Rhetoric of History and Politics: Odia Ofeimun’s A Boiling Caracas and Other Poems (2008)
Almayer’s Folly (1951) by Rene Magritte
By Ibrahim Nureni
This review examines Odia Ofeimun’s The Boiling Caracas and Other Poems (2008) within the imagination and thematization of political, social, cultural, and economic issues embedded in the collection. The poet, Odia Ofeimun, needs no elaborate introduction in the discourse of the Nigerian poetry written in English, since his radical literary route with The Poet Lied, his meta-collection published in 1980, lights up his artistic vision into the literary vista of postcolonial Nigerian poetry.
Odia Ofeimun is one of the doyens of Nigeria’s second-generation poets. His literary renditions portray the unwholesome embryo of the country and censure the reprehensible traits of powerful individuals that affect the country’s socio-political affairs. His poetry collection venturesomely goes beyond a mere indexing of societal ills and the aggravation of the downtrodden masses; it also decries the social and political imbroglios. In light of this, Ofeimun, in his literary opus, creates a social and political rivalry between the oppressed and the oppressor.
The title poem “A Boiling Caracas,” as a manifesto poem, explicates the weak point of the poet, Odia Ofeimun, as a result of the great hurricanes sweeping each generation in the political landscape of the country. The use of the first person narrative technique dwells on the fact that the poet is part and parcel of the odious predicament of the country, and to this edge; Ofeimun takes a keen attention to the political history of the country ranging from the attainment of independence up to the contemporary state. The poet considers the esotericism of the problems befalling him and the entire society as historical disillusionment, in which only a few are aware of the society’s problems. The perfected lyrical austerity of the collection is posited in the words, “I am weighed down,” with the intention of decrying the political and geographical dichotomy between the rich and the poor. To the poet, using a Marxist undertone, the society has been divided into two main groups—the bourgeoisie and the proletariats—and it is socially constituted in a way that empowers and enriches the well-to-dos, leaving the oppressed in the ghetto. As such, Ofeimun metaphorically considers his poetic sensibility as a tool “to repeal all unforgivable sins.” In the last stanza of the poem, Ofeimun uses a revolutionary tone to sink his poetic mission into the mind of the masses in order to wage war against the oppressors. Thus,
I let poetry marvel at happy cooperative mobs
let loose on the streets to prove bias mobilized
by the power of the dollars against the sassed Bolivar
What fun they have, dancing legs in old school jives
made for soccer tackles, dribbles and levitations
declaring motor traffic holidays across plazas
and military forts, with demos to end all demos (The Boiling Caracas…pg. 8)
In corresponding to the poem above, vouchsafe of art and artist is best captured in “To Bury the Dead.” The poem, written in a couplet structure, metaphorically demonstrates Ofeimun’s theory of art. Ofeimun’s theory of art reveals the personality of the artist as a very sensible being who is curious about life. In The Boiling Caracas and Other Poems, the poem “To Bury the Dead” is a clarion call for writers and the general public to discuss the issues surrounding the country, Nigeria, and Africa at large. To the poet, the voice of the writer is not sufficient to change the earth and therefore, the citizens should join the poet’s movement in this call for absolute power, in order “to corral the sick of the mind.” Ofeimun in this poem essentializes his imaginative vision to articulate the truth, which seeks to avoid the burial of the living, thus “the story not shared bids the dead rise/to bury the living. Until the truth speaks!”
In the elegy, “Death Abiding,” Odia Ofeimun unmasks the reader’s memory to the historical catastrophe of the Kano religious riots in 2004. The crises between the two major religions (Muslim and Christianity) point out the issue of religious bigotry that disturbs the peaceful scenery of Nigeria. The lyrical tenor of the words, “we died,” enriches the musicality of the poem and emphasizes the image of death that keeps lingering in the grief-stricken mind of the reader. The poet deploys the image of “muezzin” and “pulpits” as synecdoche to delineate the poisonous relationship between Muslim and Christianity, most especially when they wage war against one another:
We lapped up death
in the death of strangers
friends we knew too late
whose hands would shake ours
but for axe-blades powered
by muezzins, pulpits,
and the infallible rostrum (The Boiling Caracas…pg. 35)
The poem “Death Abiding II” is a poetic form of siamese twins to its predecessor, “Death Abiding I.” As usual, the poet-persona conveys a poetic voyage to the historical allusion of the Umuleri and Aguleri conflicts that started in 1933. This poem accounts the memory of the poet in relation to the historical processes and experiences of his society. To Ofeimun, therefore, death in this sense is avoidable if the two communities can deploy a diplomatic resolution; in contrast, death becomes the “rejoice for a day/in a mere sandwich that denounces evil” in the society. Ofeimun in this poem alludes to the long-winded war of Martin Luther as a mere battle in Nigeria that only starts and ends on the whistle of the lips. For the poet, the high number of the deceased is the only remedy to call for a serene mission in the country:
Inviting more deaths – fifty thousand bodies
taking water out of the Queen’s Lake
and eight hundred thousand hobbled visions
body counts gobbling peace missions (The Boiling Caracas…pg. 37-38)
The axis of societal dangerousness from amongst the drivers is vouched in the poem “Black Market.” The poet-persona narrates the experience of the wayfarers as a result of fuel scarcity. In a decrepit country in which the citizens suffer in the high proposition of social quagmires, the cultural rudiments of “gods,” “oracles,” and “proverbs” elucidate a touch of cultural aestheticism to reveal the black market as the only remaining option to a “shipwreck.” As the title suggests, “Black Market,” through a biblical allusion, is regarded as the last survivor “in the Ark/holding the key to life’s resurgence/in dark waters/before the sun’s utterance.” In the last two stanzas, the poet-persona divulges the hazardous act of marketing oil by the roadside as it exposes a high level of risk in the society:
Stark and ready
after a shipwreck
you forget the babalawo
of the black market
father of all contingencies
at your own risk (The Boiling Caracas… pg. 20)
Taken overall, The Boiling Caracas and Other Poems uses diverse images to crystallize a jungle of social, economic, and political quagmires that preoccupy the post-independent Nigerian poetry. Ofeimun’s treatment of political issues drives on the essentiality of the role of art and artist, as societal watchdogs, in the Nigerian environment. The musical and energetic focus of the poet reveals that the society holds a sublime power over his imagination. Ofeimun thus reworks the ideological propensity of a writer as a grand conception of his society. At the same time, the socio-cultural and political maladies are tools capable of forming sensory perceptions in Ofeimun’s poetic renditions. The unenthusiastic development of the Nigerian society provides the impetus of creating undiluted awareness about the political struggles, oppression, resistance, and insubordination that thematize the post-independent literature in Nigeria.
Ibrahim Nureni lives and writes in a beautiful world; his philosophy is “the sky is big enough for all the birds not to collide.” He uses art to soak boredom. When he is not writing, Ibrahim is somewhere in the world with a glass of wine and suya (spicy meat skewer). Follow him on Twitter @Nurenium.
