Reading Femi Osofisan’s well-languaged mind – Part 4

It is time to note that Remember Tenderness and The Jeweller of Night, the said two recent volumes which Kraftgriots and Mosuro Publishers, two Ibadan-based publishers, respectively issued, consist of poems which Femi Osofisan (Okinba Launko) himself picked, that is, selected, from his six earlier collections of poems. Let the gleaner list them as follows: Minted Coins (1987); Dream Seeker on Divine Chain (1992); Ire and Other Poems for Performance (1998); Pain Remembers, Love Rekindles (2000); Commemorations (2007); and Seven Stations Up the Tray’s Way (2013).

The specially chosen or, ‘re-created’ or ‘re-assembled’ poems in each of the two aforesaid new titles compete for artistic beauty with some new ones respectively contained in the two recent volumes. As I intimated previously, I am not doing a routine, run of the mill essay or review, so I won’t aptly or un-aptly apply and amplify the routine mode here.

I am interested in amplifying Okinba Launko as a poet of heterogeneity which is totally evinced in his collections, and especially in and with particular reference to the two latest volumes, which enable the gleaner to examine with evincive exactitude the respective characteristic of the poems or of the volumes that depict Okinba Launko’s stature, growth and maturity.

The logic of his arrangement or structure of the poems or of the volumes or of both illustrates our admiration for him as a well-languaged poet whose 1986 (when he wrote the first collection) (or 1987 when his first collection was published) poetic mind of early experience steadily grew to the maturity of middle age and beyond.

Since 1986 or 1987 when Okinba Launko won the very first Association of Nigerian Authors Prize for Literature with Minted Coins, there has been a visible development in his collections. One collection announces another progressively up to the last one (as we witnessed in our study of the poetry of the English Romantic poet, John Keats). Specifically with respect to the two volumes of new and selected poems gaining my attention, there is a development visible in each new poem and from one poem to another as well as from each part of each volume to another.

This development coupled with his manner to find expression to relate every experience or event or both that give stamp to his maturity at every stage as a poet makes him a unique and especially interesting poet whose well-languaged mind is fully evinced in each poem of his peculiar intensity of feeling. Of course, this is why he is Okinba Launko.

At this point the gleaner sees that Dan Izevbaye, already quoted above, should be re-quoted copiously in order to couple Femi Osofisan with his pen name:

“The unusual Yoruba name of the author of this collection of poems, Okinba (Royal-egret or King-egret) Launko (the-Honour-of-Writing or Honour-by-Writing), perhaps signifies his appreciation of the glory and fame that comes with creative writing. The names could also prepare the reader of this volume for the close interaction of the poet with nature and the modern urban environment, the main sources of the imagery by which he portrays the characters, evaluates the events, and expresses the emotions in his poems. As an African writing in a European language, this choice of name hints at his relation to other orders or guilds of artists, traditional and modern, African and European.” (TJON vii)

Dan Izevbaye’s eloquent prose which helps to guide the reader to read Femi Osofisan’s well-languaged mind as that of a Royal-composer who relishes the glory, fame and honour of the rhetoric of poetry cannot but debar me from interrogating the reasons why one of our pre-eminent poets adopted the humanist and honorific name of virtuous art as his non-de-plume. In any case, if he had stuck to his birth-name which we popularly know him by and with which he published his plays and scholarly essays, his fame and honour would not have been diminished in any way. Osofisan, to all intents and purposes, writes about subjects and different aspects of his life’s events elegantly in his philosophical ardour and gravity, and in a manner that divides his poetry into different codes of creativity that enhance his heterogeneous poetry.

The codes range from the traditional, that is, Yoruba folklore or art of composition, Renaissance sharp logic and inquiring mind, Romantic freshness of feelings and thought to socialist consciousness and commitment derived from material afflictions that The Jeweller of Night in particular contains. As a man and poet of diverse literary friendships, he praises, satirises and mocks as freely and judiciously as he heterogeneously borrows and adapts his verses to suit his art which he steadily renews and revises assiduously – as Remember Tenderness and The Jeweller of Night illustrate convincingly.

Femi Osofisan writes what I don’t hesitate to call triumphant poetry. So now I cannot but ask: Why did he use his non-de-plume to publish his collections? Was he afraid that his creative poetry would not receive the approval of his readers who had all the while appreciated and applauded his plays in print and on stage? Or should I go back to the point I raised much earlier concerning his not wanting to be identified as a poet when he was pursuing his career as a playwright and dramatist?

I am after all interrogating the mind of our pre-eminent well-languaged poet, our Okinba Launko. In doing so am I contradicting myself again in view of my earlier critical deposition? The question cannot but be asked – based on what now I must hold on tightly to my chest, but which I will divulge in a theoretical and critical study currently being embarked upon on our subject and other Nigerian poets after my gleaning heart.

Remi Raji, one of our scholarly scholar-poets, whose generation of poets my pen definitely or conveniently cannot define, in his foreword to Remember Tenderness, among other things, says thus: “This collection of new and selected poems invites the reader to share in remembrance of friendships and dainty tales, of promises, of lovers’ trysts, of the vows, benediction and magic only made possible by the passion and vitality of love.

Here indeed is a harvest of tenderness delicately served” (7). I am in agreement with Remi Raji. But I will go further than him to state that as a poet of the heterogeneous mind and mould, Osofisan’s love poems bear the marks of Yoruba folklore, of the Chilean poet Neftali Ricardo Reyes (non-de-plume Pablo Neruda), of the French Romantic poet Charles Baudelaire, of some English and non-English Romantic poets. I may be mistaken, but Femi Osofisan’s love poems convey themes and moods and feelings and emotions that enable the gleaner to liken him to other poets of other lands, other well-honed poets of other climes, apart from the ones I have listed, outside his time, bearing and compass.

Yet the gleaner must be impertinent. Will or does Femi Osofisan’s love poems appeal to young readers and younger poets of the contemporary generation or only to middle age readers or past middle age readers? I will underline my impertinence by not answering the question. But misunderstand me not because the gleaner’s inspiration, yes, the gleaner’s inspiration, should not be misunderstood. The gleaner and his subject are in control of the Muse that separately inspires them.

To be concluded next week.

Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.