Eva Acqui

Liberian Poets Today: And So They See the World, and the World Sees Them

“Yes, at the end of the day, Liberia will rise and fall based on the potency of her singers, painters, dancers, poets, novelists, musicians, than her economics and doctors. Yes, a song or poem or painting has that much power.” — Sengbe Kona Khasu

Impressive is the response of Liberian poetry writers today to the call of SeaBreeze Journal, in its effort to keep, publish, and present Liberian literature to the world. Illustrative is the following quotation which expresses the position Liberian poetry occupies in this endeavor: “Now you hear the voices say/We are all standing for you: Spirits that were, children of now/And them the ones to come.” (George Crayton, “Africa’s Son”).

As we read the texts written by poets in Liberia and Liberian poets abroad, we are convinced that they create a poetry of originality, both in terms of poetic discourse and themes. We see a poetry built on the solidity of tradition, as “in this is the beginning of your forefathers/before their images were touched/Before their dreams were awakened . . .” (George Crayton, “Africa’s Son”).

The themes approached are universal: life, values, beliefs, social division, hardship, ties between ancestry and contemporaneousness, ties between roots and today’s world; and the war, Liberians will keep on writing about the war. The experience stretches out across all genres, and we cannot even call it a source of inspiration, as it has become an inseparable theme to Liberian literature, more obvious in the texts written by Liberians at home.

More than any other poet whose work is present in this issue, George Crayton’s artistic strength goes back to the power of the roots, of the ancestors, and his lyrical shift back in time demonstrates the power of unbroken ties, seen by him as an unbroken link to the present; the sound of the force necessary to carry on and to justify the trust of others: “We remember when we walked across free land/Held our people together and were rulers of our own clans/We remember the strength . . . we remember conquerors; warriors; emperors; true to life fighters . . . We remember . . . the strength . . . (”Africa’s Son”). The texts display a poetic discourse of openness and understanding, dwelling on the richness of the figures of speech that underlines a well-built style. The poet is a master in capturing visual images that serve to illustrate his philosophy (”Palm Tree”).

James Dwalu lives the world, feels its very changing tonality, and senses its versatility, even as he searches for a neutral position, nihilistic in essence (”I AM NOTHING (Neutrality)”). Yet, he is involved in all the sensations the world provides with his personality mirrored from different angles, by different elements. The attitude provides a tone that keeps its uniformity along the poem.

A shockingly aggressive message of alienation and anxiety in front of the loss of human values is conveyed by his poem “Talking Dogs”, which shows the alternation of orders based on violence and death, both human and animalistic; this poem displays the war episodes haunting the poetic conscience that struggles under marks of misery carried to extremes and suffering beyond limits. With harsh echoes, the discourse is delivered in sonorous words, short verses. The tonality changes in poems like “DEMOCRACY IS POETRY”, where readers encounter definitions of peace and unity, presented in a warm, harmonious tone. James Dwalu’s poetry is characterized by versatility and a wide range of attitudes and sensations.

Saki Tango Golafale’s poetry has an optimistic tone, aided by well-built poetic figures, rich in poetic devices. Melodiousness is supported by rhymes, rhythm, and flows freely to illustrate a philosophy of life embraced with serenity and openness (”The Necessary End”), accepting the natural cycles that are for all to share: “All give a chance/For each to act/So as to make all creatures smile” (”Nature’s Beauty”).

The attitude towards the tragedy of war urges the poet to condemn the “new order” built “over skulls of red, white, and blue”, leaving judgment to posterity: The poem supports the idea of unity in front of this historical tragedy, and sees the solution in the struggle for prosperity, with all forces united – In The Name of Liberty (”A Liberian Scenario”).

A similar textual richness is exhibited in the poems signed Musue N. Haddad. Their main theme, temptations, and resistance to them, is backed by the categorical meditation on the faces of evil and the struggle against it. “The Corruptor” is one of those texts that exhibit a wide frame of figures of speech, where one feature is described by such an abundance of epithets, that the reader senses the burden of the creator right away. Descriptive power is at its best in Haddad’s texts. “The Face of the Devil” is built on the same theme, of having encountered and fought evil: the techniques of convincing her reader build on the categorical statement that opens each of the first five stanzas: “I have seen the face of the devil”, the 6th stanza though, opening with “I saw the face” brings tranquility in the deep, dramatic tone of the poem by the presence of the angel with its encouraging words: “You are not alone.”

