THE UNIVERSITY OF YAOUNDE I UNIVERSITE DE YAOUNDE I

FACULTY OF ARTS LETTERS AND FACULTE DES ARTS, LETTRES ET

SOCIAL SCIENCES SCIENCES HUMAINES
DEPARTMENT OF BILINGUAL DEPARTMENT D’ETUDES BILINGUES
STUDIES

COURSE TITLE: LITERATURE AND CIVILISATION

COURSE CODE: BIF 151

POETRY APPRECIATION:
CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Group Members:

MBIOBE MONDO Jeanne Irene 16U422 (Group head)

METCHEYE Ruth Suzie 17 JO 98 ( LCA)

MENGOMBI Catherine Isnel 16U877

MESSINA Sybille

MELONO Brenda

MENYE MEVAH Irene

MBIEDA Boris

COURSE LECTURER : Dr NYANCHI MARCEL

June 2018

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GOD HAS HIDDEN A LOT
Most embarrassing feat!
I can’t tell the next minute
Nay, not the next second
Yet had I but known,
My choice is made
I would have told the end
From this start of an affair
I would I known what she,
This now all good ladies of God
Would become as mine for life.
Surely, God has hidden a lot!
Poor thing, I
If anything, I can see, it is the
past.
Though my eyes paint ahead,
They see not beyond a second.
A blind pair they are!
Two seeing blind things
Mighty seer, Eternal eye,
Before you,
Time and eternity, he naked
Step in and sanction this affair
Or I am undone
Or we are undone
2
LET ME BE
Dear little knife,
Comrade, not alive,
Cutting carrots to pieces,
While I write my thesis.
Poor little thing,
Nothing thinking
While here I wrack my
brain,
You lie, reposing, not a
strain
When am weary,
You don’t worry,
You have no jury waiting,
Only an edge for cutting.
You spectator,
Soon ’am Doctor!
And what have you to
say?
“Vanity, Vanity! Let me
 INTRODUCTION

“Once upon a time” is a critique of life and various issues theming from

social cultural realities; Love, Politics, Religion and across cultural

encounters. Different emotions and experiences trigger the poet to
protest and revolt against wantonness in varied forms in contemporary
society. Through the exploitation of the resources of Language and free
verse, the poets Ernest VEYU, author of “Once Upon a Time” engages
on issues that concern his immediate society. Our analysis is focused on
two poems which are; “God has hidden a lot” and “Let me be”

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

The two poems are very rich in content and the underlying meaning
they portray. As matter of theme analysis, we are going to pick out some
major theme and try to shade more light on how they have been
explained in detail in the poems. The theme of Anger occupies the initial
position in our analysis. Beginning from the poet’s choice of the personal
subject pronoun “I” to referring to humanity in general, he, the poets
makes us understands that the fact that Man is a passive spectator to
what happens to him and around him is a somewhat a selfish attitude of
His. He laments the fact that God doesn’t share any of his creation with
mankind and thus, in serious indignation, confirms that man is just a
spectator of events. He decries the fact that man cannot predict things or
foresee the future. The melancholic tone used shows at what extend

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God is being blamed when he uses such as “poor thing, I.” If God had
empowered humans, calamity and catastrophic occurrences wouldn’t
have existed and man would be the master of his own foreseeable
destiny. In a bit to buttress this them, he also uses paradox to show
contrast or the different eyes and the role the. They were created to see,
he says, but now they are two “two seeing blind thing” simply because
they can’t help man to predict the future or anticipate events. With this
irony, he allows the reader to differentiate what seems and what actually
is.

Secondly, we have the theme of exploitation of man by man as

expressed by the choice of word or diction of “work” and “Laziness”
‘write my thesis’, ‘wrack my brain, weary, doctor,
nothing thinking, you don’t worry,
you lie reposing, not a strain,
no jury waiting’
The author highlights a societal ill here where others toil all day to make
ends meet but others just don’t bother. While others are productive by
working very hard, others are not move at all by what is happening
around them. He, the poet considers these category of people as
‘comrade, not alive’ He sees them as living dead, though they live
together in the society. To him, they are dead because their brains is
useless. He further uses the figure of speech anaphora to emphasize his
feelings about this attitude in our society when he say;
“you don’t worry,
you have no jury waiting,
you spectator

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As a matter of fact, the realistic mood brings out the realities of our
society which is full of selfishness, and the sad tone, a complain is being
made to mother nature ‘ the mighty seer’ who has hidden has hidden or
kept for Himself ‘time and eternity’. We can see the miserable state of
mankind when he qualifies man as ‘poor thing I’
Although the poem has a pathetic tone, he makes it sound like a melody
to reinforce his words. The structure of the poem; a quatrain with it
rhyme scheme of A A, B B gives a musical note and thus melodious.
Another salient aspect is the free verse nature. He uses this type of
poem in other to prove a point because in classic poetry, all rules are
forbidden. Freedom from rhythm and and rhyme is the technique that
changes people’s minds. We can clearly see that the author is protesting
or calling out for a change when he says “step in and sanction this affair”
In other words, he is asking God to review the state of mankind by
showing or giving him control over time, and make responsible the
somewhat lazy ones in the society.

The poet’s voice is distinctive and his poetic vision mirrors the social,
religious and political world around him. They show the type of
governance, especially in African countries where the people’s faith is at
the merci of their rulers. They sit in their offices doing nothing while the
masses work very hard to scrape a living out of the remnants of life or
survive.

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 CONCLUSION

Conclusively, the analysis of these poems gives us a better

understanding of the author’s message. These are two poems with one
being a classic poem and the other a modern poem. Through them, he
expresses his disappointment or his concern about social crisis, laziness
and cosmic governance. He out for a change in human kind.