You Laughed And Laughed And Laughed

This blog is a part of our academic writing. The blog is about Gabriel Okara's poem "You Laughed And Laughed And Laughed" ans its impressionistic approach. 

GABRIEL OKARA :

  

 

                               

                            Gabriel Imomotimi Okara (24 April 1921 – 25 March 2019) was a Nigerian poet and novelist who was born in Bumoundi in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State, Nigeria. The first Modernist poet of Anglophone Africa, he is best known for his early experimental novel, The Voice (1964), and his award-winning poetry, published in The Fisherman's Invocation (1978) and The Dreamer, His Vision (2005). In both his poems and his prose, Okara drew on African thought, religion, folklore and imagery, and he has been called "the Nigerian Negritudist". According to Brenda Marie Osbey,  editor of his Collected Poems, "It is with publication of Gabriel Okara's first poem that Nigerian literature in English and modern African poetry in this language can be said truly to have begun."

YOU LAUGHED AND LAUGHED AND LAUGHED 

POEM:

In your ears my song
is motor car misfiring
stopping with a choking cough;
and you laughed and laughed and laughed.

In your eyes my ante-
natal walk was inhuman, passing
your ‘omnivorous understanding’
and you laughed and laughed and laughed

You laughed at my song,
you laughed at my walk.

Then I danced my magic dance
to the rhythm of talking drums pleading, but you shut your eyes
and laughed and laughed and laughed

And then I opened my mystic
inside wide like the sky,
instead you entered your
car and laughed and laughed and laughed

You laughed at my dance,
you laughed at my inside.
You laughed and laughed and laughed.

But your laughter was ice-block
laughter and it froze your inside froze
your voice froze your ears
froze your eyes and froze your tongue.

And now it’s my turn to laugh;
but my laughter is not
ice-block laughter. For I
know not cars, know not ice-blocks.

My laughter is the fire
of the eye of the sky, the fire
of the earth, the fire of the air,
the fie of the seas and the
rivers fishes animals trees
and it thawed your inside,
thawed your voice, thawed your
ears, thawed your eyes and
thawed your tongue.

So a meek wonder held
your shadow and you whispered;
‘Why so?’
And I answered:
‘Because my fathers and I
are owned by the living
warmth of the earth
through our naked feet.’

      INTRODUCTION                    

    "You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed" is a poem by Nigerian writer Gabriel Okara. One of the most popular in his oeuvre, it is a frequent feature of anthologies, such as A New Book of African Verse edited by John Reed and ClivebWake (Heinemann African Writers Series,  1985). "The piece belongs with the best of Senghor's nostalgic verse," wrote Michael J.C. Echeruo in a tribute to Okara on the occasion of his 70th birthday, "with the militancy of many of David Diop's lyrics, and certainly with J.P.Clark's 'Ivbie', another of my favorite African poems. Okara's poem is more relaxed than these, however, more ironic, less tortured. In some ways, of course, it is less urgent, less strident, less involved. If Clark's 'Ivbie' was complex and for good reason, You laughed, and laughed, and laughed seemed also appropriately straightforward: proud without arrogance, hurting without showing it, and blunt without rudeness." The first of Okara's poems that it was Echeruo's pleasure to read, it was also in his opinion the most enduring. The poem is sometimes wrongly attributed to South African writer Dennis Brutus. 

IMPRESSIONISTIC APPROACH :

                                 At first when i read this poem i felt that the poet feels very low about the behavior of white people. The poet tells us that the white people laughing at their culture and everything. The white people laughs at culture, dance, songs, antenatal walk, rhythm, african land etc of black people. The poet feels himself little in front of the white people who judges the black people. The poet says that the white people doesn't like anything from blqck people's culture. They laughs on everything that belongs to the black people. 

                                    The black sing songs surcharged with emotion in their own language. The whites can't make head or tall of it. The song sung in a harsh gutteral tone sounds to the whites like the misfiring, choking, and stopping of their cars. Always traveling in their cars,the whites can't think in the terms of anything except their cars.

"In your ears my song

Is motor car misfiring

Stopping with a chocking cough;

And you laughed and laughed and laughed."

                               Next the whites mock at the blacks ungainly gait. They call it "ante_natal,in human walk". It may be a grotesque, slovenly thud. But it is certainly expressive of their extraordinary energy. The whites do not understand it and laugh and laugh and laugh uproariously.

"In your eyes my ante_

natal walk was inhuman, passing

your omnivorous understanding

and you laughed and laughed and laughed."

                                 The next activity of the blacks that is laughed at is the frenzied dancing and drum beating of the blacks. This is a magical ritual to them. The drum is not beaten with insensate and violence. In the hands of the blacks the drum talks and pleads and expresses a variety of their moods. In fact the feeling deep "inside" the blacks are bought out the whites don't understand these subtleties and,shutting themselves in their cars, laugh contemptuously.

"You laughed at my dance,

you laughed at my inside,

you laughed and laughed and laughed."

The Black Retaliation:

                                   The black narrator launches a blistering attack on the whites. He says that the whites are frozen. That is ,they have no passion. They are as cold as a block of ice. All their organs, their eyes,ears, tongue etc,,,. function without any ardour. They are more dead than a live.

"But your laughter was ice_block

laughter and it froze your inside, froze

your voice ,froze your ears,

froze your eyes and froze your tongue."

                                       On the other hand the blacks are seething and simmering with fiery passion. They are in touch with the elements. They derive their passion from the hot sun, the depth of the earth,the interior of the sea,the higher attitudes of the airs,the blazing fire etc,,. In simple English,they extent themselves physically in the hot sun,deep down the earth, the dangerous sea,etc.... It is this unremitting labour that has kept the passion of negros alive.

                               The whites are awed by the black's ebullience as it thaws them and makes them also a little passionate. They become curious. They ask the blacks the key to their passion. The answer given by the blacks is rather simplistic. They say taht walking around bare_footed,they have absorbed into their system all the warmth of the earth. What is meant is that physical work keeps one vital and vibrant. The whites are revitalized because they have contact only machines,and never with the elements direct.

"Because my fathers and I

are owned by the living

Warmth of the earth

Through our naked feet".

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