Grocott's Mail
    Facebook Twitter Instagram
    Saturday, May 17
    Facebook Twitter Instagram
    Grocott's Mail
    • NEWS
      • Courts & Crime
      • Features
      • Politics
      • People
      • Health & Well-being
    • SPORT
      • News
      • Results
      • Sports Diary
      • Club Contacts
      • Columns
      • Sport Galleries
      • Sport Videos
    • OPINION
      • Election Connection
      • Makana Voices
      • Deur ‘n Gekleurde Bril
      • Newtown… Old Eyes
      • Incisive View
      • Your Say
    • ARTSLIFE
      • Cue
        • Cue Archives
      • Makana Sharp!
      • Visual Art
      • Literature
      • Food
      • Festivals
      • Community Arts
      • Going Places
    • OUR TOWN
      • What’s on
      • Spiritual
      • Emergency & Well-being
      • Covid-19
      • Safety
      • Civic
      • Municipality
      • Weather
      • Properties
        • Grahamstown Properties
      • Your Town, Our Town
    • OUTSIDE
      • Enviro News
      • Gardening
      • Farming
      • Science
      • Conservation
      • Motoring
      • Pets/Animals
    • ECONOMIX
      • Business News
      • Entrepreneurship
      • Personal Finance
    • EDUCATION
      • Education NEWS
      • Education OUR TOWN
      • Education INFO
    • EDITORIAL
    Grocott's Mail
    You are at:Home»ARTS & LIFE»Poetic Licence
    ARTS & LIFE

    Poetic Licence

    Grocott's Mail ContributorsBy Grocott's Mail ContributorsMay 2, 2018Updated:May 15, 2018No Comments3 Mins Read
    Facebook Twitter Pinterest LinkedIn Tumblr Email

    A few days ago I found myself chatting with the fine Grahamstown poet Dudu Saki about (naturally enough!) poetry. He feels that sometimes people don’t understand his work because he writes figuratively, using similes, metaphors and other devices, rather than using a straightforward narrative.

    But isn’t this precisely what poetry does? Not for the sake of obscurity but rather to suggest an unusual relationship between one thing and another. If employed skilfully and creatively, metaphor has the potential to reveal new ways of seeing, new ways of understanding, that plain statement cannot achieve.

    “Tell all the truth but tell it slant”, advised Emily Dickinson, and she was right. Just as sunlight refracted through a glass prism reveals a spectrum of rainbow colours, so language directed through the prism of poetry often shows something previously unseen, unsuspected.

    And metaphor is a major part of the linguistic prism. This is how Dudu Saki expresses it:

    I have not found my voice

    Maybe it lies

    between the lines of my poetry

    Perhaps behind the images

    lies my voice…buried

    Perhaps across the lines my voice drowns

    I am numbed by the silence

    of a voice in a void

    A silence to which I still recite

    the empty absence of a voiceless youth

    loud with empty words

    Dudu Saki

    (from Do Men Wear Clothes, Aerial Publishing, 2008)

    Of course, we all use metaphor every day: a beloved child becomes “the apple of one’s eye”; road rage is the descent into “a red mist”; depression is “a black dog”. These are familiar figures of speech – so familiar, perhaps, that they risk lapsing into cliché. But they are simply what Robert Frost called “saying one thing and meaning another, saying one thing in terms of another”.

    And this is what much poetry attempts all the time. It needs to be done well, of course, and it does assume a willingness (and ability) on the part of readers/listeners to do a little imaginative work of their own. But it’s what sets poetry apart for me; it’s a kind of magic and why I have said so many times that I need actually to write a poem before I can know what I think.

    A technique closely related to metaphor is ‘apostrophe’, in which the poet directly addresses something not human. Keats’s ode ‘To Autumn’ is a famous example. Is this so very difficult to understand? Perhaps, but I really do think it offers rewards beyond the obvious.

    Here is an ‘apostrophe’ by the American poet Edward Hirsch in which he addresses his craft as if it were a lover.

    To Poetry

    Don’t desert me
    just because I stayed up last night
    watching The Lost Weekend.

    I know I’ve spent too much time
    praising your naked body to strangers
    and gossiping about lovers you betrayed.

    I’ve stalked you in foreign cities
    and followed your far-flung movements,
    pretending I could describe you.

    Forgive me for getting jacked on coffee
    and obsessing over your features
    year after jittery year.

    I’m sorry for handing you a line
    and typing you on a screen,
    but don’t let me suffer in silence.

    Does anyone still invoke the Muse,
    string a wooden lyre for Apollo,
    or try to saddle up Pegasus?

    Winged horse, heavenly god or goddess,
    indifferent entity, secret code, stored magic,
    pleasance and half wonder, hell,

    I have loved you my entire life
    without even knowing what you are
    or how – please help me – to find you.

    Edward Hirsch

    (from The Essential Poet’s Glossary, Mariner Books, 2017)

    Previous Article‘Zebra-listing’: a way forward for Minister Dlamini
    Next Article St Andrew’s College Pipe Band
    Grocott's Mail Contributors

      Grocott's Mail Contributors includes content submitted by members of the public, and public and private institutions and organisations - regular and occasional, expert and citizen, opinion and analysis.

      Comments are closed.

      Code of Ethics and Conduct
      GROCOTT’S SUBSCRIPTION
      RMR
      Listen to RMR


      Humans of Makhanda

      Humans of Makhanda

      Weather    |     About     |     Advertise     |     Subscribe     |     Contact     |     Support Grocott’s Mail

      © 2025 Maintained by School of Journalism & Media Studies.

      Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.