Different take on Martin Carter

Dec 17, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
So sorry to read that “Literature died a long time ago in Guyana’s education system” (KN, December 15), and many may endorse the ‘ode’ to Martin Carter and his poetry that followed. I knew Martin personally – we were virtual neighbours in Queenstown in the 1950s. A pleasant, polite chap. But, I suspect, many people, like me, find it hard to stay with his poems, described as “rich in symbolism, philosophy, theology and some very profound and complex imagery”, with its “vision of optimism as a dream to change the world”. I find “the range of his poems expressing moral anger and outrage too deeply introspective and metaphysical” for personal comfort. Perhaps, as a protest, befitting the social and political times when they were written.
Many lovers of poetry prefer poems that are easy to remember, verses with lines that rhyme and can be easily remembered, quotations that can be remembered and used decades later. I am still able to quote poems and texts I learnt at primary school, many from the West Indian and Royal class readers and from Shakespeare’s plays. Blank verse, hardly ever.
Poetry is something to relax with, as I see it. However, for those who wish to be taken back to those times, and are not afraid of anger, Martin’s poems are fine. Incidentally, I would not like my hair to be combed to look like “the green crown of a tree”. And be admired for it! But it is a good sign that Martin’s poetry is being used for research purposes in a British University.
Geralda Dennison

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