http://www.loc.gov/poetry/180/091.html
Ben Groth
AP Literature
and Composition
2nd hour
05/02/2013
Orient on Occident
Oliver Rice's Timely Enumerations Concerning Sri Lanka is
a poem fixed and specific in
intent;
it depicts the turbid swell of traditional life laced with the aftermath of
colonialism in
Ceylon,
with negligible subtext or deviation. This concept and its aesthetic of
anachronism
and
discordance are conveyed throughout the poem with the aid of particular
linguistic
choices.
The literary devices used throughout the poem are integral in cultivating the
atmosphere
that pervades the speakers account of a culture in flux.
As mentioned prior, the crux
of this poem lies in a nation's tentative first sovereign
steps, a
reemergence of a cultural archetype that now trails rent remnants of Western
hegemony.
A panorama of dilute exotica is provided in this poem, and the dynamic of a
burgeoning
land pulses and weaves under the cumbersome weight of prior attempts at
assimilation.
The imperial times are now edified in decrepit figures studding a vital
national
soil,
explicitly in the case of the seventh stanza, "These are the relics of the
Portuguese
occupation/
of the Dutch/ of the British/ of the struggle for independence," (Rice)
and, as
their
persistence in lingering over the country sterilizes national integrity, it is
their presence
that
lends the poem a transitory quality, an imbroglio in the uncertain, novel
stirrings of
cultural
reclamation. In addition to this, the Sri Lankan national character is
naturally
fragmented,
and religious and ethnic dichotomy ensures a precarious, incomplete unity (the
terms in
which this is expressed in the poem suggest a striking disparity,
"enclaves of the
Tamil
Hindu minority, the Sinhalese Buddhist majority," (Rice) which is verily
the case, with
insurrection
being a volatile, ever-present prospect at the hands of the Tamil Tiger
insurgents
after the
recent, begrudging conclusion of a 25 year long civil war.) Together with the
pairing
of
bucolic setting, narrowly and tensely suppressed conflict, and machinery
("That is a convoy
of tanks,
an elder fixing his shoes under the umbrella,") the awkward confluence of
cultural
mores
renders a portrait of a country, disheveled and inchoate, squirming at the foot
of the
world.
From this foundation, the
dimensions of the poem are expanded through the use of a
particular
diction and approach. The poem's free verse structure and the prolific use
asyndeton
and enjambment within bring something of a spontaneous flow to it, of the
unbroken
current of observations emanating from an auxiliary. In this poem, the speaker
acts as a
conduit for account, but is fundamentally removed from what is imparted, a
notion
that is
consolidated by the language used. A sojourner in the primeval turbulence, the
speaker
relates events distantly and objectively, in conventional terms punctuated with
the
occasional
arcane phrasing, which evokes a sort of journalistic detachment, as opposed to
the
solidarity
and vicarious identification of patois. In addition to this, the idiosyncrasy
of the
poem is
furthered by the consistent presence of anaphora and antithesis, whereby a
sequence
of distinct identities, displayed in tandem, are juxtaposed; a collection of
contradictions
assembled to illustrate profound irregularities ("This is, that is"
provides a
level
ground from which a vivid series of disparities radiates, e.g. "The
boutiques of the new
town, the
tenements of the old town" (Rice).) These uneasily reconciled ideas are
also
manifested
in human terms at several points (“…who otherwise keeps records for the tax
collector,”)
of which the most notable occurs at the poem’s end, a succinct encapsulation of
the
varying
conditions a population is pulled through in the throes of modernity and
tradition: “That
is a
souvenir shop/ attended by a girl in a white sarong” (Rice).
Under scrutiny and protracted
analysis, the poem is revealed to comprise exactly what
appears
at cursory examination. Its component parts find their significance not in the
embodiment
of the abstract, but in their cooperative, cumulative effect in embellishing
their
thematic
base.
