Mildred K. Barya compares Beverley Nambozo’s “At the graveyard” with Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”
Posted: June 25, 2013 Filed under: 7 GUEST EDITORS, Beverley Nambozo, Mildred K. Barya, Sylvia Plath Comments Off on Mildred K. Barya compares Beverley Nambozo’s “At the graveyard” with Sylvia Plath’s “Daddy”
ZP Guest Editor Mildred K. Barya:
What Beverley Nambozo (Uganda) and Sylvia Plath (USA) have in common
My first poet is Beverley Nambozo, and the poem I’m focusing on is “At the graveyard.”
Beverley Nambozo
“At the graveyard”
.
At the graveyard I sit on my father’s lap.
Where we can talk.
Of what could have been but was not.
Here he has many friends,
Even his mother-in-law brings him flowers.
Now I understand why he has to write.
It keeps him alive.
We saved him by killing him.
Because now he writes.
He recited a poem for me
And my mother discovered my frozen tears
on my father’s stone.
. . .
What I like most is the balance between light and dark that comes from this poem. There’s a sense of grief and regret mixed with joy and comfort. The sadness comes from what could have been but was not, and the liberating feeling in ‘sitting on his lap so they can talk.’ I find that magical and refreshing. The father continues to be a father in this regard. He is not completely gone, and he is loved—the idea that even his mother-in-law brings him flowers. How punchy, precise and economical! In the old African culture, mothers–in-law are complicated beings whose relationships with their sons–in-law are often devoid of affection or open expression.
Beverley also does that cool thing of referencing Sylvia Plath without sounding banal. In Plath’s “Daddy” poem, her 2nd stanza begins in the direct, individual voice: Daddy, I have had to kill you. Beverley says in the collective, beginning of 3rd stanza: We saved him by killing him. I find this connection sweet and pleasant, especially when I realize that Beverley’s title could have been Daddy, but she lets the subject matter resolve that.
In Plath’s poem, we find the reason she’s had to “kill her Daddy.” She tried resurrecting him first: 4th line of the 3rd stanza: I used to pray to recover you. When that failed, she tried joining him. 12th stanza: At twenty I tried to die/And get back, back, back to you/I thought even the bones would do. For a long time she couldn’t accept the loss. So deep and long was her grieving. Bit my pretty red heart in two/I was ten when they buried you.
Beverley “saves her Daddy” by acknowledging that he’s alive – even in death. He now writes, and whenever she needs to talk with him she only has to visit, and hear him recite her a poem. It’s also her Daddy’s way of staying alive, so the goal is mutual and the action liberating for both daughter and father.
I like how these two poems deal with the loss of a father and grieve in a close but contrasting manner. So related they are, but with a twist in perspective. In order to heal and move on, the two poets find peace through poetry. One lets go through visions of the most dark form and then, severing the bond, so to speak, the other by imagining Daddy in the most friendly images: friends, flowers, and then reunion.
See Sylvia’s end stanza:
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
And Beverley’s 4th line of her first stanza: “Here he has many friends”.
The two poems/poets belong to different traditions—African versus American—but are much alike in their approach. Writing is their saving grace. Their differences are also interesting; what and how they write based on their feelings and experiences.
One of the joys of reading poetry is when you come across one poem/poet that reminds you of another. It’s like hearing the echo that merges time, people, and places, connecting across centuries and generations.
. . .
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)
“Daddy” (1962)
.
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.
.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time——
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
.
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
.
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
.
An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You——
.
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
.
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
.
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two——
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
. . .
Mildred K. Barya is a Ugandan author of three poetry collections: Give Me Room to Move My Feet, The Price of Memory after the Tsunami, and Men Love Chocolates But They Don’t Say. She has also published short stories in various anthologies and taught creative writing at Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham. She is a board member of African Writers Trust, and she blogs at: http://mildredbarya.com/
.
Beverley Nambozo‘s “At the graveyard”: from her poetry collection, Unjumping, published by Erbacce-press, U.K., 2010
.
Sylvia Plath‘s “Daddy”: from Sylvia Plath: Collected Poems, © 1965 / 1981, The Estate of Sylvia Plath
. . . . .
“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted”: Sylvia Plath and “Daddy” on Valentine’s Day
Posted: February 14, 2013 Filed under: English, Spanish, Sylvia Plath Comments Off on “Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted”: Sylvia Plath and “Daddy” on Valentine’s Day
ZP_Portrait of Sylvia Plath_© IsMiseKate
“Even amidst fierce flames the golden lotus can be planted.”
(Inscription on Sylvia Plath’s headstone)
.
