Poetry for Southern California

 

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Welcome to Poetix 2/2010

 

COVER STORY

By Richard Modiano

 

 

Dennis Brutus 1924-2009

All that is visible, clings to the invisible, the audible to the inaudible,
the tangible to the intangible:
Perhaps the thinkable to the unthinkable.
— Novalis

Words are seals of the mind, results—or, more correctly, stations—of an infinite series of experiences, which reach from an unimaginably distant past into the present, and which feel their way into an equally unimaginable distant future. They are the audible that clings to the inaudible, the forms and potentialities of thought, which grow from that which is beyond thought.

The essential nature of words is therefore neither exhausted by their present meaning, nor is their importance confined to their usefulness as transmitters of thoughts and ideas, but they express at the same time qualities which are not translatable into concepts—just as a melody which, though it may be associated with a conceptual meaning, cannot be described by words or by any other medium of expression. And it is just that non-rational quality which stirs up our deepest feelings, elevates our innermost being, and makes it vibrate with others.

The magic which poetry exerts upon us is due to this quality and its rhythm in combination. It is stronger than what the words convey objectively—stronger even than reason with all its logic, in which we believe so firmly. The success of great poets is not only due to what they say, but how they say it. If people could be convinced by logic and scientific proofs, the philosophers would long since have succeeded in winning over the greater part of humanity to their views.

One poet who drew on the magical properties of poetry was Dennis Brutus, the South African freedom fighter. Brutus died in his sleep early on December 26 last year in Cape Town, at the age of 85. Through the medium of his poetry and the direct action of civil disobedience, he struggled against the injustice of racism, challenging South Africa’s apartheid regime. For his courageous stand, for his poetry, he was banned, he was censored, he was shot.

Brutus spent 18 months in prison, in the same section of Robben Island as Nelson Mandela, where he wrote his first collection of poems, Sirens, Knuckles, Boots. His poem “Sharpeville” described the March 21, 1960, massacre in which South African police opened fire, killing 69 civilians, an event which radicalized him. Brutus authored over more than a dozen collections of poetry, including A Simple Lust, Stubborn Hope and Salutes and Censures. In 2006, Haymarket Books published a compilation of his work, Poetry and Protest. His work was banned for years in South Africa, but one book, Thoughts Abroad, slipped through; it was published in 1970 under the pseudonym John Bruin.

Dennis Brutus became known in later years as a campaigner for global justice, frequently attending mass mobilizations against the World Trade Organization, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund and most recently, although not present, giving inspiration to the protesters at the U.N. climate summit in Copenhagen. Brutus also gave generously to many projects he deemed worthy such as the fledging November 3rd Club on-line journal. He said, on his 85th birthday, days before the climate talks were to commence: “We are in serious difficulty all over the planet. We are going to say to the world: There’s too much of profit, too much of greed, too much of suffering by the poor...The people of the planet must be in action.”

The poetry of Dennis Brutus embodied the idea that a truly free society is not only desirable but also possible, and that nothing less than the most far-reaching social transformation can bring such a society into being. The age of meaningful reforms having passed away long ago, this transformation must go beyond the traditional political/economic limits of the last century’s revolutions, but also needs to embody—from the start—the open-ended, non-repressive, emancipatory, and eros-affirmative praxis of the poetic imagination.

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