critical approaches to west indian literature || louise bennett in print

LOUISE BENNETT IN PRINTAuthor(s): MERVYN MORRISSource: Caribbean Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. 1/2, Critical Approaches to West Indian Literature(MARCH-JUNE, 1982), pp. 44-56Published by: University of the West Indies and Caribbean QuarterlyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40653443 .

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44

LOUISE BENNETT IN PRINT

by

MERVYN MORRIS

In addition to performing her poems, Louise Bennett has been publishing books of them since 1942.1 She has shown no hostility whatsoever to scribal dissemination of her verse. She is not, like some of her admirers, inclined to apologize for having the poems in print.

I have been working with her on a new book -Louise Bennett, Selected Poems to be published by Sangster's of Kingston. [Louise Bennett, Selected Poems, ed Mervyn Morris (Kingston: Sangster's, 1982) - Ed.] The experience has led me to two opinions I wish to argue: (1) that Miss Bennett's literary reputation is not well served by Jamaica Labrish; and (2) that Miss Bennett needs to have her work conveniently available in print, since, although some aspects of her verse are clarified and/or enhanced in performance, there are others more fully appreciated by a reader savouring a text.

Jamaica Labrish, Rex Nettleford declares, "is a collection of Miss Bennett's poèmes designed to give an overview of her art and artistry over the past twenty-five years and not a volume of 'Collected Poems of Louise Bennett dropping all the ephemera and choosing the best of the others'. [A footnote refers us to my "well-intentioned sugges- tion" in "On Reading Louise Bennett, Seriously".] Not enough is known about the language which she uses for us to be sure about what are 'the best of the others' though the rigid application of criteria born of a tradition of English literary criticism could, I daresay, disqualify a great many of the pieces. It is hoped that the volume will reveal Miss Bennett in her multiple roles as entertainer, as a valid literary figure and as a documenter of aspects of Jamaican life, thought and feeling".2

I have problems with much ofthat. Because of the nature of Louise Bennett's art, a selection made on literary criteria is certain to include many poems which also reveal her as "entertainer . . . and as a documenter of aspects of Jamaican life, thought and feeling". Of course we cannot be sure which Louise Bennett poems are "the best". We can never know enough to be sure. Since taste is ultimately personal, it is natural there should be disagreement on individual cases. But we do not serve her reputation as a "valid literary figure" by indiscriminately publishing her good poems (whichever those may be) in company with items which are ultimately trivial, of ephemeral interest or obviously flawed. Nettleford's hold-all concept allows him to retrieve, for example, an apprentice piece such as "Writing Home", 3 with its inept inversion:

I is not working now but ah Jine in a labour set An ah 'ope to keep awn strikin Tell some esteem jab ah get.



45

The poem is said to give "a feeling of the mood of the period among this class of people at least". That many of the poems are dated does not diminish - it may even enhance - their documentary value. Of literature we require something more: the good poems by Louise Bennett use language with notable precision, cunning, force. "Literature is news that STAYS news."4

Topicality is not the problem.5 The great bulk of Louise Bennett's published verse originated as journalism. She had to produce new (and preferably topical) material for her newspaper column or her radio programme. Many of the poems have at least some element that ties them to the time of their composition. But many please, and have significance, beyond the immediate occasion of their origin, especially when, as Lloyd Brown has noted, "their focus is less on the specific topics of the 1940s . . . and more on the continuing modes of perception and communication which they dramatize".6

A poem entitled "New Govanah"7 might seem to promise topicality blunted by time. It remains in fact a fine example of Miss Bennett's ironic skills.

Wat a way dem gwan bout new Govanah; Jus a-meck whole heap o' fus, Dem a-gwan like him is year steak, Or any t'ree month war bonus. Dem jus haffe dah-pick and choose Who fe goh dung go meet him, Like him is any white rice an Anybody gwine eat him.

