Analyze Poem Of Alienation By Antonio Jacinto

This poem of Antonio Jacinto is a deep heart poured out. In a keen view to analyze, The title "Poem Of Alienation" and the opening line "This is not yet my poem/ the poem of my soul and of my blood no" try to separate the poet from the message passed via this poem. Jacinto believed that a professional poet must have a certain category which his poem must base, but in his own case, he still lacked knowledge and power to write his poem because his poem still wanders aimlessly in the bush or in the city in the voice of the wind in the surge of the sea in the Aspect of Being.

Jacinto is a poet from Angola, a country with a colonial story of White versus Black. He died on the 23th of June, in the year 1991. In the words of the poet: child abuse, child labour, lustiness, poverty, racism, injustice; are evident.

The versification and diction are lowered to laymen comprehension even with the prevalent use of imageries all through the seventeen stanzas of the poem.

There are instances of personification plus imageries in some stanzas (e.g: my poem

wanders aimlessly/ in the bush or in the city) while others are metaphor plus imageries in others (e.g: My poem is the prostitute/ in the township at the broken door of her hut).

[Read: Loser of Everything by David Diop]

With the beauty of quoted words, emphasis, and vernacular in the drama. The quoted stanza below has some non-English words which are only know to the poet and his people:
"My poem loads sacks in the port fills holds
empties holds
and finds strength in singing
'tué tué tué trr
arrimbium puim puim'"

The stanza 3-5 exemplified the act of child labor through hawking_ which happened to be one of the poet's motivation. Stanza 8 shows the act of child abuse by saying "My poem is suffering/ of the laundress's daughter/ shyly/ in the closed room/ of a worthless boss idling/
to build up an appetite for the/violation."

With the way the poem concludes, one may not hesitate to say that "Poem of Alienation" by Antonio Jacinto, is a poem aimed at reminding the readers of the past era of apartheid or colonization:
"But my poem is not fatalist
my poem is a poem that already wants
and already know
my poem is I-white
mounted on me-black
riding through life."

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Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the Leo with wings flying)