Commonword Blogs

I kneel at your feet, Master (If female would you be Mistress?) This is something revelatory. I would love to go over this in more depth. For now I looked at the poems/pieces I wrote while in Pakistan and found these. Can either of them be moulded into a classical shape?

1.
Grey trees spider the grey skyline
Mr Mehmood’s cell phone battery is fading.
He speaks quickly in 3 languages

2.
A bird whistles an evening chorus.
The rope bed sighs as I shift a limb.
Somewhere in UK it is raining.

The poetic principle organizing the poems of the Shijing is often one of contrast, juxtaposing a natural scene with a social or personal situation. The reader of the poem sees the similarity in the natural description and the human condition, and comes to a new awareness of each by this contrast.

Fu

Refers to straightforward narrative with a beginning, middle, and conclusion, that stands by itself

Bi

Literally "against," implies a comparison or contrast, placing two things side by side. Examples include simile and metaphor, but also when two different fu are placed together, creating a bi.

Xing

Literally ‘stimulus’, usually seen as an image of a natural object employed at the head of a poem or stanza when the relationship between the image and the topic of the poem is vague or open ended; that is, when it is neither directly related to the scene (fu) nor part of the explicit comparison (bi). The purpose is to pervades the mind of the reader, bringing new insight or awareness into the nature of the individual fu that compose the poem. Confucius stated that xing is the purpose of poetry, that the point of a poem was to make the mind contemplate its subject deeply.

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The following examples illustrate the distinctions and overlap of these concepts

1. The Ospreys Cry

“Fair, fair,” cry the ospreys
On the island in the river.
Lovely is this noble lady,
Fit bride for our lord

In patches grows the water mallow;
To left and right one must seek it.
Shy was this noble lady;
Day and night he sought her.

(First two stanzas)

The first poem of the Shijing, the opening two lines of the first stanza are an often cited example of xing. There is no obvious relationship to the narrative and as such the comparison/contrast is implied through juxtaposition without being firmly established.

The first two lines of the second stanza in contrast have a clear link with the narrative and are an example of bi. The noble lady and the search for her is being compared and contrasted with water mallow.

*

In a Station of the Metro

The apparition of these faces in the crowd :
Petals on a wet, black bough .

Ezra Pound

Pound ‘translated’ a number of classical Chinese poems and whilst he was already experimenting with similar ideas the poem In a Station of the Metro to me is an example of what he learnt and applied to his own work. It is also regarded as a key text within the Imagist movement.

The juxtaposition of the image of the petals against the apparition of the faces is not strictly speaking bi or xing but crosses the territory of both. There is comparison and contrast (bi), an implied association with (bi) and a simultaneous disassociation from (xing) the narrative.

In addition the emotional force of the image and the fact that it supplants the narrative and lives on its own (There are almost two poems, which resonate when brought together) fits within the concept of xing.

Almost any genre can be a praise poem and almost anything can be an object of praise. For example :

Hymns, Love poems, haiku, Hamd, Epic, Clan poetry, Tanka, Sijo, Work songs, Sutra

In traditional/classical forms the object of praise was generally fairly restricted, most commonly to God or gods, ‘great’ men (rarely women), genealogies/histories, a beloved. the natural world.

In modern writing the object of praise can be almost anything, from collective historical events to the odd sock left behind in the washing machine.

Despite all the apparent differences, belief systems and conventions of genre and style, there is one feature common to all praise poetry. A praise poem is always about values, not necessarily the values of the poet but certainly the values of the poem. Both the object being praised and the attributes being praised, both directly and indirectly, are significant.

For example :

Young maiden is she;
her teeth are like the shining pearls
from the ford of Korkai

(What he said to the heroine's companion; Tamil, Sangam period)

The fact that a young maiden is being praised tells us two things as far as the value structure of the narrative voice is concerned:

1. young maiden is generic and therefore as a person is absent and does not require a name
2. the objectification of the person against physical attributes is allowable

The comparison with the pearls is telling, this time for three reasons

1. the physical beauty of pearls
1. pearls have a value related to both economic and social status
2. Korkai was the early capital of the Pandyam kingdom and a well known pearl fishery

The poem is therefore praising the physical beauty of the young maiden as preeminent over any personal qualities, and if she is of high social status confirming her status, if of low social status elevating it.

In other words women are important for their beauty, that beauty is objectified and may confirm or elevate their status.

Not values I subscribe to but I still like the poem.

There is rarely any commentary on the beauty of African poetry, either traditional or Modern (with the possible exception of literature with a direct Arabic influence). Beauty is one of the commonplaces of poetry as far as European literature is concerned, and one of the fundamental criteria by which poetry from the Indian subcontinent, China and Japan can be admired. It is impossible to talk about the English tradition without reference to the beauty of the Romantics, Shakespeare or Milton (who in my opinion is quite possibly one of the dullest poets the world has ever invented).

Where then is the equivalent appreciation of beauty in African writing, or more generally of African aesthetics, as a norm. Either the notion of beauty must be called into question, or the cultural projects of racism must be more directly challenged. Or both.

As examples of poetry I find beautiful:

Work Song

Two days nothing happens,
The third day, nothing happens;
I work my monthly ticket.

Tanzania

Where the Blue-grey Bulls are grazing

We live at the field of Kagipsirich,
We live where the calf, the calf plays with the calabash:
We live at that hill the colour of sandy-sided cattle,
That hill where the grass is burned until only a patch remained where the rabbit sleeps:
I love the stone, stone of Kiboney
Which rolls into the shade and rests like a man purging himself:
I love the salty water at Pirar, where the cattle drank until the pebbles showed:
We live at this hill where the blue-grey bulls, the blue-grey bulls are grazing.

Kenya

Note to Marxian commentators. The dialectics of beauty is only partially related to political economy. This does not mean that you are wrong, only that the rest of the world is right.

Note to Postmodern commentators. Is the post in postmodern the same post as the post you get through your letterbox, real or virtual. Answers on a post-postcard please. (Perhaps its all in the hyphen, I don't know.)

www.oraltradition.org

For anyone interested in reading more on oral tradition/literature. Some of the articles are studiously academic but many are straightforward. There is a fair amount of material examining oral tradition in relation to social context and some good articles on gender.