Doah him picture wid de farm dem Did come out lickle dim, Me did meek out me bwoy -fríen' face, Dah-tan up near to him.

An as him comin straight from de re, Me gwine meet him fe see Ef Joe gi him any message Or parcel fe bring fe me.

But before me coulda get near him Fe sey me lickle bit, Dem quick an drive off wid him, like Him is a war seekrit.

De way dem all goh dung fe meet him All dress up eena silk, Yuh hooda tink him is a whole Big tin o' condense milk. Me glad fe know him come at las', Me hope him feel happy, But it hooda meek me gladder ef Him bring some ting fe me.



46

The "free month war bonus" is money given to the dependents of men employed in the war. During the war "white rice" was less available than brown rice, which had a distinctive smell. The Governor referred to, Sir John Huggins, stopped in the United States on the way to Jamaica and was photographed in the company of Jamaican farm- workers there.

Cunningly, the poem measures the value of the Governor against the value of scarce commodities. The sly reference to "white rice" reminds us that the Governor is white (and less available than brown people). The careful security arrangements imply that the people excluded from this high-status social occasion might even be feared to be cannibals: "Like . . . Anybody gwine eat him." The kind of attention devoted to the Governor, it is

implied, should more properly be given to satisfying basic needs. That the Governor's picture "Did come out lickle dim" is no doubt partly because he is surrounded by black people whose image in the photograph is bolder; which quietly implies that to the persona herself the black farm-men matter - or ought to matter - more than the Governor. Unlike the people who have dressed up, the speaker is not in awe of the Governor. She wonders whether (in accordance with a common Jamaican courtesy) he has brought her any message or parcel from her boy-friend Joe. Her thought ignores the Governor's high status and measures his behaviour against a courtesy she takes for granted. In the final stanza the persona makes the ironic point that the Governor has brought nothing that is for her; neither material things nor values.

Less memorably, the poem that follows, "Mrs Govanah",8 praises Lady Huggins as "wut more" than things that are scarce. Though used to opposite effect, the strategy is

essentially the same as in part of "New Govanah". The poem, which no doubt once functioned pleasantly as a neat public compliment, has little to reward our attention now the occasion is past - especially as there are similar compliments, better turned, available elsewhere in Labrish. In "Duty Bound"9, for example, a tribute to Sir Hugh and

Lady Foot. From de day de Foots set foot yah Govanah an Lady start Fe timely-timely stir demself Eena Jamaica heart.

Look, for example, at the affectionate teasing of that English couple who Mix up wid we art an Drama Teck een every line an word, You want hear Govanah an him wife Hall [a] "Chi chi bird".

Our folksong "Chi-Chi Bud" has a line that runs: "Some a dem a halla, some a bawl"; the sadness of the farewell is obliquely indicated in the reference. For the Creole "bud" the

English couple are accused of singing Standard English "bird", the joke emphasized by rhyme. The couple have evidently taken in not quite every line and word. For all the warmth of the tribute, the poem finally focusses on the fact that the Foots have loyalties which might conflict with their apparent love for Jamaica. Are they really as deeply com- mitted to Jamaica, the poem enquires, as they have seemed to be? If Sir Hugh Foot were free to stay, would he really remain? The compliment implies that the answer could be

yes; but the ironies leave the question open.



47

Given no indication by Nettleford which of the 128 poems in Labrish are recom- mended as poems, the reader's view of Miss Bennett as "a valid literary figure" is impeded by inferior and repetitive items clamouring for attention: pieces such as "Writing Home" or "Mrs Govanah" (or "300 Chrismus", "United Nations Fair", "Revelation", "De Latis News" or other examples of Louise Bennett at less than her enduring best).

