Beibee’s Ben…poetry. prose. diaries.

Ebereonwu’s foreword to his latest collection of poetry published in Vanguard on the 25th July, 2004 has prompted me finally into writing this essay about the nature of recent Nigerian poetry over which I had been musing for quite sometime. I must however hasten to say that I am doing this not as a professional critic – I have no such pretensions – but as someone who has been closely observing the happenings in the Nigerian poetry scene for quite some time and who feels he has a few humble suggestions to make about its development.

Ebereonwu’s essay has thrown up quite a number of pertinent questions which a close observer of the contemporary Nigerian poetry cannot have failed to have noticed namely; the overwhelming preponderance of poetry that is being written over the other genres of literature, the nature of the poetry itself and lastly the narcissism and self – glorification of which the present generation of Nigerian poets is most guilty, including Ebereonwu. For how does one explain a poet adjudging his own collection of poems. The Insomniac Dragon as the best of all the poetry collections to have emerged from Nigeria. If that is not narcissism and self – glorification, I wonder what it is.

Writing poetry, alas is a most narcissistic enterprise and hence poets are prone to expressing certain peculiar opinions in defense their works, especially when faced with a criticism that challenges the value of such works. Be that as it may, I think it is inexcusably vain for a poet to go as far as stretching his poetic license to include arrogating to himself the privilege of the reader and adjudging his own work as the best there is or even for that matter the worst, as he claims his latest collection, Medemede is. It is meet that such judgments be left to his readers. There is no doubt as to the brilliance of Ebereonwu as a poet, and the respect he seems to enjoy from his fellow poets confirms this view. What I rage against is this mentality of self – glorification that is most endemic in the present generation of Nigerian poets.

Another example of this effusion of enormous conceit I can readily think of outside these shores is that of Whitman, a nineteen century American poet who not only published his own work, but also in his relentless campaign to assure his Leaves of Grass a breathing space in the world, reviewed his own book, interviewed himself and planted stories in several newspapers about his activities and whereabouts. Whitman may perhaps be pardoned for such exhibition of unbridled vanity. At least he did turn out later to be a great poet.

The same, I dare say cannot be hoped for some Nigerian poets I have come across. Their problem is less of talent than of their indolence and reluctance in undergoing the laborious process of developing their craft. They are usually too anxious to get published. E.E. Cummings, one of America’s greatest poets of the last century wrote over a hundred versions of a poem before he felt it was right. William Blake was a poet who claimed all his poems were dictated to him by spirits. Yet his manuscripts show he saw nothing wrong in subjecting such dictations to vigorous revisions, by making alterations upon alterations deletions upon deletions, re-arrangements upon re-arrangements until the resulting works appeared almost effortless. How many of the poets of this generation are ready to undergo such pain-staking craftsmanship? Every true poet who desires greatness must as of necessity be determined upon a life of poetry – he must be ready to work hard at his art, suffer for it, bleed for it, he must make himself amenable to constructive criticisms and most of all he must be his own bitterest critic. Very few poets of this generation are ready to make such sacrifices. They are just too anxious to be called poets, and thereby fitting perfectly into the description of James Russel Lowel who described such writers as “those who might have been poets but that in its stead preferred to believe they were so already“. And so what we get to see these days are many poets, little poetry.

Literary history is a self-pruning process – it prunes poetry to the study of few poets of each generation and it may be that these poets generally regarded as the best of this generation will be studied, Akeem Lasisi, Ogaga Ifowodo, Uche Uduka, Chiedu Ezeanah, Ebereonwu, Lola Shoneyin, Toyin Adewale-Gabriel, Obi Nwakama, Remi Raji, Tony Kan, Promise Okekwe and others. But this is only a tentative judgment. However ecstatically we praise these poets, the final verdict belongs to the future generation of poets, who will find in some of these poets something to admire and emulate. This leads me inevitably to the next question.

What will the future poets find in the best poets of this generation to admire and emulate? The poetry of every generation the world over has always had some distinctive features that distinguish it from the one of the preceding generation. Are there some distinguishing features peculiar to the poetry of this generation? If there are, they are very few. It is quite unfortunate that in spite of the increasing chunks of poetry that are being churned out everyday, Nigerian poets are yet to evolve a style that would distinguish them from their predecessors. There are hardly new trends in the poetry being currently written. Nothing to consider as a development and as a deliberate reaction against the trends of Niyi Osundare and Tanure Ojaide generation. Almost every poet still wants to write in the oral, lyrical fashion of Osundare and Ojaide.

