Abstract
Poetry is work of art in which poets express their thoughts, feelings and emotions through oral presentation or writing. According to Tsambo (1999: 2), “poetry is the expression of the life experiences; these life experiences are unfolded or expressed in a variety of themes.” This suggests that, like any other literary genre, poetry is used by poets to convey or communicate their thoughts and feelings in the form of a poem that has one main underlying idea. The conveyed message may not always be clear or easily identified, it may require one to thoroughly read the poem, maybe several times. The aim of this study is to identify themes in B. Mavuso’s two volumes of poetry and other poets works. The chosen volumes from Mavuso are The Undying Spirit of a Dead Man as well as Izimbali Zemfolozi. As much as the study looks at different poets, the emphasis is on Mavuso because the researcher realized that no study has been conducted on the works of this poet. The study focuses on three themes, namely; the theme of love, theme of death as well as historical theme. The aim is to understand how B. Mavuso and other poets present and highlight their themes in poetry. The data was collected with the qualitative research method analysed using the Reader Response Theory. The finding reveal that, when it comes to love, people experience love in different forms. The love shared between family is not the same as love as experienced by friends, or motherly love or even romantic love. The difference is that, these are different love types, and therefore have different characteristics. Again, when it comes to death, it is revealed that death has more power on living people as it causes pain and sorrow to them, but, it is powerless once a person has died because, after death, one becomes an ancestor. it was learned that South African history is very rich and that it is important for one to take time and learn it. Again, it was identified that, as much as history is important, not many poems are written on this theme. When poets write about history, they do so by looking at how things are, currently, and let the reader read between the lines to understand the past from the comparisons made. Poets use poetic techniques to highlight their themes. The techniques that have been identified and discussed in this study are repetitive techniques as well as the writing vi style. In addition, this study may encourage more research to be conducted in Mavuso's works. There are still a lot of literary aspects that can be explored.
M.A. (African Languages)