Although it so casually dismisses the relevance of literary criteria, Nettleford's introduction is in various ways of value. In relation to my essay, it helpfully broadens the context of discussion. It sketches in the historical background to the poems. It briefly relates the work of Louise Bennett to the imperatives of performance, to Jamaican oral tradition ("parson's pulpit", "politician's platform", the oral transmission of news) and to blues, jazz and calypso: "the ambivalence of a comic sense coming to grips with an essentially or potentially tragic situation". It recommends attention to the scholars of Jamaican language.10 It also furthers literary discussion by challenging particular judge- ments.

Nettleford justifiably mocks an unwary phrase ("that level of dialect") employed by me in an overconfident paragraph about Miss Bennett being "sometimes false to her medium". My formulation was inadequate. I am not sure my response was essentially mistaken.

Den is weh y uh gwine Miss Matty? Oh, you view de countenance, An between yuh an de Africans Is great resemblance!

Compared with every other rhyme in the poem ("Back to Africa") "countenance"/ "resemblance" seems to me effortful; in every other instance the run of the statement takes comfortably in its stride the hurdle of rhyme; "countenance" and "resemblance" in context invite the suspicion that the one is there to facilitate the other.

Nettleford is wrong about the persona in "Pedestrian Crosses"12: the persona is evidently a driver (not a pedestrian) frustrated by the crossings - which required vehicles to stop for pedestrians but not (in those early days) vice-versa:

De crossin a-stop we from pass meek dem cross, But nutten dah-stop dem from cross meek we pass, Dem yah crossin is crosses fe true!

But, in spite of the error, Nettleford is helpful when he defends the poem, which now seems to me to work. The stanza-form sets up a very strong rhythmic pattern, made more emphatic by rhymes within the line, as in some of the patter songs of Gilbert and Sullivan opera. There is a conspicuous tension - a struggle, even - between the emphatic metre and the rhythms of Jamaican speech. "Read at the proper pace the poem becomes alrriost a tongue-twister."13

Louise Bennett most often employs a version of the ballad quatrain. But mystifi- cation and undue awe have been the usual consequences of relating her prosody to the iambic stress-patterns of the English/Scottish ballad norm.14 What Louise Bennett quite regularly employs is a quatrain (version) in which eight syllables are followed by six, then eight, then six, with the rhyme scheme abeb. An extra syllable here, a syllable short there, need hardly cause a flutter; especially as, even more regularly, each pair of lines tends to



48

have fourteen syllables (or their equivalent in time). The regularity gives Louise Bennett's most characteristic verse an underlying structure which - unlike many of the people who recite her monologues in public - the author herself invariably suggests in performance. Yet, unconcerned about iambic stress patterns, she is free to "manipulate the tonal range of the language",15 to follow the contours of Jamaican speech and to point each line for meaning and for dramatic effect. A poem such as "Pedestrian Crosses" - like "Cousin Joe"or"Mout-Amassi Liza"16 - is exceptional in that in it the poet has set herself to work within a tighter rhythmic restriction than she normally accepts.

Jamaica Labrish is inadequately edited. The headnotes are helpful when they offer historical information, which many of the better poems do not need. A few of the headnotes actually misinform the reader about details of the poem they introduce (e.g. on pp. 74, 131, 205). The text of the poems has many errors. Here and there whole stanzas are missing (e.g. from p. 186; the stanza missing from "Uriah Preach", pp. 203-204, has appeared in a reprint). Punctuation is unconventional, often actively unhelpful to the reader. The spelling within the volume is inconsistent; some of the forms are a hindrance to comprehension (e.g. "lian story", p. 187). The basic editorial challenge - to present an accurate text in a convenient form - has not been met.

At the ACLALS conference at Mona in January 1971 Cliff Lashley observed: "we have no established orthography, and Louise Bennett is no authority in this area and has never pretended to be. She had done her best to record a completely different phonemic system in the sort of bastardisation of Standard English spelling. This takes us to the whole business of the page and the performance. There is no poem on the page. What you have on the page is a rough and ready method of recording."17 I think much of that is true. But, as Louise Bennett has been having her poems published for close on forty years, it was always desirable that she be encouraged to adopt a more or less consistent orthography in her publications; in order to facilitate the ordinary reader.18

In Selected Poems (47 poems also in Labrish, 34 not) we have attempted to be fairly consistent. My "Note on the Text" attempts to explain the principles we have adopted.