Monica Horton-Knuckles chooses to versify specific portraits: the outside child, the heart man, and present them in their specific environment. Reading her verses, the moments can be followed in detail, given the visual image, which is predominant in her work: rubber slippers that gather dust along the path, the balance of the zinc pail on the girl’s head, the coal iron, ants that bite with fire, the night that shelters the heart man. Texts of variable length, very similar in tone, the portraits in their specific scenes end in a philosophical reflection on each category’s condition, as if the creator wanted to smooth the fate of those portrayed. The reflection on fate is concluded with a teaching that brings ease to the reader, convincing that suffering and injustice are always healed by the general laws of fate and divinity (”Outside Child”, “Heart Man Business”). “Once Upon a Time” is the versified history of the Land of Liberty: the poem starts with the beginnings, follows historical development, accompanied by reflections and motivations of events, depicts injustice and the power of greed, to come to the present and show “what the love of liberty can triumphantly achieve”. This achievement versified in the last stanza of the poem comes to heal all the wounds of the past, reaffirming the technique used in the other texts, where the end always heals the evil and injustice on which the poems dwell.

The artistic techniques of Miatta Kawinzi’s poems show a richness of content and a very original development of ideas and themes. Texts of a tensioned narrative, with poetic figures developed at their highest, the poems seem to be constructed on various perspectives and details that make a complex whole. The poetics of the titles is also very original. “11/30/1999″ expresses the philosophical idea of fighting against losing identity: “they call it history, what you wrote that day, /but yours was not a history of dry words . . . spelling out the ease with which we can become faceless”. Another text is hooked to a rather long title: “When the Rain Falls it Does Not Fall On One Woman’s House”, meditating on the personality made up by the reflection of those around it.

The acute feeling of loss by displacement is illustrated in the text linked to its title-definition: “Displacement”. The poet adopts a dialogue style: “Who America’ed my Africa, I ask you”, meditating on the effect of the foreign logos with obvious bitterness, but the solution to all the issues raised is seen as the duty of the people to mold, to shape their own history: “But how do we take this history/and mold it fiercely,/string battered patterns into shapes/less harsh?/ This be our duty,/Should we embrace it./This be our duty,/bold and huge.”

With a poetic form quite rigorous in the organization of stanzas, Saah Millimono vividly shapes up the face of human hardship in his poem directly entitled “Hard Times”. The poem doesn’t die out in lament, but expresses the hope for change and the belief in a better life despite the hopeless struggle along years of extreme hardship. Loneliness brings the poet’s readers into his own world of meditation and contemplation, where he defines a universe of extreme burden; loneliness finds various metaphorical definitions, visualizing the impact of a double injustice: the loneliness of the human being, isolated by hardship and grief, and the loneliness of the artist, who tries to define and overcome its limits by creation. The width of vision describes the immensity of feeling, and the insistence triggers a lyrical shape, which is rigorously organized. The various angles of perception enhance complexity and the impression of unbearable burden. Perceiving the world around, attempting to define it, drives him to counseling and advising, generously delivered by warm lyricism.

With a poetic text built on high contrast, between they and those subjected to the extremes of hardship, Emmanuel Charlie Morgan writes with a force that stops the reader at the very first verse of his poem, after a title “The Great Ones in a Strange Land”, whose poetics expresses contrast and anticipation of important issues of existence. “Strange fires burn the Land . . .” is the first verse of the poem; here, the reader stops. The apocalyptic vision sets in from the start: “Strange voices fill the air . . .” The second verse pins down the first one and the further choice of words, with harsh sonority, brings us to the last verse of the first stanza: ‘”They call themselves the “Liberators”‘. After this first stanza, the readers know that they stand in front of a poem rising against the terror of war, fearlessly and categorically.

