After reading a locally published anthology of poetry and short fiction, entitled Crab-man: An Anthology of Short Stories, I was forced to come up with a completely new metaphor. Roopnandan Singh, who my research tells me is an accountant, seems paradoxically to possess a literary streak to him. He is President of the Association of Guyanese Writers and Artists, an organisation that seems, well to put things frankly, a bit non-existent. Also Singh has been shortlisted for the Guyana Prize for Literature for a novel Roll Play and received a special award at the Guyana Prize 2000 Award Ceremony for his continuous publication of locally-based Guyanese writers.

With Crab-man, Singh seems to have taken on the mantle of Noah and has launched a book, his ark, filled with a variety of literary animals, great and small. The book has a grand total of ten contributors and the contributions run the qualitative gamut from simple versifying to virtuoso fictional performances.

The first half of the anthology - 32 of the 63 pages - is occupied by Mohamed Yasin, the elephant within Singh's Ark. The first story in the anthology is the title story Crab-man, which won the author a `Highly Recommended’ prize in the 1999 Commonwealth Short Story Competition. Oddly enough, the story isn't the best story Yasin has within the anthology and one is immediately tempted to question Mr. Singh's choice of a title for his anthology.

Crab-man isn't a very accomplished story and seems to be apt more for a CXC text-book than anywhere else. But even so, it might need a bit more polishing up, a bit more refinement. Elephantine, the bulk of Yasin's contribution to the anthology, lumbers along, gray, clumsy, and excessive. But even pachyderm's possess their moments of grace.

The story that stands out of all five of Yasin's is a story called Tears, the purple patch on Yasin's published efforts at writing. Tears displays a far more mature author than that of Crab-man, Wong's Legacy, Sweet Boy, and The Faith Healer. Although there are vestiges of clumsiness within the story, with phrases like "Moisture began oozing from his fingers…" or "He desperately wanted to engage her in more than the usual exchange of platitudes…", the story moves along at a sensual, wavering pace following the tragic affair of Ricardo and Maisha.

There is one particular point in Tears, when Ricardo and Maisha are having lunch in a Chinese restaurant together and she asks Ricardo if he'd marry someone of another race. He asks for some time to reply and she tells him not bother. The scene ends beautifully with her eyes to shifting to the kitchen to "see an enormous tan coloured enamel pot boiling on top a large , black gas-stove." The symbolism could have been a bit more subtle, but even so, it is excellently accomplished.

Tears belongs in the same category of fiction that we find written by another author in the anthology; the modern Caribbean short story, one that fictionalises this place with an awareness that is only incidental, that is not 'ideologically' Caribbean but inherently so.

Mohamed Yasin works for the Guyana Lottery Company and attended the 2001 Cropper Foundation Workshop. A few more stories like Tears and Yasin may probably be able to leave Lotto and make his Daily Millions practicing his craft.

Next in the anthology comes one Victor A. Surujballi, the dog within Roopnandan's Ark, loyal to his attempts at verse, but as predictable as salt. With six poems entitled, `Mother’, `Just Smile’, `Raksha Bandhan Dialogue’, `Phagwah’ and `Thought for Today’, Surujballi fervently convinces us that he will not any time soon aspire to write real poetry.

Following closely on Mr. Surujballi's paws comes the ebullient goose of Roopnandan Singh's ark, Dorothy Carmen Johnson from Freeport, Grand Bahama, Bahamas. We are offered three cackling pieces of rhyming with painful stanzas such as this tidbit from `Thanks Columbus’:

"Africa's scenery may be splendid.
As is much of its history.
There's snakes, flies, leeches and lions;
I dislike seeing them on TV."

I have rarely suffered so much as reader as I have from Ms. Johnson's lines.

We are saved from the dyspepsia of Roopnandan's goose by, very aptly, the Noah of the Ark himself who, in keeping with our theme, begins his poem `Me Without You’ with the line, `A ship without anchor…’, Roopnandan's two offerings can't be classified as great poetry, probably not even very good poetry, but it is recognisably poetry and that so far seemed to be missing in the anthology, Crab-man.

After him is that venerable bard of Kaiteur News and Upscale Restaurant's Open Mic Tuesday nights, the indefatigable Stanley Jones, who surprisingly comes off as something other than the role I predicted him playing within Roopnandan's Ark, that of the bęte noire. With his hymn-like, `A Friend’, Jones doesn't quite succeed but then again he doesn't quite fail either. He simply comes across as mediocre, an unoriginal beast.

