Reign of the Quisling-Rodents

Introduction

v INTRODUCTION Reign of the Quisling-Rodents is, at once, a lament and a call to resistance couched in modern prose-poetry. It is a volume in two parts; the first entitled “Treasons of Malversation” seeks to uncover a society at the brink of socio-economic autoannihilation through the nefarious human phenomena of egoism and corruption. The quintessence of the work is seen in the utter dehumanization undergone by both the victim of this phenomena represented by the persona in the various poems, and the perpetrator, represented by the unnamed, implied human forces behind these ills suffered by the victim. These unnamed, implied human forces are the “…pairs and pairs Of black hands that throw a shroud Over the sun” (see ABYSS ) They both thus become dehumanized in the sense that while the victim is reduced to sub-human status by dint of the privation and destitution he is seen going through in the various poems, the perpetrator, on his part, is imbued with animal qualities by virtue of his capability to transcend the frontiers of human nature in his unleashing of such extreme tribulations to his victims. The outcome of corruption suffered by the persona in the poems is a function of the unspeakable rapacity that has ravaged the mindset of the society in question. That is to say the constant recurrence of the deprivation motif in almost every stanza of each poem in the volume is testimony to the hypothesis that it is the entire collective consciousness of the society that has been perverted or destroyed by the ills decried. The poet puts his reader in a situation where these ills and their resultant devastation are seen in the pathosridden , anguish-filled lines and stanzas. vi The volume owes its title from acts, in wanton terribleness, of kleptomania in high places which has held the society sway, pointing to a betrayal of that society, in the Quisling fashion, by its leaders. This kleptomania which has so ravaged the society can be paralleled to the destruction wrought by the pilfering of rodents. The volume’s second part, “Nineteen Bugle Calls”, constitutes a refusal to be resigned to the society’s dire fate. Here, the poet incorporates into each lament a battle call to resistance against these damnable phenomena in the society; a resistance which must be staged in literary as well as other circles. N.M ...