Attunement of the Senses 
Who has an eye for Nature’s beauteous forms
And lends an ear to trap her melody,
Will see the rose a sudden scarlet blush
When shyly bursting forth in dewy morn;
Observe the riotous splash of colour spilled
Across the palest blue of Heaven’s dome;
Will harken to the noise of kneeling grass
Which furious, fitful winds keep trampling o’er;
Will hear the symphony of weeping skies
Euphoniously played on tresses green;
Will smell the dampness of the rain-scoured earth
And deep inhale the fragrance of its flowers;
Will taste the freshness of the laughing brook
And smack the lips in sheer delight of being;
Will feel a oneness with Divinity,
Dynamic; indivisible; serene
All these and more perceived and understood
Is proof . . . clear proof . . . the senses are attuned.
Frank E Dalzell
We recently reviewed samples of Guyanese poetry published in 1934, commenting on what they reveal about the literature of that time period. This week we examine another, published 12 years later, and find similarities that will not surprise, but will invite observations that are quite ironic. By 1946 there were two anthologies and the founding of a historic literary journal all of which contain samples of the poetic output of British Guiana in the colonial period from 1831. What they reveal is remarkable.
We refer to the first published anthology of Guyanese poetry – Guianese Poetry 1831 – 1931 (1931) compiled by Norman E Cameron; The Anthology of Local Indian Verse (1934) edited by C E J Ramcharitar-Lalla; and the journal Kyk-Over-Al established by the B G Union of Cultural Clubs with A J Seymour as its founding editor. The verses in their pages tell a lot.
The first collection covers the poetry of the hundred-year period 1831 to 1931. But why 1931? That was a significant year. It was the start of publications and a quest by Cameron to repair what he saw as a gap in Guyanese literature and consciousness as well as to highlight the dignity of the Black race which had been besmirched and undervalued in those colonial times. But it was also because of what is explained by Gemma Robinson in her “Introduction” to the reprint of Cameron’s anthology by the Caribbean Press in 2014. “1931 was a year of great inspiration to Guianese. It was the centenary of the union of the three counties Berbice, Essequibo and Demerara into the colony British Guiana. An outburst of literary events greeted the event.”
The second collection grew out of the rise of cultural consciousness among descendants of Indian immigrants, some of whom were writing and publishing poetry. This period included the establishment of several cultural and sports clubs. It was a time when the poetry of the great Indian master Rabindranath Tagore was revered in the colony. The Anthology of Local Indian Verse was the second published Guyanese anthology and the first by East Indians. But its appearance was thought to be a response to Cameron’s 1931 collection which, in its sweeping of 100 years of local verse, included no East Indians.
The third source of published poetry mentioned above was not an anthology, but a literary magazine whose first edition was in 1945. These pages revealed samples of the poetry of the previous age covered by the first two, but also exhibited the very important new work that was developing in the 1940s. The poem printed above – “Attunement of the Senses” by Frank E Dalzell appeared in the Third Volume of Kyk-Over-Al in December 1946. It is very similar to the verses found in Ramcharitar Lalla’s 1934 anthology but makes very interesting comparison with other poems that surrounded it in the journal.
Of great interest is the fact that with this poem, Dalzell won the first prize in the B G Union of Cultural Clubs Literary Competition 1946. Clearly, it was considered a superior model of poetry by the yardsticks of assessment at the time. It is thus ironic when compared to other poems appearing beside it in the pages of the three volumes of Kyk between 1945 and 1946. Seymour declared in the editorial notes: “The quality of verse in this issue is, we think, high.” He mentioned that Dalzell, as well as “Jas W Smith and Wilson Harris have some of their finest work included, and the extracts from Leo’s work printed . . . these all show that British Guiana’s verse of yesterday and today is good and comparable.”
“Attunement of the Senses” is clearly very neatly composed and structured with an easy command of its controlled rhythm and facility with rhyme. Yet it is another example of the poetry of imitation that prevailed at the time, carried over from the previous era. Like several of its contemporaries and precursors it imitates perceived models of good poetry and accepted versification. These models were and drew from the poetic language, styles and subjects of English Romantic and Victorian poetry.
This includes preferred diction such as “scarlet”, “morn”, “Heaven’s dome”, “harken”, “o’er”, and “tresses”. Some of the notions of poetic language are a bit archaic, like a number of other obsolete words, but are preserved in the poetry of earlier centuries. Additionally, there are conventions in which certain words are capitalised because of a classical influence that persisted in English poetry. They are capitalised because they are actually personifications. “Nature”, for example refers to or is represented by the god/goddess of nature, or of nature personified, and thus is not just a noun but a name. Other similar notions carry over in “Divinity” and “Heaven”.
Next to observe is the way the poem is imitative in subject matter. It is a nature poem, glorifying nature and its elements and reflecting romanticism. There is imitation of Wordsworth in the inevitable influence of nature, as a living supernatural force over man and man’s inability to resist it. There is imitation of Keats in the concept of empathy and in the sensual. It is a poem that appeals to the senses in a manner reminiscent of Romanticism.
But while the verse forms like those used by Dalzell were published and praised in the pages of Kyk, strong advancements in modern Guyanese poetry were also found in the same place. From Volume One of Kyk-Over-Al there were signs of poets who rose above the conventions they inherited and were already independent voices. These included Wilson Harris from the outset with “Tell Me Trees, What Are You Whispering”, and “Words Written Before Sunset”. There was James W Smith’s “To A Dead Silk Cotton Tree”, landscape poetry which manages to be local and quite liberated from the imitative.
Walter McA Lawrence too, inherited that brand of landscape poetry, but turned it into something inventive. He developed a patriotic verse from praise of landscape and developed literature based on the natural beauty of the country. This persisted long after him. Other outstanding examples of the confident new developments with a strong sense of post-colonialism were Edgar Mittelholzer’s “For Me –The Back-yard”, Seymour’s “Tomorrow Belongs To The People”, and the early poetry of Helen Taitt, the only woman among the leading poets at that time.