There is nothing wrong in being influenced by the great masters of the art of a preceding generation, as Wole Soyinka asserts in his preface to his anthology of African poems, Poems of Black Africa:

‘There is a distinct quality in all great poets that does exercise a ghostly influence in other writers, but this need not to be cause for self – flagellation. The resulting works is judged by its capacity to move ahead or sideways by the thoroughness of ingestion within a new organic mould, by the original strength of the new entity’ The renown the Niyi Osundare generation presently enjoys is a result of its resolve to ‘move ahead‘ from the conservative poetic trends of the Soyinka generation of poets and evolve its own unique poetry in a new ‘organic mould‘. The present generation of Nigerian poets has failed to do likewise. They have failed to capitalize on the weaknesses of their predecessors and build on them. As exceptional as the poetry of Osundare generation is, it still does have some gross weaknesses. It is unfortunate that the poets of the present generation have continued to perpetuate such weaknesses. Its best poets though very brilliant still have their bilabials lost in the gutturals of the masters, to put it in stricter words, their voices can at best be categorized as self – displaying babels that are yet to evolve into one organic, unmistakable voice that would denominate their generation and distinguish it from the preceding generation.

There is something about the Nigerian poetry that palls. I may be crucified by this, but the truth must be told. There is certain satiety of lyricism and declamation in the contemporary Nigerian poetry that is becoming increasingly indigestible. There is an uncreative temper and explicitness in the poems that are being rammed into our throats, leaving very little to chew on. We have had enough of this gross presentation of endless, repetitive diet of politics in our poetry. The poems are rather prolix, prosaic and uninventive. Normal failings in Narrative poems, if narrative poems they are, but Nigerian poetry suffers from a serious lack of narrative voices. What we have heard and continued to hear are the same subject voices in imagined superiority, crooning the same monotonous things in the same monotonous formats, assuming to teach us about what even a lay man on the streets already knows – politics. For God’s sake where are the narrative poems? Where are those short poems of inventive directness and immediacy? Where are those poetic vignettes of the Nigerian life? Life is vast and endless. Our poetry should reflect that vastness and endlessness.

Thom Gum says in one of his poems! Whatever is here / it is material for my art! The world has moved on. Sex, loneliness, jealousy, duty, friendship, loyalty, madness, drunkenness, etc., have since become material for poetry. Why are the Nigerian poets so fixated as Ebereonwu puts it “in versifying the popular opinions on our misrulers by newspapers columnists?” We have had poets addressing the so called socio – political ills since the country’s independence, yet nothing has changed. Yes, I concur there is no way politics can be completely expunged from our poetry, but if we must write about politics let us be more subtle and creative about it. Eliot did it. If took decades before his earlier critics who had criticized him for not addressing the political ills of his day realized that wasteland is much more than just “a poem about the catastrophe of inner life and of civilization”. Even so, the British and American poetry has since moved on from the modernist practices of Eliot and Pound. The current poetic offerings by Western contemporary poets have a very little consanguinity with the modernist legacies of their forebears. That is why poets like Sonia Sanchez, Allen Crossbie, Li-Young lee, Rita Dove, Cathy song, Andrew motion, James Fenton and others are making names for themselves.

Every student of literature knows that the development of poetry, nay literature, has always followed and maintained fidelity to one unchanging tradition – the tradition of action and reaction, of counter reactions and returns. Thus we have romanticism as a reaction against neo-classicism, modernism as a reaction against Victorianism, etc., and poetry is much the better or it. Why then has the present generation of Nigerian poets created for itself dark stagnant waters in which it has continued to wallow in the oral traditions of the second generation of Nigerian poets? Why should our contemporary poets continue to write in the aesthetics in whose evolution they had no hand and in which their predecessors have continued to record unsurpassable achievements?

Before I am misconstrued, I must quickly say that I am not advocating total severance from the rich literary heritage of the masters. What I am saying is simply this; the greatness of the present generation of poets neither lies in the aping of the masters’ aesthetics nor in the betrayal of them but in the redefinition of the masters’ rich bequeaths. How can this be done? I do not want to fall into the error of prescribing the modes our poets should adopt, but there has to be a progression from the present state of our poetry. Every poet worth his salt knows that his poetry will be much more richer if he submits himself to vast extensive readings; if he makes himself receptive to all poetic trends all over the world, while maintaining a consciousness of his base; if he loosens up his current stilted poetic lines and finally if he embraces all subjects as material for poetry. Reading a few verses of Niyi Osudare, Christopher Okigbo and Wole Soyinka will not give them the greatness to which our poets aspire.

It is however gratifying to note that propitious signs about the development of our poetry are already emerging from certain poets. In the freshness of imagery, in the musicality of lines, in the inventiveness of imagination and language, Uche Nduka, Obi Nwankama, Ebereonwu and Chiedu Ezeanah are already setting the pace. These poets are certainly some of the poets that shall define the aesthetics by which their generation of poets will be enjoyed and remembered by subsequent generations of poets.