April Anne P.

Moncada Lit 4005 Study of Poetry, Fiction, and Drama July 2, 2011

Africa by David Diop A Call for Liberty

David Diops poem Africa is a free verse about negritude that downplays the aesthetic dimension of the poem to emphasize its intellectual and emotional dimensions. A poem is a voice; it is a form of expressionaesthetic expression. However, there are times when the message is more important than its form. The message is so powerful that following a rigid style of writing would constrict it, and because of its power, it seems to blow the poem off its seams. Such is Africa. The poem shoutscriesfor liberty, for freedom. It brings the reader
from the ancestral savannahs to bondage to an African future full of hope of liberty, and in its wake, it leaves a lasting sense of pride and love for being Black. The poem is not as melodic as Edgar Allan Poes works or as perfect in measure as Shakespeares sonnets. It is a free verse. There is no rhyming scheme, and it has an irregular meter. It is however written in a voice that the reader can easily relate to. The use of the first person point of view does this effectively, conveying an intimate voice that draws the reader into the world of Africans and make them feel the latters plight.

This poem is clearly a rebellion against the conventions of a poem. The form is dictated by the content. The natural rhythm of the language with the help of literary devices makes it a free verse, not the poetic structure. One of the dominant literary devices used in the poem is repetition of words or lines. The first line itself is a repetition: Africa my Africa. Moreover, the first three lines start with the same word, Africa. Lines 13 and 14 also exhibit repetition.

This back that never breaks under the weight of humiliation This back trembling with red scars

A specific type of repetition is anadiplosis, a rhetorical term for the repetition of the last word of one line or clause to begin the next. This is shown clearly in the following lines (emphasis added). There is also a pattern in the structure of the lines: noun phrase + prep phrase, and all three lines start with the article the.

The blood of your sweat The sweat of your work The work of your slavery

Alliteration where the same sound starts a series of words or syllables were also employed by Diop as exemplified in the following line (emphasis added):

Your beautiful black blood that irrigates the fields

Although it cannot be ascertained at the moment of writing, Africa can also be taken as a rebellion with regard to its theme, which will be discussed more in the succeeding paragraphs.

Yet what the poem downplayed in aesthetics it more than made up for in its powerful, compelling imagery. It makes the reader see, hear, taste, and feel the Black experience. With this, it unlocks in the readers the sentiments it seeks. Readers cannot help but feel compassion for the Africans and hatred toward the colonizers. For Filipinos, this is not so hard to do. Even on a more personal level, we can also say that bullies are just like these oppressors. Despite their grave circumstances, there is hope as symbolized by the tree, growing splendidly alone amidst white faded flowers. David Diop wrote this sometime in the 1950s, and he could not be more right. Indeed theres hope. The Blacks around the world eventually got the R-E-S-P-E-C-T (to copy Aretha Franklin) that they deserve. With Obama in the White House, it is indubitably so. Alongside its imagery is the spare use of punctuation marks. In fact, the only terminal punctuation is the period at the last line of the poem. With only a few punctuations, the reader is left to her own devices in interpreting the cadence, tone, and expression of the poem. The form of the poem, its aesthetic dimension, serves as the springboard upon which the message of the poem is catapulted straight to the readers heart. Beyond its structure, this poem is one of advocacy. In this sense, it is intellectual and emotional at the same time. Intellectual because the persona is presenting an ideanegritude, the sense of Negro pride. At the time when Blacks were considered third-class citizens and treated as slaves, he reminded them of their glorious past being proud warriors in ancestral savannahs. Notice that he used the word ancestral, indicating ownership and heritage and pride as Africans. Negritude is an affirmation of Black identity, but the idea was foreign to the foreign colonizers. At the time, it was difficult for them to understand that people who are not white are still humans with dignity. But eventually their inhuman treatments stopped because more people became aware of negritude. The idea spread around the world, encouraging support and

fostering acceptance and recognition of the Black race. Through this, the Africans are in turn motivated to show their history and culture as something to be proud of. Some people write dramas, novels, and short stories to promote a cause. Jose Rizal did so in his novels just like Harriet Beecher Stowe in her Uncle Toms Cabin. But writers can sometimes say what they want in lesser words and be just as effective. Moreover, by limiting the use of poetic form and style and thus downplaying the aesthetic dimension of the poem, Diop was able to highlight the more important dimensions to serve his purpose. This is what makes Africa his masterpiece.