Lief mama i writeth thee this lett'r / what? guesseth what! upon a comput'r well enow liketh i has't did join the m'rcantilists! well, not quite. if 't be true thee can did beat prosp'ro whistleth nay mother ’tis not one of those pensive things liketh IBM 'r bangeth & ovid 'r aught gl'rious liketh yond but ’tis one of the most wondrous things since cic'ro, well enow? ’t hast a keyboard and ev'rything liketh yond fusty |
gath’ring dust
only with this one thee has't to bendeth ov'r
to out thy foul deed with white liquid pap’r, yon papyrus
ribb'd and soft
bef're ’t dries flakey
liketh thee w’re to painteth thy house
and useth nay pap’r thee might not but
rolleth
upon yon blacken’d rolling pin
liketh thee were’t to roll thy dough upon a flat
and ’t tolls ping pun thy right hand wingeth
thy pap’r
when thy clatt’ring w’rds take flight
liketh a ping. wing
with this X anon
long bef're thee couldst sayeth jackie robb
inson or rt-d2 or shouteth
wreX
this thee obeyeth bloX
receiveth thou a whole whole para
graph writeth up and
blinketh upon a black
bird
like yon indonesian sir in star
trek
wh're those gents weareth p’rmanent wrinkle’d grey
and white flannels
liketh those gents art eft to joggeth
but they sitteth h’re without declaring aught…
wherefore can't i useth mine own hands and crawleth
up the white liketh i hath used to
since at which hour can I
typeth
yond is what i endeav’r to bid
thee
thou knowest i daren’t champ foot upon the key
boards as ’t
tell
charlie chap afoot
nary as fleet as bo
jangles
astride along the chauncery
lane
dost thou hearth me fair mother?
lest I mangleth!
I daren’t f’rward with star
wars
n’r singeth
sans bionicle
chants ‘r liketh sputnik and
chips
fairly bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep bleep
ere long into the wars of pelopon
yet I mangleth!
I spent a lot of time last semester delving into Brathwaite’s use of nation language for the paper on the Caribbean poetry unit. In my paper, I argued that Brathwaite’s unique voice in “Letter Sycorax” is a poem about the appropriation and subversion of language as a metaphor for resisting the undue, unwanted influence of one culture over another. Brathwaite knows that whoever controls the language exerts control over others by manipulating the discourse. By retooling the colonizer’s language into a nonstandard yet native form, Brathwaite creates a vehicle through which he can begin to express an authentically Caribbean perspective. As I looked back on the poem and my paper, I wondered what Shakespeare would think about Brathwaite’s interpretation of Caliban. In many of Shakespeare’s plays we can clearly see his sense of humor, so I imagined how he might find it fun to interpret Brathwaite’s poem in his own style. So I set about trying to translate Brathwaite myself, first into modern English, and then into Shakespearean English—a feat that required the Oxford English Dictionary, deep dives into many of Shakespeare’s plays (which, fortunately, I still have on my bookshelves), and some serious internet sleuthing. It was so laborious, in fact, that I only managed to complete the poem’s first section.
There were a couple of interesting takeaways from this project. First, in order to translate Brathwaite into modern English, I really had to look and listen more closely to the poem than I originally had. In doing so, I realized that last semester I didn’t fully appreciate the energy and enthusiasm Brathwaite brings to his Caliban—an energy that is more upbeat and essentially absent from Shakespeare’s character. Brathwaite really invests his Caliban with more of a “can-do” spirit than what we experienced with Caliban in The Tempest. Then in translating from modern English to Shakespeare, I saw Caliban lose that spirit. In the process, it became completely apparent to me that Brathwaite is right—language controls everything. Brathwaite’s Caliban translated back into Shakespearean English isn’t the same character at all: he’s stiff, and the authentic liveliness he has in Brathwaite’s poem becomes a fussy, stuffy, stilted parody. So a project that began as an attempt to poke a little good-natured fun at Brathwaite’s nation language resulted in convincing me that his artistic choice is actually, totally right. In order to make his point about resisting the colonization of his native culture, his choice to write in nation language is ingenious. I would never have reached this conclusion had I not engaged with his poem in this way.