We have tried to ensure that the poems are easy to read. The spelling assumes that the reader is accus- tomed to English and that anyone familiar with Jamaican creole will "hear" the creole sounds even when the spelling looks like Standard. Previous collections have printed "me", for example, where it would be sounded "mi", and "one" for "wan". We have taken that process further: thus "soldier" for "solja", "fìnger" for "fìnga", "white" for "wite" etc. We have avoided spattering the text with apostro- phes; but as spelt in this volume many of the creole words clearly suggest their English relations: "respec", "frien", "ornan", "fader", "modder"; "lie-an-story" rather than "lian story". The spelling is more or less



49

consistent throughout; the occasional variant signals the pronunciation required in a particular context (p i e k n e y/pickinni, independence/independance, tedeh/teday etc). There is an extensive glossary at the back of the book.

I anticipate some degree of resistance. Some critics will no doubt argue that an important aspect of Louise Bennett has been sacrificed to readability. Some - including no doubt a few who previously argued that the poems do not belong in print - will contend that a Bennett poem ought to look more strange than, in Selected Poems, it will do; and the more extreme commentators may charge me with having seduced Miss Bennett towards the regrettable respectability of Standard. But if, as I believe, we have at last achieved a text which the Jamaican reader can accurately read at first sight, we shall be happy.

In "The Folk in Caribbean Literature" ("Literature and the Folk" retitled) Gordon Rohlehr says many illuminating things about Louise Bennett. But he also declares: "There is a tendency in certain quarters to undervalue an oral tradition, and the sort of criticism which it demands of the critic. Criticism of works which are meant to be per- formed can never be purely literary criticism, although it may borrow some of the methods of literary criticism. Louise Bennett's poetry, for example, depends so much [on] tones of voice [,] on the fluidity of the voice as it breaks out of the strict material limitations of the quatrain, that one ought to comment on the words in audible motion rather than in their comparatively frozen form on the page."19 The "metrical limitations", I have suggested, may be fewer than Rohlehr assumes. Also, why "words in audible motion" rather than "on the page"? We may be willing to assess performance (by whom? on what occasion? for what audience?), but need that inhibit discussion of the texts? Might not Louise Bennett poems, like dramatic literature, be available both in performance and in the study?

Gordon Rohlehr did not mean exactly what he said. He did not really mean rather than; he seems to have meant as well as. In the discussion after his talk he clarified: "I'd like to stress that I am not saying that any one method of approach which we use should necessarily exclude any other. Indeed, the fact that we are talking about writers who seem to be as much at home in oral traditions as in scribal ones, necessitates a mixture of approaches. If I have been arguing for anything at all, it has been for a certain openness in our approach to this business of criticism."20 Unfortunately, however, this discussion has not (as far as I know) been published, while the original overstatement has been cited with approval in many a student essay.

Louise Bennett's art is both oral and scribal; the forms are not mutually exclusive.21 The Louise Bennett poem in print is, however, fully available only when readers are in touch with the oral and other cultural contexts the words imply. The Times Literary Supplement of London, reviewing Jamaica Labrish,22 had this to say: "In print these ballads are like a phonetic libretto for performance, but they cannot recreate for us the performance itself. Not merely something, but too much, is lost." That is unlikely to be true for the reader to whom the words on the page suggest recognizable noises and nuances of meaning. The anonymous reviewer argues: "The poem on the page must offer its riches to the reader through a verbal, even at times typographical wit, rather than



50

a vocal one. ' In Louise Bennett's work typographical wit is unusual: "Bans o' Killing"23 provides a rare example, noted by Gordon Rohlehr:

"An mine how yuh dan-read dem English Book deh pon yuh shelf For ef yuh drop a 'h' yuh mighta Haffe kül yuhself.

