The Womb in the Heart & Other Poems

Tanure Ojaide on the poet: Preliminary notes on a writer’s poetics

“…In “The Music of Pain”, the first poem in the collection The Fate of Vultures and Other Poems , the coalescence of Ojaide’s well known poetic principles with those of the poet-speaker establishes the poem’s status as metacommentary. Drawing on “the chorus of resistant cries | to excoriate the land’s scurvy conscience”, the poet persona underscores his poetry as counterhegemonic and aimed “against over lords | who clamped reins upon the jawbones | of upright words” (1990: 2). The presiding war imagery of the poem paints a portrait of the committed poet as a warrior on whose self-sacrificial adventures in war or hunting the preservation of the clan lies.…”

“…By its theme as by its dedication to the Malawian writer-activist Jack Mapanje, “My Next Step” in the same collection as “The Music of Pain” does not only complement the latter poem as a manifesto poem; it complicates the poet’s burden. The image of the poet as a soldier is sustained in this poem as the persona “enlist[s] in the army of instant recovery” and moreover desires to “give birth to new warriors | who will love the abused land with their bodies” (1990: 20). This poem charts the path to the poet’s realization that self-giving is the hallmark of activism: Daemons of resistance are pacing about my head;they goad me beyond mere slogans.I pledge not only support, I give my lifeif that’s what it takes to revive the land.…”

“…Self-consciously echoing phrases from Okigbo’s “Heavensgate”, Ojaide exalts Okigbo’s poetry for its music potentially capable of transforming poetry into a powerful elemental force that enables the human soul to contemplate the deepest mysteries of life (Diala, 2020: 128). On the other hand, the imitative work of the new generation is indicted for being incapable of transporting the human pilgrim “to the hills | where streams invite for cleansing” (Ojaide, 1990: 52). The ultimate praise for the great poet at the close of the poem is not the controversial hierarchical arrangement of gender in which the male is preeminent; it is his heightened agency as a cultural hero of the clan with a discernible godly disposition: And his ears strain for passionate notesand, a man where others are women,he walks out, shouting with a divine sneer;where are the slit-drums I left you,where are the lithe fingers of the wind?…”