The “Liberators” dictate a narrative poem to the creator, in which the words are as strong and categorical as the images they convey: valley of skulls, cave with terrible mosquitoes, helpless ones . . . The poem grows out of the poet’s total rejection of war and anger, with a visual and expressive force that does not need to build on figures of speech theoretically categorized. These words are real, hailing from reality; they transfer it into the literary reality apparently unfiltered, and thus they manage to build a discourse of powerful artistic force. The imaginative response of the reader is stimulated by interrogation, and the direct expression of the poet’s feelings. “The America Dream” proves a creator who simply needs to stretch the borders of the poetic beyond it, into the narrative, to accommodate a poetic discourse of extension, which shortly expresses conclusion in the end.

Alexander Queh promotes a lyrical text of width; the discourse stretches out and comes back in the pattern described by the motion of the ocean waves – “Save the Creatures”. Repetition creates a world of rhythm in bitter tones that finally finds a spring of comfort. A poem of high musicality, it leaves the measure on its own, to flow with the oscillation of feelings, building up intensity. Characteristic to his texts is the gradual building of intensity; reiteration (”Down the road.”) moves the discourse to a peak from where it is brought down to declared tranquility. When the text is not tense (”The Beauty of Sunrise”), it is built up by peaceful images of sight, among which the poet freely intervenes among verses.

A form of original construction, like a wide-based triangle of knowledge attempting to place itself on one-two separate notions (babies, war), turn Woryonwon Roberts’ poem “Cinquain” into a canvas on which details come to provide full shapes: hints of meaning, by a careful choice of words to convey the idea behind the choice of detail-object-involvement-outcome. The discourse flares up by words of challenging sonority, then the target notion holds it down, voicing itself. The form comes as a stylistic support for the idea, allowing it to spring up, grow, spread, and fall directly into the word describing the object it focuses on. The poems rely on a style of form variety and tone, powerfully defining, or gently meditating, conveying the message of the feeling underneath. Rhythm and measure serve the poetic idea with faith.

Momo Sheriff promotes a meditative style in poetry: his texts carry sorrow for the loss of cultural identity, symbolized by Kendeja, the “mighty school of Liberian pride”, as without it “traditional knowledge can be understood no more”. Even though the name is inbuilt in the Liberian spirit, Kendeja turns into history. The poem with this title, “Kendeja”, is written out of sorrow for a loss never to be recovered. Patriotic in tone and militating for deep social change, “Liberia” calls for awareness, signaling that the future is in Liberia’s hands, to be built in her light. More meditative and philosophic in approach, “Frustration” expresses a general feeling, so overwhelming, that it attempts to annihilate everything around us. The poetic discourse is free of stylistic adornments, concentrating on the expression of the poet’s attitudes and general feeling towards the vital issues he approaches.

Othello K. Weh understands the writing on the wall: no matter what times have been like, or how hard it has been for people to go through suffering beyond limits, the time has come to militate for a new world, for a new order. His poem “Our Eyes Are Opened” clearly militates for a “”new independence”, for a liberty of real meaning. Invoking, militant, determined and categorical, the poetic discourse serves the cause of a humanity that has learnt its lessons of history and now demands a different order. With a firm rhythm to sustain the poetic idea, the discourse is built on solid figures, impressive in their association and disposal through the text, clearly outlining the demand, and highlighting the poet’s figure as the voice of those whose liberty his determined lyrical approach categorically demands.

With the tonalities of a song, aided by repetitions, by a rhythm specific to Weh’s poetry, with the employment of sonorous interjections to aid the auditive effect, “Our Voices Have Changed” is another text where the poet’s role to militate for a change of times and order is obvious to the reader. The voice within the voice of his people, and a heart within the heart of his people, he goes through historical events that impress the poetic conscience and calls out for the change of the war song into a “new song” that will heal the suffering around him.

A poet with a deep sense of history, Othello K. Weh pleads for the values that contribute to stability, with its multitude of meanings. At the same time, he expresses deep sorrow that the young generation does not know these values, their reigning value being that of the arms. The powerful voice calls out for a vital change.

It is a pride to observe that Liberian poetry today meets the challenges of the contemporary poetic models, by its richness and diversity. The multitude of approaches in terms of theme, form, poetic discourse, proves a rich oral tradition on the one hand, and sustained preoccupation in artistic creation, on the other hand. Poetry is an important part of national literature as it immortalizes the world at that very moment along with the feelings generating it. Liberian poets today have fully understood this role and it is certain that they will keep on writing in all the perspectives that view the enrichment and value of Liberian national literature.