The play on words (s (h) elf, self) is brilliant, summarizing the argument of the entire poem."24 But though typographical wit is unusual, verbal wit abounds in Louise Bennett's verse. The TLS reviewer needed more help than Jamaica Labrish supplied.

Let us look, for example, at "Pass fe White".25 Miss Jane jus hear from 'Merica, Her daughta proudly write Fe sey she fail her exam, but She passin' dere fe wite!

She say fe tell de truth she know Her brain part not so bright, She couldn' pass tru college So she try fe pass fe wite.

She passin wid her work-mate dem, She passin wid her boss, An a nice wite bwoy she love, dah- Gwan wid her like sey she pass. But sometime she get fretful an Her heart start gallop fas' An she bruk out eena cole-sweat Jus a-wonder ef she pass! Jane get bex, sey she sen de gal Fe learn bout edication, It look like sey de gal gawn weh Gawn work pon her complexion. She noh haffe tan a foreign Under dat deh strain an fright For plenty copper-colour gal Deh home yah dan-play wite. Her fambily is nayga, but Dem pedigree is right, She hope de gal noh gawn an tun Noh boogooyagga wite. De gal pupa dah-laugh an sey It serve 'Merica right Five year back dem Jim-Crow him now Dem pass him pickney wite.



51

Him dah-boas' all bout de districk How him daughta is fus-class How she smarter dan American An over deh dah-pass! Some people tink she pass B.A. Some tink she pass D.R., Wait till dem fine out sey she ongle Pass de colour-bar.

The poem's central meaning is focussed in the rhymes and in puns. There are repeated rhymes on "wite" and repeated rhymes on "pass"; and in the two stanzas which vary from those the rhymes again suggest the opposing values: education versus colour (education/complexion; D.R./colour bar, recalling pass exams/pass for white). Some of the art involved is unavailable to even the most alert of listeners; it is when we can linger over the page that the tightness of the organization becomes more fully apparent. One pun in stanza 8 requires familiarity with the Jamaican proverb: "Ebery John Crow tink him pickney white" (at birth the John Crow, a vulture, looks white; its feathers grow jet black). The pun here is on John Crow/Jim Crow; the irony criticizes the father who is proud that his daughter has passed for white; the mother, on the other hand, has recog- nized the possibility of a "boogooyagga [low-class] white". The poem, which offers further rewards to detailed analysis, is a finely crafted assault on snobbery, and in particular colour-snobbery, in various quarters.

Louise Bennett is an expert, and highly trained, performer. Whatever, as a performer, she touches tends to be enhanced. It is so too with her own poems. Gordon Rohlehr has suggested that "the fact that a good performer makes 'bad' material live, may indicate that the material k not quite as bad as it appears on the page".26 Or, of course, it may not. In any case, an anthologist selecting a book of poems ought, surely, to offer poems which might reward the reader who can hear the sounds, visualize the movement they imply, even if he sits in silence. To a person purchasing a book and not a record it is little recommendation to remark: "If on the printed pages her poems appear to be dated frozen jingles, in the renditions she gives of them they take on vitality and meaning."27 Faced with that, it is no wonder the TLS reviewer took the line he did: "Who . . . would want to read a whole book of calypsos, though he might run a mile to hear Lord Kitchener sing?"28

Louise Bennett habitually makes use of some of the devices characteristic of oral performance. The underlying structure of her usual quatrain is one repeated principle of order which might help a listener keep his bearings. Like the preacher or the political speechmaker or any other orator, she knows the value of repetition and of rhetorical lists (as in "Dutty Tough" or "Bans o' Killing"). She uses memorable antithesis (as in "Tan a Yuh Yard") or careful balance (as in "Back to Africa" or in "White Pickney"). She can turn an aphorism with the best (as in "Dead Man": "Man kean badder dan Dead!" - no man can be more daring, or more evil, than Death: the primary meaning of "bad" in this context is "fearless", "daring"). She uses the aural effectiveness of onomatopoeia, as in "Jamaica Elevate":

Biff, Referandum! Buff, Election! Baps, Independence drop pon we!



