Episode 42: Manifesto on Ars Poetica

Connor and Jack discuss Frank Chipasula's poem "Manifesto on Ars Poetica." They discuss the poem's historical context regarding Malawi, its contrast with Carolyn Forche's style of witnessing, the juxaposition of light and dark, self-reflexivity, and the tradition of ars poetica.

Check out the poem below or at this link.

Read more about Chipasula here. Read more about Tracy Dale's With the Witnesses here.

Manifesto on Ars Poetica
By: Frank Chipasula

My poetry is exacting a confession

from me: I will not keep the truth from my song.

I will not bar the voice undressed by the bees

from entering the gourd of my bow-harp.

I will not wash the blood off the image

I will let it flow from the gullet

slit by the assassin’s dagger through

the run-on line until it rages in the verbs of terror;

And I will distil life into the horrible adjectives;

I will not clean the poem to impress the tyrant

I will not bend my verses into the bow of a praise song.

I will put the symbols of murder hidden in high offices

in the center of my crude lines of accusations.

I will undress our raped land and expose her wounds.

I will pierce the silence around our land with sharp metaphors

And I will point the light of my poems into the dark

nooks where our people are pounded to pulp.

I will not coat my words in lumps of sugar

I will serve them to our people with the bitter quinine:

I will not keep the truth from my heartstringed guitar;

I will thread the voice from the broken lips

through my volatile verbs that burn the lies.

I will ask only that the poem watch the world closely;

I will ask only that the image put a lamp on the dark

ceiling in the dark sky of my land and light the dirt.

Today, my poetry has exacted a confession from me.