Forty-seven pages into the anthology, we find the most interesting beast within Roopnandan's menagerie, the young tiger within the Ark, Ruel Johnson. Now I've been following this young man's correspondences in the papers from time to time and for the most part he's come across as a tiger yes, but a paper tiger, ferocious in his criticisms of others, but incapable of providing proof of achieving anything himself; in short, he seemed destined for literary criticism.

Two weeks ago, my perspective was shifted when he walked away with a Guyana Prize for Literature award. When I heard through the grapevine that some of the stories that he had submitted in manuscript were published in Crab-man, I had to go pick up an advanced copy for myself. I was not disappointed.

Johnson's first story, starts off simplistically and continues so with what we think is just the adventure of a young Amerindian boy hunting deer and encountering a jaguar. The language is clear, simple and seemingly uninspired. It is when we reach the last paragraph in the story, which is really only one sentence, "One month after they found his remains, the first priest came", that we find that the simplicity of the bulk of the story was simply a distraction, a dance carefully choreographed by the author in order to hit us with the oblique of his final statement. It is only after we reach the end of the story that we are forced to refer to the title, Salvation. In less than two pages, Johnson has taken a slash at the concept of 'salvation' within religion, particularly Christianity.

The next story by Johnson, Killing the Kitten, is also seemingly simplistic but subtle and moving within its ordinariness. We meet what seems to be two former lovers, Ravi and Bharti, on a bench on Camp Street. Their conversation meanders convincingly until the story climaxes in resolution that leaves the reader emotionally strained, almost, I admit, on the verge of tears. Johnson ends Killing the Kitten with a lyrical and accomplished piece of writing that would be exemplary at any age but extraordinary for someone in his early twenties. I give you:

"And there are nights along Camp Street, yes there are nights along Camp Street, when the wind from the ocean blows a heart-breaking cold, so cold that it, the very air, sometimes seems as if it's been encased in a layer of thin ice, thin, fragile, crystalline ice, and you walk, afraid of your passage, afraid that one wrong step and the whole world might shatter, and there is nothing more to say, there are no more words left to say, and you walk, and you and wish and pray for rain."

Knock comes next, a fast paced story about football and race. There isn't much to say about Knock, or rather there doesn't seem to be much that anyone other than the author can say. This is a story that you have to simply enjoy at whatever level it hits you on. Johnson seems to have developed a skill for weaving a number of themes and allusions and modes of writing into the shortest space possible and nowhere else is this exemplified as it is in this story.

The story starts off in a sort of Nabokovian verbal virtuoso paragraph, but then 'degenerates' into a rhythmic creole that captures the essence and the spirit of that lil knock that the boys like taking every now and then on a field or road corner. When the narrator in the story tells us, "Play it how you want, call it what you will, dem ent really get no set way to knock, no immutable laws or rules of engagement…" you get the sense that he is ambiguously commenting on language while covertly speaking about football.

The fact that the story never reverts to standard English after breaking into creole seems to support this view. He handles our urban language the way Rooplall Monar handles our rural language; with a startling confidence and ease. Until Johnson comes out with a complete anthology, I would recommend a copy of Crabman in the meanwhile.

After Johnson, the anthology decidedly declines, the only other relative high-point being two poems by Rooplall Monar, the former workhorse of Guyanese writers who, it seems, recently moved to greener pastures to graze a bit better. All two poems are dedicated to Bramdeo Persaud who was murdered last year and who probably was a close friend of Monar's. The poems are probably too derivative of Martin Carter but that in itself is an unoriginality hard to achieve. Monar presents us the best poetry within the anthology.

And that's about it for Crab-man: An Anthology of Short Stories and Poems. Roopnandan Singh presents us with both the chaff and the wheat of what there is in local writing today. Fortunately, it seems that wheat outweighs the chaff altogether. In the final analysis, with Yasin's Tears, all of Johnson's stories, Monar's poetry, and to a lesser extent Singh's, make this anthology eminently buyable. Sources say that Crab-man is going to be less than a thousand dollars and should be in bookstores, so go pick yourself up a copy.

It's time for me to leave. Tonight I going out with the boys and decide what I goin give you for the month of March. Next week look out for something surprising from Avis, maybe just a lil conversation. And, before I forget, I going high-tech in my old age. My grand-daughter say that she likes the column and is going to set up an e-mail address for me. Send me your thoughts.