Poetry Criticism | Brutus, Dennis - R. N. Egudu (essay date 1976)

R. N. Egudu (essay date 1976)

SOURCE: "Pictures of Pain: The Poetry of Dennis Brutus," in Aspects of African Literature, Christopher Heywood (ed.), Heinemann, 1976, pp. 131-144.

[In the following excerpt, Egudu describes Brutus's poetry as the expression of "mental agony" and praises his use of emotional tension.]

The poetry of Dennis Brutus is the reaction of one who is in mental agony-whether he is at home or abroad. This agony is partly caused by harassments, arrests, and imprisonment, and mainly by Brutus's concern for other suffering people. Thus Brutus feels psychically injured in some of his poems. When he traverses all his land as a 'troubadour',¹⁰ finding wandering 'motion sweeter far than rest', he is feeling the pinch of restiveness resulting from dislodgement. All the factors that make life uncomfortable are assembled in the poem: banning of 'inquiry and movement', 'Saracened arrest', and 'the captor's hand', and...

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