Wole Soyinka in the BBC Reith Lectures talks about a climate of fear in the world at the moment; the fear of extremist thought, of sudden death, of trepidation in pursuing ordinarily very normal mundane daily activities. Pray, where has our recent poetry made any of this the subject matter of contemplation? Or put differently, in how far has poetry warned about such a possibility before the actual establishment of such a climate of fear? Where is that foresight, or that vision, usually credited to poets and poetry? There was the September 11, 2001 bombing in the USA. Did our contemporary poetry address it? There is a war in Iraq. How much have poets devoted their energy to that unfortunate colonialism going on under our very noses? There is instability in the world, war and poverty in many regions, oppression by the USA – even of its own people, dictatorships in Africa, natural and unnatural disasters everywhere; evil is rife and thriving. Why have our poets decided to concentrate on the idyll, the ode and the merely ornamental narrative as a form today? Derek Walcott’s recent poetic outing is called The Prodigal; he lives in the USA. Why does he not address the infringements to life going on there? Paul Muldoon is another poet in ascendancy in the USA. What does this poem by him below, for example, say about our present distress?:

Medley for Morin Khur

I

The sound box is made of a horse’s head.

The resonator is horse skin.

The strings and bow are of horsehair.

II

The Morin Khur is the thoroughbred

of Mongolian violins.

Its call is the call of the stallion to the mare.

III

A call which may no more be gainsaid

than that of jinn to jinn

through jasmine-weighted air.

IV

A call that may no more be gainsaid

than that of blood kin to kin

through a body-strewn central square.

V

A square in which they’ll heap the horses’ heads

by the heaps of horse skin

and the heaps of horsehair.

After reading the above a thinking reader might ask, and so what? What is the poet trying to tell us. Apart from the dalliance with form, as in end-rhymes, is there is an underlying deeper significance to that ‘light’ verse in all its prosaicness? Having tried to read this particular poet, admittedly not his complete oeuvre, one notes the mimicry of the modernist tendency in form. But where, pray is the marrying of subject-matter, style, and form? Where is the depth? Poets should stop fooling us. It is a scandal! This tendency to pull the wool over the reader’s eye is particularly strong in North American and European poetry in terms of a tinkering with form to the detriment of depth in style and subject. Is it because life is too comfortable in the West? Are Westerners immune to the suffering, injustice and fear in the world around them? No, because the anti-globalisation campaigner shows an awareness of things. What then is wrong with our poets? Is their sense of history atrophied?

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