The 20th century has been a terrible one indeed – not any worse than in ages past someone might quickly counter, but at least we lived in that age and now in the 21st and our poets do too. Why this navel gazing? The Middle East has festered since 1945. We had the First World War, the Second World War; there was a holocaust; before that there was the black holocaust. What is there in the larger archives of poetry addressing these events?; in the ‘larger archives’ because we find only coteries of poets who are truly committed to their duty as conscience of society – like Wilfred Owen or Sassoon during their own time. Where is the conscience in the art of poetry today?

It is noteworthy that poets of the Southern hemisphere or those working within sections of oppressed society – like African-America, are more dedicated to their calling as the ‘unacknowledged legislators’ of the world. Is it, perhaps, because there is more trouble in their little corners? Again one notes that this romance with form is prevalent mostly in the comfortable West. The only conclusion can be that the western poet more than those in any other parts of the world are unwittingly acquiescing in the systemic violence that surrounds us. This is why, earlier, one questioned the poet’s sense of history. Poetry today is a-historical and has become part of the tools of oppression in its tacit agreement with Hegemon. To come back to the image of the egg, what we are being served is too often just a shell of an egg. And any critical or aesthetic weight brought to bear on it crushes it to smithereens, nothing; most poetry today are nothing – form and nothing; At bests, poets seem to be saying, maybe we should be thankful for the egg’s stench. We are not completely rendered senseless; if it is a rotten egg, at least, there is a certain olfactory response to that stench!

Amatoritsero Ede

Editor,

Ede is a Writer-In- Residence, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada.

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