Thematic Study of Poems

Thematic Study of Poems

The Piano and The Drums by Gabriel Okara

Hello, I am Emisha Ravani, writing this blog as a thinking activity. Which is given by Yesha Bhatt ma'am. In this i will discuss the two poems which are given above. This is by Gabriel Okara.

Who is Gabriel Okara?

 

Gabriel Okara is a Nigerian poet and novelist whose work has been translated into several languages. After his first poem, “The Call of the River Nun,” won an award at the Nigerian Festival of Arts in 1953, several of his poems were featured in the Nigerian literary journal Black Orpheus. In his poetry, Okara draws from Nigerian folklore and religion while exploring extremes within daily life through circular patterns. In addition to a novel, and several books of adult poetry, including The Fisherman’s Invocation (1978), Okara has published two collections of children’s poetry, Little Snake and Little Frog (1992) and An Adventure to Juju Island (1992). The need to reconcile the extremes of experience (life and death are common themes) preoccupies his verse, and a typical poem has a circular movement from everyday reality to a moment of joy and back to reality again. Okara incorporated African thought, religion, folklore, and imagery into both his verse and prose.

THE PIANO AND THE DRUMS

Gabriel Okara

When at break of day at a riverside

I hear jungle drums telegraphing

the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw

like bleeding flesh, speaking of

primal youth and the beginning,

I see the panther ready to pounce,

the leopard snarling about to leap

and the hunters crouch with spears poised.

And my blood ripples, turns torrent,

topples the years and at once I’m

in my mother’s laps a suckling;

at once I’m walking simple

paths with no innovations

rugged, fashioned with the naked

warmth of hurrying feet and groping hearts

in green leaves and wild flowers pulsing.

Then I hear a wailing piano

solo speaking of complex ways

in tear- furrowed concerto;

of far away lands

and new horizons with

coaxing diminuendo, counterpoint,

crescendo, but lost in the labyrinth of its complexities, it ends in the middle of a phrase at a daggerpoint

And I lost in the morning mist

of an age at a riverside keep

wandering in the mystic rhythm

of jungle drums and concerto.

The white man came to Africa with many things including his culture or ways of life. The European culture exposes Africans to unfamiliar and astonishing things, it made them experience things that were absurd according to the African Culture. Most of these things were not accepted, while a few, especially material artifacts, were embraced by both the commoners and the elites.

It is a poem of three stanzas with 29 lines. It has no consistent rhyming scheme, hence one can say that it is mainly a free verse. The language of the poem is simple. The poet has used his unique style of writing here by the comparison of two different musical instruments. He used the piano to symbolizing western or foreign culture and drum for the his native land that is Africa. 

This poem starts with the action of hearing by the poet that he hear the sound of drum. And that is mystical and by saying that we come to know about the supernatural aspects of african culture as well as the quickness of the people of africa. 

A straight use of imagery and comprehensible words draws the readers’ attention to the fact that everything about this sound is in their natural states using words like, “riverside, jungle, raw, fresh,” names of animal in the jungle – natural habitat, and the last line of the stanza speaking of a hunter with spear ready to strike and hunt.

The poet remembers of years back when he was still an infant in his mother’s laps suckling her breast. Suddenly, he is walking the paths of the village with no new ideas of a way of life different from the one he is born into.

Further, He is going with the very new scenario of a different instrument other than African native drum, and it also produces a sound that is different with so many musical technicalities which the poetic persona expresses with musical dictions in words like, “concerto, diminuendo, crescendo.” He deploys them to emphasize the difficulty in understanding this new sound. “Then,” the word that begins the third stanza, introduces a strange rhythm produced by a piano, a foreign musical instrument. The introduction of a foreign beat brings confusion into the life of the poet, for the natural “mystic rhythm” with which he is familiar clashes with the “complex ways” of the “wailing piano.”

