Poets and Poems
“I know why the caged bird sings … The caged bird sings of freedom.” – Maya Angelou
Dr. Maya Angelou is perhaps one of America’s most celebrated authors and poets. From the prose in her memoir, mentioned above, to her books and poems (you can watch Janet Jackson recite “Phenomenal Women,” beginning at the 1:59 mark), this Grammy-award winner has been called on by many, including presidents, to succinctly relay the sentiments of a nation.
As we mark Black History month, instead of taking you, dear reader, on a tour of such poets as Angelou, Phyllis Wheatley, Paul Laurence Dunbar or Langston Hughes, I’d like to introduce you to three poets who hail from other lands. Some are well-known. Others are not.
Egyptian Nights
The palace gleamed. From jubilant choirs
Of bards re-echoed hymns of praise;
The joyous strains of lutes and lyres
The Queen enhanced by voice and gaze
All hearts in transport thronged to seek her
When of a sudden she stopped short
And mused above the golden beaker,
Her wondrous forehead dropped in though.
The festive turmoil ceases shifting,
The choir stands mute as in a daze;
At last the Queen pronounces lifting
Her brow again, with cloudless gaze …
--Alexander Pushkin, 1799-1837
Pushkin is the founder of modern Russian literature and is considered that country’s greatest poet. What few people know is that Pushkin, who was born into Russian nobility in Moscow, was the great-grandson of an African slave (a slave who was given to Peter the Great as a gift). That slave, Abram Gannibal, was educated and rose to aristocracy. The above poem (an excerpt of an unfinished, yet revered work) is an English translation and a personal favorite.
Relentlessly She Drives Me
Relentlessly she drives me through the thickets of Time
My black blood hounds me through the crowd to the clearing where white night sleeps
Sometimes I turn round in the street and see again the palm tree smiling under the breeze
Her voice brushes me like a soft lisping sweep of a wing and I say
"Yes it is Signare!" I have seen the sun set in the blue eyes of a fair negress
At Sevres-Babylon or Balangar, amber and gongo, her scent was near and spoke to me …
--Leopold Sedar Senghor – 1906-2001
Leopold Sedar Senghor was a Senegalese poet, politician, and cultural theorist who for two decades served as the first president of Senegal. The above poem, translated from French, is not about a woman—rather, his deep rooted sense to Africa and a longing to be insusceptible to European ways.
“Departures linger. Absences do not.” – Wole Soyinka
Akinwande Oluwole “Wole” Soyinka hails from Nigeria and in 1986 he became the first person from the African continent to win the Pulitzer Prize for Literature. You can watch Soyinka, 78, read a poem here: http://www.nobelprize.org/mediaplayer/index.php?id=668
Africa has given birth to many, many poets: Dennis Brutus, Odia Ofeimun, Keorapetse Kgositsile among them. Many of them wrote poems which examined such themes as praise, criticism, the environment, reflection, appeal, war, death, and of course, love.
In honor of the month, I encourage you to seek their words on your own.
--Written By Aliah D. Wright