Publisher: Malthouse Press
Year of publication: 2010
Genre: Poetry
Reviewer: Olutayo IRANTIOLA
INTRODUCTION
The book The Beauty I have Seen is the
seventeenth published anthology by Tanure Ojaide. The work is published by
Malthouse Press, Lagos in 2010. This is one of the recent collections of the
poet. It is worthy of note that this book has won the Cadbury Prize for Poetry
awarded by the Association of Nigerian Authors. The anthology is in three parts
namely The Beauty I Have Seen, Doors of the Forest and Flows & other poems.
This book is a rich compendium of the dexterity of the poet because there are
also poems written in Pidgin English.
THE POETRY OF TANURE OJAIDE
According to Onookome Okome
in the book titled, Writing the Homeland: The Poetry and Politics of Tanure
Ojaide, It is only the prolific vastness of this poet that defines him as one
of the most ambitious and significant poet to emerge after Soyinka, Okigbo and
Clark. The daring political content of his poems add to the success that his
poet has known since his firct book of poems made the bookstands. Ojaide’s
literary style puts him apart from his literary peers. His poetry is simple,
yet each line is loaded with meaning; each carries the weight of serious
contemplation, creating a world in which meaning generates more meaning.
Tanure Ojaide is a poet
whose seeming simplicity holds the complex balance of the discourse of the
poet’s power and place in society as a prophet and a seer. Ojaide’s poetry
brings the potency of the living word back to our withered humanity.
Ogaga Okuyade states;
It becomes an
undeniable fact that the magnetism of orature on the social existence and life
of Africans are evident in contemporary African literature. The pervasiveness
of orature manifests to a large extent, the profound impact it has in the
social formation, shaping and constitution of the geneology and life of a
writer. Ojaide himself observes that "poetry in Africa is generally
believed to be currently enjoying an unprecedented creative outburst and
popularity" According to him this popularity seems to arise from
"some aesthetic strength hitherto unrealized in written African poetry
which has successfully adapted oral poetry technique into the written
form". Although the scribal expressive medium is English, the poetry
carries the African sensibility, culture, and worldview, as well as the
rhythms, structures and techniques of tradition, which give credence to what is
designated as "double writing" (Soyinka 319). Yaw Adu-Gyamfi
factorizes such features to include "ceremonial chants, tonal lyricism,
poetry of primal drum and flute, proverbs, riddles, myths, songs, folktales,
the antiphonal call-and-response styles, and the rhythmic, repetitive,
digressive, and formulaic modes of language use".
In Ojaide's poetry, social
existence is constructed through communal landscapes given in myth, folklore
and common histories that provide a community with a source of identity. Ojaide
develops this form of art by transposing traditional forms and images into the
contemporary world in order to address more pressing post-independence
concerns. Since the work of art according to Hugh Webb "arises out of the
particular alternatives of his time (24), the historical circumstances that
inform Ojaide's art is a real issue of this study.
Bodunde asserts that the
poetry of Tanure Ojaide in Delta Blues, casts the tragic experience of a people
in the setting of a landscape in ruins. In the collection, the interpretation
of the landscape in the context of human mediataition is considered as the main
stream of aesthetic and social engagements. We have of the Delta landscape that
is trampled, abused and ravaged or a landscape that is posioned, home to the
dead who walk “the troubled land”. The poet urges us to condemn the political
and economic agenda, which erodes the normal bond between landscape and man.
The decimantion of the landscape crushes the people’s collective pysche as it
becomes more obvious that the country is under siege of the “hyena and his
calvalry of hangmen”.
His writing can be seen in
the contexts of time and place and my experiences relate to his Niger Delta
background, Urhobo/Pan-Edo folklore, Nigerian, African, global, and human
issues. In relating the poet to a historian, Tanure Ojaide said his poems in
the third part of this anthology is the periods of the failed
nascent democracy in Nigeria, civil unrests, military takeovers, civil wars,
and postcolonial misrule have their presence in the human experience that is
being express in my poems. In The Beauty I Have Seen, many poems in
the “Flow & Other Poems” section, such as “I Sing Out of Silence,”
“Contribution to the National Debate,” “Testimony to the Nation’s Wealth,” and
“After the Riots, in Jos,” among others, deal with sociopolitical issues that
are related to Nigeria’s history. The writer in Africa is political out of
historical necessity.
