Mantis Poets: Jack Cope & C.J. Driver

by Jack Cope (Editor), C.J. Driver

This book contains the work of two poets: Jack Cope and Jonty Driver (Cope did the editing).

58 pages, Board book

First published March 31, 1979

About the author

Jack Cope was born on his family's farm in Natal, South Africa, and attended boarding school in Durban, afterwards becoming a journalist on the Natal Mercury and then a political correspondent in London for South African newspapers. At the outbreak of the Second World War, in a state of some disillusionment, he returned to his father's farm and, while working at various jobs, took up creative writing.

During the following four decades Cope published eight novels, more than a hundred short stories, and three collections of poetry, the last one in association with C.J. Driver. For twenty of those years, beginning in 1960, he edited Contrast, a literary magazine bilingual in English and Afrikaans. He co-edited The Penguin Book of South African Verse (1968) with Uys Krige and, as general editor throughout much of the 1970s, produced the Mantis editions of Southern African poets. In 1980 he moved to England, where he published The Adversary Within: Dissident Writers in Afrikaans (1982) and his Selected Stories (1986).

Cope's first novel, 'The Fair House' (1955), considers the Bambata Rebellion of 1906 in an attempt to account for the later racial and political conditions in South Africa. Later novels, including 'The Golden Oriole' (1958), 'Albino' (1964), and 'The Rain-Maker' (1971), chronicle the white man's destruction of black culture and the ensuing struggle by the blacks to regain their pride and identity.

However, it is as a short-story writer that Cope demonstrated his finest talent. His stories evoke, according to Alan Paton, 'with a few words the scents and sounds and colours of our country'. In 'A Crack in the Sky' (The Tame Ox, 1960) and 'Power' (The Man Who Doubted and Other Stories, 1967) his moral vision is clear; his third collection, 'Alley Cat and Other Stories' (1973), contains darker themes such as those of alienation and loneliness. Among Cope's main achievements was his influence on South African literature during the 1960s and 1970s, important years in the struggle against apartheid.

Jack Cope is also well-known for his romantic attachment to tragic South African poet Ingrid Jonker.

Reviews

[Ilze · Rating 3 out of 5]

Jack Cope was one of Ingrid Jonker's lovers, so of course I had to find out how he writes! Besides Cope, this volume also contains poetry by CJ Driver. The latter's poetry is not bad. It evokes all sorts of images from the past and from apartheid South Africa. But it's not the kind of poetry that would make a "big poet".

Cope's work is much more interesting. It's not as sentimental and contains images that aren't easily forgotten. Like Ted Hughes' and André Brink's last words about their lost lovers (Sylvia Plath for the former and Ingrid Jonker the latter), Cope writes about her too. Since I know Jonker's poetry quite well, I could see how Cope tried to bring some of her images into his poems in a beautiful reminiscent kind of way. He tried to jump into her grave after her while they were burying her and caused a huge embarassment to all attending the funeral. I still don't understand why he only realized how much he loved her after she was gone. The following lines show how it pained him:
(page 6)
I found you in the innocent sheet
flawless and free from all blame
and could not kisss your lips once more
or ever speak your name.

(page 14)
At first the precise horror of the coffin
the trade of grief, paper solemnity:
lips distant with indifference and cold
your last kiss the denial of dying.

Apparently Brink couldn't see for the rest of the day after he heard of her drowing.