Zimpapers Logo

David Mungoshi

Beaven Tapureta Bookshelf
David Sunny Mungoshi’s debut poetry collection “Live Like An Artist” (2017, Bhabhu Books) is but a lifetime poetic bible which contains what the poet in one of his poems describes as “invaluable little gems”. No wonder why we have gone crazy about the anthology and want to write about it again and again because each “reading” of it hatches a new experience!

The very act of David’s patient “waiting” to retire ( or turn 68 years now) to produce this masterpiece is no doubt a part of the poetry, a real life testimony conveyed with tense emotion, observation, brilliance and technique.

Hundred poems, that is, hundred carefully observed, recorded different mannerisms of life from infancy to old age, even beyond death, are what constitute this anthology.

The book’s title (and the black cover) first captures you before you are welcomed by the title poem which seems deliberately placed as first poem in which the persona plays the overseer advising the artist about the pains and joys of creativity – “the story of creation out of nothing”.

Yet as you delve further into the vast poetic spectrum, you realise the “artist” being talked about here is any human being because life is a complex art that also demands priceless prowess or what is commonly known as lifemanship.

Although well-known also as a critic of literature, in this anthology David is a critic of life itself – there’s nostalgia and jubilation at different times and in different places of the artist’s life but it is the poet’s ability to capture these and other aspects of life in a few words that tell a long story.

In poems like “In Our Time”, and “When I was Young”, the personae are critical of modernism, its technological tragedy and the diminishing world. Today’s youths are reminded of yesteryear virtues and urged “you’re the rising sun to prod us on at the break of day/And propel us towards ambitious estimates and targets . . . ”

The poet is sensuous in some poems such as “Tulips”, “Bang, Bang, Bang”, “Best Belch South of Sahara”, and “Different School of Romance”; he is the ‘uncle’ showing, via clever words, what happens when sympathy, romance and/or intimacy is existent or non existent in a relationship.

And the romance is not about the kisses, “because kisses can sometimes be messy”, it is not “even the fabled roses!” because these too are temporary.

Another painful poem is “Sweetness Gone” in which a poor husband is ditched by his wife and the moment of loneliness is captured with immediacy, mixed humour and sadness as somewhere in the poem the man reflects he “woke up one morning, and/ alas! You and our single blanket were gone/And I knew sweetness was gone . . . ”

Memory and in some cases regret haunt the now aged “artist”, as he looks back and sighs:

Alas, too late the little things

We should have done.

The poet gets personal occasionally, inspired by moments shared with his loved ones who are now no more. In poems dedicated to his late relations such as “Weeding The Crops With My Sister”, “One More Christmas”, and “Farewell Around a Fire in June”, he comes to understand the transiency of life and tries to imagine what actually death keeps in its arms for its newcomers when:

In the sparkle of the moment

The evanescent dew melts

And trickles into gaping eternity (Toothless Mouth)

There is another story behind the anthology “Live Like An Artist”. Surely, Bookshelf can tell that different people worked with David to make this book.

How good it would be to hear from his wife who saw him composing the poems, those who were privileged to read it while it was still a manuscript, Memory Chirere who then selected the poems and also co-edited it and Ignatius Mabasa who co-edited it and finally published the collection.

These are the persons making the choir that has the anthology’s background song which if published, would further entice the reader to understanding David the poet.

Two years ago fellow columnist Elliot Ziwira in his preview of the anthology, quoted co-editor Chirere somehow likening David to DH Lawrence, but there surely is more to it, for truly speaking, “Live Like an Artist” is just multifarious, symbolic, and accessible.

Born in Bulawayo, David Sunny Mungoshi is also an academic, literary critic, short story writer and novelist. He is a brother to the iconic writer Charles Mungoshi.