the islands. Negritude oversees the creole reality and assumes, in collective and conclusive terms, Antilleans to be Africans. Hybridity as a fact in the Caribbean makeup accounts for both the failure of Negritude in winning ground and for the success of Marvelous Realism (or, Magical Realism). Chapter 3 presents an historical overview of West Indian territories. It is in this chapter that Breiner introduces his contention that the literary developments in the region follow a pattern of “same intellectual trajectory … leading from prise de conscience through assertion and subsequent exploration of national identity.” Chapter 4 tracks the dismissal of West Indian poets, under Nationalism, of the English “filter” of perception. Imitating and assimilating English models characterized the stage of apprenticeship of the 18th and 19th century. Gradually up to the 20th century, however, a sense of “uneasy divergence” intensified as the discrepancy between the West Indian realities and European tradition became pressingly evident. Eventually, uneasiness resulted in an impulse towards embracing and asserting difference as such. Breiner correlates the appropriation of these strategies to the theme taken up by a poem; whereas religion and patriotism dominates the era of apprenticeship, nature stirs uneasiness. In other words, the break with the “filter of the English eyes” is a transformative active whereby the Caribbean experience, formerly processed to fit the English tradition, has by now compulsions over tradition. The break, thus, marks a shift in tone: from apologetic to protest poetry. Chapter 5 scrutinizes the culmination of West Indian poets’ efforts to perceive indigenous material without the interposition of European filters termed “Europe.” It is the moment of turning to and adopting the filter of “Africa” as a ground for a different center of identity. Breiner explicate how poets’ responses to the idea of “Africa” were not uniform. Geographically, poets were referring to various regions of the black continent when invoking “Africa.” Functionally, “Africa serves differently for different poets. The connotations of “Africa” includes: (1) a mythical Africa of the Golden Age before the Middle Passage; a frozen, pre-colonial ideal Arcadia (the Africa celebrated by pan-Africanism, Black Power, and Rastafarianism); (2) “Africa” the homeland of roots; and (3) “Africa” the cultural complex; “Africa” the license and the authority: a place and a people with whom the West Indians are bound in affinity. Unlike negativity as a base of identity achieved in relation to Metropolitan “Europe” and the dialectical definition characterizing West Indians’ relation to ancestral “Africa,” it is their relation to creole “America” that allows them to achieve positive definition of their position in their place. Chapter 6 accounts for this relation to “America” from which Caribbeans derive tactics to become acclimatized to their place and be harmonious with the essence of the Caribbean central self as creole. Breiner draws another distinction between the three heritages. He argues that Europe’s heritage exists in language and cultural tradition; Africa in peoples of the regions; America in the “discovered place.” Breiner coined the word “discoveredness” to designate what “America” means as a term or an idea of the paradoxical state of the Caribbean place as full and empty at one and the same time. Furthermore, “America” encourages the Caribbean to confide in the immediacy of their perception without filteration: a filter-less (filter-free) response. Asma Hussein.
Posted on: Thu, 26 Jun 2014 19:57:40 +0000
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