52

(suggesting that these are things that happened to us, not things we decided to do). She often creates contrasting voices in dialogue (as in "Dry Foot Bwoy"). She cultivates verbal surprise, often with puns or wordplay (as in "Pass fe White" or "Uriah Preach") or with inventions (as in the pig-Latin and pseudo-French of "Cuss-Cuss": "When you ackebus him salt-fish/an bwilivous him yam"). But none of these effects is unavailable to the silent reader willing to hear and visualize as silent reading often requires.

Miss Bennett is profoundly familiar with Jamaican folk culture, which is primarily oral (though some of it has been preserved in books, as well as on tapes and records and in the minds of individuals). Her knowledge of our folk culture was not casually acquired. She undertook a programme of deliberate investigation and study, beginning in the early 1940s when she was a student at Friends' College in Highgate, St Mary, and continuing in the late 1950s when she worked for the Jamaica Social Welfare Commission, and in the years since then. She has a personal collection of more than 700 Jamaican proverbs, and is adept at citing the one appropriate to a particular moment. In her poems (whether in print or in performance) proverbs often serve to widen the significance of an incident or situation (as in "Dutty Tough", for example): because they represent the distillation of generations of experience, proverbs, appropriately placed, often remind us that the immediate difficulty or the immediate occasion for joy is not entirely new, and that the present moment is part of the flow of communal experience. Sometimes, however as in the poem called "Proverbs", the references function ironically.

References to Jamaican folk song, which Miss Bennett knows equally well, are less frequent, and characteristically functional. In "Pedestrian Crosses", for example, the persona echoes "Dip Dem Bedward", and the poem's meanings become clearer if the reader or hearer recalls the words of the song: the first verse runs:

Some come from de Eas Like a big leggo beas Fi go dip inna de healin stream; Some come from de Wes Like a plague, like a pes, Fi go dip inna de healin stream.

The persona observing the stream of pedestrians says/ thinks: From de Eas, from de Wes, Like a plague, like a pes, Dem a come one bi one, two bi two.

What is also important is that the chorus of "Dip Dem Bedward" runs: Dip dem Bedward, dip dem, Dip dem inna healin stream; Dip dem sweet but not too deep, Dip dem fi cure bad feelin.

So the allusion also implies that bad feeling has been engendered (by the pedestrian cros- sing). Close reading often reveals elements of meaning and art it takes a little time to per- ceive.

Louise Bennett does not restrict herself to either the knowledge or the perceptions we tend to associate with the Jamaican folk (in the sense of a comparatively unlettered community). Academic information about the development of English informs "Bans o'



53

Killing" for example; and the persona is evidently familiar with the old Oxford Book of English Verse (1915, edited by Sir Arthur Quiller Couch) - "Lady Grizelle" is a Scottish poet, Lady Grisel Baillie, 1665-1746, who has a dialect piece in that anthology. The persona in "Independence Dignity" (Labrish pp. 170-172) hymns the dawn of Indepen- dence in rhythms that parody Charles Wolfe's "The Burial of Sir John Moore at Corunna":

Not a stone was fling, not a samfìe sting, Not a soul gwan bad an lowrated; Not a fight bruk out, not a bad-wud shout As Independence was celebrated.

The coloniser is being buried as a new nation is born. Not a drum was heard, not a funeral note, As his corse to the rampart we hurried.

But there are other ironies. In the poem by Wolfe there is further battle ahead. The Bennett poem, aware of battles to be fought and of the need for leadership, mentions areas of inadequacy and unpreparedness: people have been dishonest, unruly, illmannered, lazy, disunited, feeble, and may be so again.

