Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1991

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

English

Major Professor

R. B. Miller

Committee Members

Marilyn Kallet, Joyce Carol Thomas

Abstract

The poems contained in this collection are all autobiographical in the sense that each is an impression of some thought or experience from within the poet's life. These works are not presented as "perfect" art. Poems are words selected and sewn together in a futile attempt to clothe the beauties of thought and feeling. The poems are the survivors of the sowing of "the dragon's teeth" of life experience. They are not delicate academic exercises. While some have been revised and, or, edited, this has been kept to an absolute minimum- in order to keep inspiration and artifact as intimately related as possible. "Rejoice" is the longest poem in the collection and also, by far, the most complex. It is a praise poem and a poem of renewal. As an attempt to draw upon, if not recreate, the style of the praise poems of the Dogon people of West Africa. "Rejoice" weaves time into an elaborate tapestry linking past and present, present and future, future and past. The effect of this weaving is the inscribing of the poem in a circular pattern. The poem operates upon an ambitious combination of the rhythm of African "drum songs" and the "witness" or voicing of a Griot. The combination lifts the poem to a ceremonial plane. The utilization of a deliberate and powerful drum beat, and the repetition of key words and phrases recalls the oral traditions of ancient pre-colonial African language groups, such as the Dogon, the Shona, and the Kele. Structurally, "Rejoice" is both cohesive and disjointed. The poem is composed of a blend of quatrains and octettes. The early quatrains establish a sense of order and balance. The first octette speaks directly to that order being disrupted. This dynamic or tension governs the poem in its entirety and creates a new reading of African/African-American history. Conversely, the poem "Black" is not a praise song, but a Warrior's chant. The seven end rhymed quatrains move from the abstract to the specific in a song of self-identification and in defiance of all other proposed identities. Internal rhyme is utilized to counter-weigh the repetition that occurs at the beginning of first and third line of each quatrain. Lastly, each quatrain contains some element of contrast or irony that enhances the transition from the general to the specific which forms the central core of the poem. The duality of this "voicing" becomes a mirror which reflects the duality of the myth/history of Blacks in western society. It is vital that the full range of a people's historical reality find expression in their art; hence, these poems echo the cries of slavery and songs of victory, the thundering drums of tribal ceremony and the sweet gravelly voice of the blues, the soft lullaby of a mother's nurturing and the rooster crowing of a father's pride. Most importantly, these poems embody the songs of an aboriginal healer and the high, hot, chanted prayers of a warrior. Despite their wide diversity in rhythm and theme, the poems in this collection are connected one to the other by a simple fact: They are the works of a Black American. Hence, each was "born of battle."

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