Reading Femi Osofisan’s well-languaged mind – Part 3

Now I am getting to the point(s) I particularly wish to make about Femi Osofisan (Okinba Launko – his adorable pseudonym as Dan Izevbaye adorably wants us to understand it in his aesthetic meaning/explanation of his pseudonym in his foreword to The Jeweller of Night). The point(s) relate(s) to what I have called Femi Osofisan’s heterogeneous poetry.

Another name for it, for his kind of poetry – which Remember Tenderness and The Jeweller of Night display – is eclectic poetry. Before I dwell on this, I would like to respond – briefly (or un-briefly) – to a reader’s inquiry regarding the generation I am placing Femi Osofisan (or I wish to place him). The reader in question is a short story writer and novelist, Razinatu Mohammed of University of Abuja (now Yakubu Gowon University).

When I dwelt on the above question of generations of Nigerian poets and where to limit Femi Osofisan (or not to limit) him to, it may be that I did not express myself adequately, or that I expressed myself unsatisfactorily or disappointingly or unfavourably or badly or even poorly. Let me try to answer Razinatu Mohammed (and Sonny Awhefeada, a determinedly committed critic of Delta State University, Abraka with whom I had a lengthily lengthy telephone conversation on the same matter).

Let me do so in a circumlocutory manner. Gabriel Okara was a well known poet to us in my secondary school in the nineteen sixties – as Wole Soyinka, JP Clark and Chinua Achebe were. Gabriel Okara’s “Pianos and Drums” and “The Mystic Drum” were poems we extolled. (Up to now the poems still deserve my extolment). But he did not publish a collection of poems until 1978 when the now defunct Ethiope Publishing Corporation, Benin City, issued his The Fisherman’s Invocation. Do we place him in the generation of Wole Soyinka, JP Clark, Christopher Okigbo and Chinua Achebe? Furthermore, in 2005 Gabriel Okara (who was born in 1921) jointly won (with the far younger Ezenwa-Ohaeto (author of the 2003 published Chants of a Minstrel) who was born in 1958) the NLNG Literature prize with his second collection of poems, The Dreamer, His Vision which was published in 2005.

Again, to take another example out of other numerous ones: Romanus Egudu, already cited, as far as I know, published poetry before Femi Osofisan. Which generation does he belong to? Razanatu Mohammed’s inquiry is a huge one in the same way that Sonny Awhefeada’s contention is, to wit: that Femi Osofisan’s generation is glaring to all of us who are interested in the study of Nigerian poetry.

I can say that Femi Osofisan belongs to the generation that immediately follows that of the gargantuan four of Nigerian literature. But will I be right? Will we be right to say so?

As I can never bear my inability to do justice to the question and the issues placed before me by these two named highbrow, sophisticated readers (and other ones), I am willing to leave the point or matter unsettled; but I must stress here now, at least, that the truth of the matter, and why the gleaner has read or is reading Femi Osofisan’s poetry couched in his well-languaged mind is this: Okinba Launko (Femi Osofisan) is one of the Immortals-to-be of Nigerian Poetry.

He is one poet, one Nigerian poet, that Nigerian poets-to-come should study with reverence. Mabel Evwierhoma, another highbrow, sophisticated reader and a fellow poet, agrees with the gleaner.

The University of Abuja scholar-poet adds what may amount to be her clincher: “You have done one great ‘imaginer’ of great creativity deserving of great exposure that deserves further scrutiny, in critical terms by your essay. Femi Osofisan looms large. We all agree. What is Femi Osofisan’s form of poetry? You asked a pertinent question and may the responses flow in; may we ruminate on this spark of matter from the medulla.”

In addition to the above turns of mind, an Abuja-based Daily Independent columnist, Bob Etemiku, a young poet of a very young generation, responded to what I have written on Femi Osofisan so far as follows: “How mistaken I was, to have assumed that poets have no generational birthright (in a manner of speeching), but that they belong to “schools of thought,” just the same way there were Renaissance, Romantic Poets of the Lake School, etcetera. In Ali Mazrui’s The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, poets were expected to be one of these: Individualists, Social Collectivists, Universalists, and the emphasis, therefore, indisputably, I imagined, was on a poet worth his salt to be a blend of the individualistic and universalistic stock. Maybe we can pass the subject of your analysis through the rubrics?”

The alluded to reader-critics and intellectuals, in their respective ways, have raised arresting thoughts.nThe point which should follow quickly and naturally what I have just said or inspired is that Osofisan’s consciousness or inspiration as a pre-eminent Nigerian poet derives from the heterogeneous nature of his poetry not necessarily in subject-matter only but also in expression which in my theoretical and critical opinion make him universal.

In writing personally and as a Nigerian in subject-matter and in the manner of his rendering, he, like the Irish poet, Yeats, or other European poets or writers, he gives a universal stamp to Remember Tenderness and The Jeweller of Night.

Dan Izevbaye, one of the very best of our front-line theorists and critics of renown, notes, among other things, as follows in his foreword to The Jeweller of Night: “One quality that should favour this poet’s popularity with the reading public, apart from the poetry’s accessibility, is his mastery of the art of blending the elements of poetry-the synthesis of various themes and attitudes of different cultures and of different verse techniques.”

Femi Osofisan, like all good writers and masterful poets, is a wide reader – who has the added advantage of being trilingual – he speaks and communicates fluently, efficiently and competently in Yoruba, English and French which his two volumes are evidence of. Thus he is very much aware of cultures within cultures and of cultures outside cultures which help him admirably to do what he does in Remember Tenderness and The Jeweller of Night.

The gleaner will now try to gain access to his Muse in the artistic hope that favour will be granted him to talk to the volumes that will in turn grant him audience to enjoy the mind of the well-languaged master in such a way that will be of artistic and critical benefit of benefits to his audience.
Help me Muse! Help the gleaner! Help us all!
To be concluded.
Afejuku can be reached via 08055213059.