The poet discusses the confusion that is created when western culture mixes with African culture. Any attempt to unify the two results to confusion and disorder. The poet is not against choosing any of the cultures, but don’t mix them together. Indirectly, he warns us against becoming whiter than the white themselves or more civilized than civilization.

FIRST MEMORY : YOUTH

SECOND MEMORY : MOTHER'S LAP

THIRD MEMORY : NATURAL 

SETTING :

The setting of the poem appears to be the poet's village and it is a typical African countryside. The poet also informs us that it is a riverside. What lends support to this conjecture is the fact that Gabriel Okara hails from the riverine area of Nigeria where numerous water channels from River Niger form a delta before emptying into the Atlantic. Also, the setting is rural in nature, we infer this from the animals the poet refers to; and the choice of words employed by the poet which includes; "jungle drums", "wild flowers", "hunters" and "green leaves".

Lastly, it should be noted that the time described in the poem is morning when there are no disturbance.

THEMES OF THE POEM, PIANO AND THE DRUMS

• Dilemma
• Innocence
• Cultural Clash
• African Culture
• Acculturation
• Living a Double Standard Lifestyle
• No place like home
• Childhood Reminiscence and its Effect
• Nature

Dilemma

The poem speaker concluded that he found himself/herself in dilemma "wandering in the mystic rhythm/of jungle drums and the concerto." because he didn't know which culture to totally embrace. He preferred the simple rural life but it was also impossible to let go of the civilisation he had got unto despite it was complex and confusing.

Innocence

In the poem we can see the description of his personal feelings and even the nature, culture in all ways carrying the innocence into it. In the poem is explored in the depiction of african culture, from the very first line of the poem where we are told that the events take place "at break of day", the idea of innocence is already implied. This is because the day is fresh and uncontaminated by other activities or sounds. The sound heard from the jungle drums are therefore pure and not corrupt, the poem also invokes the idea of innocence.

Cultural clash

Culture in Piano and Drums by Gabriel Okara In the poem “Piano and Drums” the poet Gabriel Okara depicts and contrasts two different cultures through symbolism of pianos and drums. The Poem is divided into four stanzas. The first two stanzas represent the “drum” culture and the second two stanzas show the “piano” culture. The description of the drums is in two stanzas, but is one sentence long. The first line of the first stanza: ‘When at break of day at a riverside’ Uses trochees to emphasize the deliberate broken rhythm. The stanza has savage words, “bleeding flesh,” “urgent raw,” “leopard snarling,” “spears poised,” to show that this is a primitive culture, one which has dependency on the environment, as is represented by the “hunters crouch with spears poised.” The environment in this culture is physically dangerous, surrounded by wild animals. Drums here are a way of communication, and “jungle drums telegraphing the mystic rhythm, urgent, raw…” shows the way of life in this culture. This is life which is simple, near the beginnings of man. The stanza ... ... middle of paper ... ...with one another, with Drums illustrating primitive behaviour, and a savage, dangerous culture. The connotations of the piano are complex and technical. The piano uses significantly different word sounds, showing that it is learnt, westernized and intricate compared to the drums which is instinctive and naturally acquired, and simple. The poem uses no set rhyme pattern which suits the poem as it has an undecided effect, emphasizing the confusion of the persona over his future. The Themes in Piano and Drums

No place like home

This theme cannot be identified on a surface level in the poem, but, when the poetic persona laments over the confusion that emanates from the contact of the two instruments: piano and drum (African lifestyle and western lifestyle), he shows how comfortable one can be at home with the things and way of life that he is familiar with. There was no confuse when it was all African and their drums until civilization came.

Living a Double Standard Lifestyle

By emphasizing the confusion that comes out from the marriage of the piano and drum sounds, the poetic persona tells us that living two contracting lives can only breed confusion and complexities.

Acculturation

The notion of acculturation is brought into the poem with the contact of the piano and the drums. Acculturation is when two distinct cultures meet and start to adopt and absorb each other’s norms.

Thank you!

words : 1586

You laughed and laughed and laughed by Gabriel Okara (click here to get that poem)