The Beauty I Have Seen derives
from the minstrelsy tradition in Urhobo orature. The minstrel tells not just
his own tale but the collective tale of his people. The first part of the book
explores this tradition to talk about sociocultural, political, and other
issues that affect the minstrel’s community. The poet he represents, the
contemporary minstrel, is thus a public figure, a traveler and observer of
humanity, and one grounded in the landscape and fate of his native land and
people.
In The Beauty I Have Seen he
tried to communicate feelings and ideas and so make the content accessible. He
has attempted to use a poetic style from the oral tradition, which uses
repetition, proverbs, metaphor, irony, and other tropes that convey meaning in
a startling manner. He endeavour to experiment with other poetic traditions of
Africa and elsewhere that can strengthen his poetic articulation. Tradition and
modernity are combined in this collection. It is the practice in Urhobo poetry,
especially the Udje tradition, to start by laughing at your own self before
venturing to laugh at others. In this collection, the poet assumes the persona
of the minstrel. The minstrel persona is used as a figure familiar with the
society as a means of knowing, seeing, and questioning truths. Poetry should
function as a questioner of habits, actions, and happenings in the society
towards a salutary ethos. The sense of community that the minstrel represents
is underscored by the title poem, “The beauty I have seen,” which shows him
better appreciated and received outside than in his own homeland.
Many poems in the
collection, especially in the second and third sections, deal with experiences
outside the primary home of the Niger Delta or his other home, the
United States of America. He highlight the Akosombo Dam which “decapitated” the
Volta River into the Volta Lake in Ghana; he embraced the wonderful
diva, an untouchable/low caste beauty and dancer extraordinary whom he called
the “pride of Bengal” in India; the ganja peddlers at the beach of Negril in
Jamaica; watching fasting Muslims waiting for the call to eat dinner at a
restaurant in Kuala Lumpur with mouth-watering dishes in front of them; and
seeing where Shaka Zulu was buried in South Africa; among many experiences.
These poems arising out of travels are meant to widen and deepen one’s humanity
towards a contribution to one’s homeland. Above all, they are parts of “the
beauty I have seen.”
The poems are in three
sections, the first using the minstrel persona; the second and third about
travels, as well as Nigerian and American experiences. He attempted to use
unrhymed couplets to establish some formal discipline. The title poem, The
Beauty I have seen, relates to the exhilaration the poet goes through in
the process of creativity. Here, the “beauty” of experiencing one’s homeland as
well as the rest of the world is remarkable for the writer. It is a series of
epiphanies, illuminations about life, society, and the world. The beauty I
have seen is that experience that is so exhilarating that it cannot be
replicated and it is only in memory that one relives it.
THE ANALYSIS OF THE
ANTHOLOGY
The anthology is in 3
sections and each section will be discussed. The first section of this
anthology has virtually all the poems written in couplet except two poems. The
first poem titled, “When the Muse gives the minstrel a nod” is a poem that
speaks on the experiences that culminates into what is written by the minstrel.
The minstrel picks his materials from his immediate environment as well. The
first four lines of the poem go thus:
When
the muse gives the minstrel a nod,
No
bead ever competes with his diamond.
The
minstrel gets his share of pain and joy
That
he converts into songs of the season-
The inspiration for
materials set the minstrel apart when he is in the world of reception, it goes
thus:
Transported into primeval
rapture by the zeal for song
He knocks out others for a
singular vision of beauty.
The depth of what the
minstrel achieves in his craft is dependent on the available matters at his
disposal.
“The Minstrel’s livery” is
about the comportment put on by the minstrel when discovering what he is
expected to write about, when he gets disappointed; he must be brave like
Okonkwo.
Rather
he must spring in it like Okonkwo
And
avert the obscene snipes of keen cynics
The carriage of the
minstrel is just like that of the priest, he must be elderly:
But
must carry himself high in chiefly steps
And
leave pedestrian rush to vagabond feet.