It’s fifty years since her suicide, February 11th, 1963, at the age of 30, and Boston, Massachusetts-born Sylvia Plath’s confessional poem “Daddy” remains powerful still. It’s easy to forget – now that we’ve experienced a generation of much soul-baring in society (and of really really private stuff) in tell-all autobiographies, Oprah Winfrey interviews, etc., that what Plath was doing here was rare in Anglo-American poetry – where decorum and a certain “cool” or at least emotionally-neutral treatment of the subject of the poem predominated. In its way “Daddy” is a kind of turbulent, definitely heart-felt Valentine letter from a daughter to a father. (And some scholars have suggested that the anger in the poem is also directed at Plath’s poet-husband, Ted Hughes, who was brazen about carrying on an affair when the couple had two infant children.) It was while staying at the Yaddo artists’ retreat in New York State in 1959 that Plath had learned “to be true to my own weirdnesses”. Yet a poem such as “Daddy” – drawn from such deeply personal material (the death of her German father, his emotional repression, her angry love for him) – would not come till just before the young poetess – depressed and suicide-prone from her early 20s onward – finally “did it”. Plath’s use of Holocaust imagery combined with nursery-rhyme poem-metre makes “Daddy” a jolting poem for any first-time reader.
. . .
La poetisa estadounidense Sylvia Plath se suicidó hace cincuenta años. Su poema “Papi” permanece como buen ejemplo de su poesía confesional. Casi es una carta apasionada, del amor y enojo, una carta de Valentín muy rara para su padre alemán que ya había muerto. (Y aunque Plath escriba de su padre como si fuera un Nazi – él no fue un Nazi.) En 1982 Plath fue la primera poeta en ganar el premio Pulitzer póstumo (por Poemas Completos, publicado después de su muerte).
.
Sylvia Plath (1932 – 11 de febrero, 1963)
“Papi”
.
Ya no, ya no,
ya no me sirves, zapato negro,
en el cual he vivido como un pie
durante treinta años, pobre y blanca,
sin atreverme apenas a respirar o hacer achís.
.
Papi: he tenido que matarte.
Te moriste antes de que me diera tiempo…
Pesado como el mármol, bolsa llena de Dios,
lívida estatua con un dedo del pie gris,
del tamaño de una foca de San Francisco.
.
Y la cabeza en el Atlántico extravagante
en que se vierte el verde legumbre sobre el azul
en aguas del hermoso Nauset.
Solía rezar para recuperarte.
Ach, du.
.
En la lengua alemana, en la localidad polaca
apisonada por el rodillo
de guerras y más guerras.
Pero el nombre del pueblo es corriente.
Mi amigo polaco
.
dice que hay una o dos docenas.
De modo que nunca supe distinguir dónde
pusiste tu pie, tus raíces:
nunca me pude dirigir a ti.
La lengua se me pegaba a la mandíbula.
.
Se me pegaba a un cepo de alambre de púas.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
apenas lograba hablar:
Creía verte en todos los alemanes.
Y el lenguaje obsceno,
.
una locomotora, una locomotora
que me apartaba con desdén, como a un judío.
Judío que va hacia Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
Empecé a hablar como los judíos.
Creo que podría ser judía yo misma.
.
Las nieves del Tirol, la clara cerveza de Viena,
no son ni muy puras ni muy auténticas.
Con mi abuela gitana y mi suerte rara
y mis naipes de Tarot, y mis naipes de Tarot,
podría ser algo judía.
Siempre te tuve miedo,
con tu Luftwaffe, tu jerga pomposa
y tu recortado bigote
y tus ojos arios, azul brillante.
Hombre-panzer, hombre-panzer: oh Tú…
.
No Dios, sino un esvástica
tan negra, que por ella no hay cielo que se abra paso.
Cada mujer adora a un fascista,
con la bota en la cara; el bruto,
el bruto corazón de un bruto como tú.
.
Estás de pie junto a la pizarra, papi,
en el retrato tuyo que tengo,
un hoyo en la barbilla en lugar de en el pie,
pero no por ello menos diablo, no menos
el hombre negro que
.
me partió de un mordisco el bonito corazón en dos.
Tenía yo diez años cuando te enterraron.
A los veinte traté de morir
para volver, volver, volver a ti.
Supuse que con los huesos bastaría.
Pero me sacaron de la tumba,
y me recompusieron con pegamento.
Y entonces supe lo que había que hacer.
.
Saqué de ti un modelo,
un hombre de negro con aire de Meinkampf,
.
e inclinación al potro y al garrote.
Y dije sí quiero, sí quiero.
De modo, papi, que por fin he terminado.
El teléfono negro está desconectado de raíz,
las voces no logran que críe lombrices.
.
Si ya he matado a un hombre, que sean dos:
el vampiro que dijo ser tú
y me estuvo bebiendo la sangre durante un año,
siete años, si quieres saberlo.
Ya puedes descansar, papi.
.
Hay una estaca en tu negro y grasiento corazón,
y a la gente del pueblo nunca le gustaste.
Bailan y patalean encima de ti.
Siempre supieron que eras tú.
Papi, papi, hijo de puta, estoy acabada.
ZP_Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes in 1956
Sylvia Plath (1932 – February 11th, 1963)
“Daddy”
.
You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or A-choo.
.
Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time—
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal
.
And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off the beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.
.
In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend
.
Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.
.
It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene
.
An engine, an engine,
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.
.
The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gypsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.
.
I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You –
.
Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.
.
You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not
Any less the black man who
.
Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.
.
But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look
.
And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I’m finally through.
The black telephone’s off at the root,
The voices just can’t worm through.
.
If I’ve killed one man, I’ve killed two –
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.
.
There’s a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I’m through.
. . . . .
Zócalo Poets 