Brutus, Dennis - Pol Ndu (essay date 1971)

Pol Ndu (essay date 1971)

SOURCE: "Passion and Poetry in the Works of Dennis Brutus," in Black Academy River, Vol. 2, No. 1-2, Spring-Summer, 1971, pp. 41-54.

[In the following excerpt, Ndu maintains that the presence of passion is critical for creating great poetry and he argues that Brutus's poetry is limited by what the author calls his "cautious " emotional involvement in the anti-apartheid movement.]

Dennis Brutus sows the needs of great poetry when he discusses themes of special intimacy to himself. Such themes could have arisen from some loss, some desire, some feeling or even the pain of the confrontation of the abominable regime. But in each case, the poet does not generalize or pose as the mouthpiece of a doomed race. He speaks from the labyrinths of his fear, his anger, the wells of his thirst. This is only when the two strands of passion are consumated in him and he knows that if oppression takes

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