He must not misuse power:
If
an Elephant, he must tread lightly
And
not throw his weight over ants;
The minstrel is greatly
admonished to know that the life he lives must be different from that of
others; he must be cautious and careful of how he does his things.
“The Minstrel tells Tales”
is a poem that reinforces the African belief in the mermaid (Mami Wata) that
lives in the deep. This poem is musing on the existence of the mermaid and what
happens in their world. The poem might not making meaning to other cultures out
of Africa. The poem could also be interpreted as the thought of a drowned man
about what happens in the deep:
I asked Mami Wata to teach
me how to swim.
I ended up not knowing how
to swim to safety
A
drowned man; a prisoner in her palace of coral
and weeds. She blows big
bubbles into the air,
A romance relationship
starts in the water and eventually, he does not want to leave the deep for the
land again
I
immerse my body in her splendor;
I
do not seek freedom from love.
“The Loan” is remembering
the father of the poet who went to get a loan for a festival that comes up once
in two decades. He got the loan to purchase gunpowder and this made him become
the favourite of many for doing spectacularly well during the four days
festival
But
you are a hero. The spectacle of four loud days
Of
cannon has changed your life into a blazing star.
The father was compared to
these animals; an Elephant, Leopard and chameleon. The time didactically shows
that proactiveness is fundamental to valiance.
“Waiting” is a poem about
the circumstance of young Nigerians who had been taught that they are the
leaders of tomorrow however they are the leaders of today. The youths had been
told to wait endless and in fact as the poem “wait out an entire lifetime”.
“The Muse won’t let me
quit” is a poem that shows the determination of the poet not to stop writing.
As described he is one of the most prolific after Wole Soyinka and JP Clark.
The muse won’t dry. He alluded the endless flow of inspiration to Aridon, the
god of memory of Nigeria’s Urhobo people, the god was mentioned twice to show
his reverence to the god.
The second section of the
book titled, “Doors of the Forest & Other Poems” is based on various
traveling experiences. The poems in this section are longer than the poems in
the first group. “Sukur” is a poem that celebrates a world heritage place in
Adamawa, Nigeria. The place is even obscure to Nigerians and this is a way of
showcasing the heritage site, the poet had lived in Maiduguri for years but he
might not have discovered this place till recently. The place is made in stones
with “a few openings to enter and marvel at the closure”.
“Yola’s fish” is of the
family with “Sukur” the poem is just keeping the memory of a mealtime enjoyed
in Yola. The fish is such delicious that it was described by Ola as something
that can make one settle in Yola. This particular poem is in prosaic in nature.
The poem opens with an inverted coma showing that Ola is being quoted,
“Eat
the fish caught from the Benue at Yola
and
you’ll return to the city to settle or visit,”
says
Ola at the fish treat of the July evening.
“For the sake of love” is
about the mystery behind love. Love is described to do the following, “judge”
lines 1-2, “mystery”, lines 5-6, “foolish” lines 7-8, “riddle” lines 11-12,
“changing thing” lines 15-16, “diverse experience” lines 21-22, “secret” lines
25-26. Love is dynamic in nature and this is captured by the last
few lines:
When
it hurt you want to flee,
When
it heals you seek it with life.
What
a fool I have been!
What
a philosopher I can be!
“For Mahatma Gandhi” is a
poem to Mahatma Gandhi. It is a praise poem of the heroic deeds of Gandhi. It
describes the way in which he died:
The
assassin’s bullet could not wipe out line 1
The value Gandhi stood for
is still ringing after his death:
Of
transforming the scoundrel world without spilling blood line 6
Gandhi was further
described as:
But
you were not just Indian or even South African
But
a prophet of the human spirit, the entire world lines 10-11.
He has been recognized as
the voice of the truth by many cultures:
Countless
languages of the world speak your truth line 15
Many people visit the where
he lived hoping that they would be free to live in an egalitarian society.