The pervasive irony in Louise Bennett's work is no doubt an expression of her sensi- bility. It is also a characteristic element in dramatic monologue, the particular literary form in which she most frequently creates. A characteristic effect of the dramatic monologue is self-exposure which appears to be unintentional; as in, for example, Robert Burns' "Holy Willie's Prayer". The form encourages irony: what Philip Drew has written of Robert Browning monologues also applies to Louise Bennett's: "in poem after poem the vital point to observe is ... that the speaker understands himself and his own situation less thoroughly than the reader, who nevertheless derived all his understanding from the poem."29 Robert Langbaum has argued that because we get our information through the speaker, because "we must adopt his viewpoint as our entry into the poem",30 we are forced into at least a temporary sympathy with the person who speaks. Langbaum has identified in the reader's response to dramatic monologue a "combination of sympathy and judgement"31 ; which accurately describes the response of many to the personae of Louise Bennett monologues: we often sympathize with them (as in "Uriah Preach" or "Roas Turkey") while recognizing that their conduct is not entirely to be approved. The author is always there, an ironic guide; the characters only seem to be independent of her.32 Many of the ironies become apparent only when the poem has been closely read; and some are problematic. In "Sarah Chice", for example, does the poem finally approve of Sarah spoiling her vote or condemn her as irresponsible, or both? or neither? In "My Dream"33 surely the final stanza (also) has an application somewhat different from the one noted by Nettleford and Cooper?34 The poem registers "an undercurrent of dissatis- faction" (Nettleford), an "undercurrent of rebellion" (Cooper); but the final stanza applies as much to cousin Rose (Britain after the Second World War) as to the washer- woman (Jamaica).

A [h] feel jus like a bug eena Big pool o' D.D.T., Den ah hear a vice sey "keep heart Yuh no wusser off dan she".



54

Dog a-sweat but long hair hide i', Mout a-laugh, but heart a-leap! Everything wha shine noh gole piece An me jump out o' me sleep.

Through the dream the speaker confronts the impulse towards the wastefulness of spite, which (the dream also suggests) may even be based on a misconception. The final

proverbs insist on the gap between what seems and what actually is: cousin Rose (it is

implied) is, like the dreamer, struggling. With this insight, the dreamer wakes up. Though the many complications of Louise Bennett's irony warn us to take care, we

may yet tease out certain values implicit in her work. The work in general promotes the acceptance of Jamaican culture; it draws on the customs, beliefs, language of ordinary Jamaicans; the living tissue of Jamaican life. It is steadily aware, and critical, of the power of gossip (one facet, perhaps, of the oral tradition). It exposes people ashamed of being Jamaican or ashamed of being black. It ridicules class and colour prejudice but is more concerned to tackle black self-contempt or to express or promote pride in being black. The poems undermine pretension, of whatever kind. Much of the self-contempt and many of the pretensions pilloried are shown to derive from colonial education. Though the work is deeply patriotic, the pretensions of a small newly independent nation are not exempt from ridicule. Many of the poems suggest sympathy with "the small man" engaged in a struggle against systems he does not control, though ultimate approval is often qualified by irony.

There are many facets to the art of Louise Bennett. The performer complements the

poet. But, with due respect to her many other accomplishments, there is a literary Bennett: an ironist - compassionate observer, subtle judge - whose best verse offers rich reward to any reader who knows, or will investigate, Jamaican language and culture.

REFERENCES AND NOTES

1. (Jamaica) Dialect Verses (Kingston: Herald, 1942). Jamaican Humour in Dialect (Kingston: 1943). Anancy Stories and Poems in Dialect (Kingston: Gleaner, 1944). Mis' Lulu Sez (Kings- ton Gleaner, 1948). Anancy Stories and Dialect Verses (New Series) (Kingston: Pioneer Press, 1957). Laugh with Louise (Kingston: Sangster's, 1966). She was a major contributor to Stories and Dialect Verse (Kingston: Pioneer Press, 1951).

2. Jamaica Labrish by Louise Bennett, with Introduction and Notes by Rex Nettleford, Sangsters, Kingston, Jamaica, 1966.

3. Labrish p. 116. With the exception later indicated, all quotations from Miss Bennett's verse are from Jamaica Labrish.

4. Ezra Pound, The ABC of Reading (London: Faber, 195 1), p. 29.

5. But I had seemed to think so in "On Reading Louise Bennett, Seriously" (written in 1963). See Jamaica Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, December 1967, p. 73: "As in the same periods as her very topical poems she wrote others of more lasting interest, we can hardly complain: we can only regret that so much of the journalism has been published in book form."



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6. Lloyd Brown, West Indian Poetry (Boston: Twayne & G. K. Hall, 1978), p. 111.

7. Labrishp. 125.

8. Ibid pp. 126-127.

9. Ibid pp. 159-161.

10. Such as Frederick Cassidy, Jamaica Talk (London & Kingston: Macmillan & The Institute of Jamaica, 1961; Second Edition 1971) and Beryl Loftman Bailey, Jamaican Creole Syntax (London: Cambridge University press, 1966). I have been greatly helped also by the Dictionary of Jamaican English edited by F. G. Cassidy and R. B. LePage (London: Cambridge University Press, 1967; Second Edition 1980).

11. Labrish pp. 214-215.

12. Ibid p. 74

13. Nettleford, Labrish p. 13.

14. Ibid p. 1 1. See also Gordon Rohlehr, "Literature and the Folk" (typescript of a paper presented to the ACLALS - Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies - conference at Mona, Jamaica, in January 1971, revised for publication December 1971), p. 23: "one begins to wonder how the ballad form can contain such energy and volatility. There are sudden changes in pitch and tone and speed, a complete departure from the stress patterns which the ballad form would seem to be imposing." Published in Tapia, as "The Folk in Caribbean Litera- ture", 17 and 24 December, 1972.


16. Neither available in Labrish.

17. Gordon Rohlehr's stencilled transcript of discussion after his ACLALS talk on "Literature and the Folk", p. 7.

18. For that purpose a phonemic system such as Cassidy's would be, I take it, inappropriate. ("Wans apan a taim, Breda Anansi, oed dat King av a Son." Jamaica Talk, 1971, p. 434.)

19. Tapia December 24, 1972, p. 8.

20. Rohlehr transcript, p. 4.

21. See Rohlehr, Tapia December 24, 1972, p. 8: "A continuum exists between a living oral tradition, and a growing scribal one in the West Indies." See also Ruth Finnegan, African Oral Literature (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), p. 20: "the two forms, oral and written, are not so mutually exclusive as is sometimes imagined." See also Ruth Finnegan, Oral Poetry (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), p. 2: "there is no clear-cut line between 'oral' and 'written' literature."

22. TLS 15 December 1966.

23. Labrish pp. 218-219.

24. Rohlehr, Tapia December 24, 1972, p. 8.



56

25. Labrish pp. 212-213.

26. Rohlehi, "Afterword", included in transcript of discussion after his ACLALS talk, "Literature and the Folk", p. 5.


28. TLS 15 December, 1966.

29. The Poetry of Robert Browning (London: Metheun, 1970), p. 32.

30. The Poetry of Experience (New York: W. Norton, 1957), p. 78.

31. Ibid p. 96

32. Cf. Lloyd Brown, West Indian Poetry, p. 1 16: "Her voice fascinates and challenges her audience precisely because her characters seem to be so irrefutably independent of a controlling artistic vision and authorial judgement."

33. Labrish pp. 155-156.

34. Nettleford, Labrish p. 155. Carolyn Cooper, World Literature Written in English Vol. 17 No. 1, April 1978, p. 325 (in "Non Lickle Twang: An Introduction to the Poetry of Louise Bennett").



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