The last section of the anthology
is titled Flow & Other Poems. This poem is peculiar because some of the
poems are written in Pidgin English which is an acceptable means of
conversation in Niger Delta region of Nigeria.
The first poem, “Wetin Man
Go Do?” is a poem on attribution of the traits of the question being asked and
getting responses from the animal world, the Yoruba mythology and the military.
Others are the lover, the pastor, the coffin-seller and the singer. Animals and
the traits used in the poems are: Goat and the Tortoise. Reference was made to
Ogun-the god of Iron. The military officers who kills his rival during a coup,
the politician who rigs his way into power, the lover who jilts to start with a
new lover, the coffin-seller hoping to sell his wares. This poem is about
attribution as events unfold, it also reflects the dynamism of time.
“I No Go Sidon Look” is
about how passive man can be to happenings in his environment but the poet
objects to fold his hands to the plight of his people who keeps observing. This
is a call to incite others to stand up to action. The poem looks into the effect
of war, where soldiers are drafted from various regions of the world as United
Nations Peace-Keeping Force
I
no go sidon look
Like
African Union soja for Darfur.
There is a show of
ecological effect of oil exploration on the Niger-Delta
people:
I no go sidon look
Make
Shell dey piss and shit for our water
This is the call for an
outcry thereby getting freedom from the different oppressions being suffered,
the poet concludes:
I
no fit sidon look lailai
I
go do something-o.
“I sing out of Sickness” is
a poem that shows the communalist in Tanure Ojaide. According to Isaiah, Ojaide’s
activist artistic enterprise, finds ample expression in using poetry for
resistance dialectics, which culminates in environmentalism and cultural
reaffirmation. He is sick of the many ills bedeviling the nation. Ebi prompted
the poet to speak on this matter by asking the question, “What makes you
write?”
I
am sick from chasing robbers that take me for granted
With
whips that don’t flog and shouts they shut ears from hearing
Issues raised in the poem
include: armed robbery, suffering in silence, the exploration of the resident
mineral resources whereas the owners and residents of that community are still
impoverished, the extra-judicial killings of people who are complaining of
their misery. Other issues include water pollution, deforestation, extortion by
the police force, mistaken identity of culprits, electoral malpractice. All
these and many more were categorized as:
I
sing out of sickness from multiple afflictions,
Sing
from the pain of knowledge without memory.
“On Environmental Day” is a
poem that advises on the various days that should exist in the human calendar;
all of this is a call to make the world a better place. The trait of
Environmental Day opens the poem:
Everyone
is asked by the state to stay at home
And
clean the surroundings; no movement
On
the street and highway to keep the ban.
Violators
not in high places expect thrashing.
The poet wishes days such as
“Truth Day” to eliminate lies, “Honesty Day” to curb armed robberies, “Secular
Day” to address religiousity, “Human Day” to transform man from their
“animalistic” features, “Patience Day” to shrink the crazy drive for wealth,
“Law and Order Day” which will give way to emergency traffic, “Modesty Day” to
make people humble, “Corruptiion-Free Day” and the nation is free of sharp
practices. He recommended other days like, “Personal Hygiene Day”, “Forgiveness
Day”, and above all “Peace Day”. Sanitation Day should be daily and every day
in the calendar of life must be “Humanity Day”.
“You don’t Have to Be” is a
poem on the experiences of different regions of the world. Regardless of what
is being discussed about occurrences in other regions of the world, the place
of empathy might not be there because one is not in those shoes. However, the
human mind can give a “mental interpretation to the matter under discourse:
You
just have to be human
To
know the plight of others.
CONCLUSION
Tanure Ojaide is a poet
with the passion of speaking for his “dumb” or “speechless” people in the
nation through poetry. He has given us the “opportunity to experience other
countries through this poem. He extolled the virtues of people, made known the
true essence of communalism and the gratification of life. It is fundamental to
point out that the poem were written in simple language that can be understood
by any person but no simplistic. The anthology is distinct in its use of
punctuation which makes most of the lines; enjambment. The strength in his
poetry over the decades is contemporary and it has not lost touch with the
reality of what Nigerians face and citizens of other parts of the world.