Unlike most poets in Nigeria, Osundare did not publish a collection of poetry until he was through with his formal academic studies and had secured a place as a lecturer at the University of Ibadan. This may seem of no consequence for the making of any poet. But it seems to bear some significance for Osundare who burst onto the scene in the early 1980s with an innovative poetic voice. One can extrapolate that, for all those years he was pursuing his higher studies, Osundare was gathering the momentum he needed to launch his voice. This is telling in that his debut collection drew overwhelming attention to him as a poet with a distinct voice. Apart from the poems \u201cEyekaire\u201d and \u201cA Wife\u2019s Complaint\u201d published in The Greenfield Review<\/em>, and an appearance in Reebou<\/em>, Osundare was not very much in the print while at Leeds and in Toronto. There were only a couple of poems in the London-based West Africa<\/em>. Resounding is his absence in Wole Soyinka\u2019s Poems of Black Africa<\/em> which features the young Odia Ofeimun, a notable contemporary of Osundare.<\/p>\n Of the three successful poets that form the trinity of their generation (Osundare, Ofeimun, Tanure Ojaide), Osundare was the last to come on board, although he and Ojaide had long established a literary dialogue that went back to their days at Ibadan. While a PhD student at York University, about the same time Ojaide was doing his graduate studies at Syracuse, USA, both of them had made their international debut in The Greenfield Review<\/em>. But it is pertinent to point out that Ojaide had published Children of Iroko and Other Poems<\/em> in 1973, a full decade before Osundare\u2019s first collection appeared. In 1981, Ofeimun\u2019s The Poet Lied<\/em> appeared to tremendous fame and controversy among the literati.1<\/sup> Due to its trenchant view on the gross ineptitude of Nigerian leaders and its thematic orchestration of the plight of the common people, Ofeimun\u2019s volume is often taken by scholars and critics to be the cornerstone of the emergence of the Osundare generation.2<\/sup> But perhaps Songs of the Marketplace<\/em> Osundare\u2019s first title drew more attention to the new phenomenon announced by Ojaide and Ofeimun. In their poetic praxis, Ojaide and Ofeimun sought to distance themselves from the existing tradition of Nigerian poetry in English characterised by turgid metaphors and quasi-private engagement, a result of the influences of Euro-American high culture. The modernist-traditionalist poetics of Soyinka, Christopher Okigbo and J. P. Clark, vigorously challenged at this time by notably Chinweizu and others, would become unpopular with these new poets.3<\/sup> The older poets mostly wrote about gods, personal cults, and myths; the new poets sought to write about ordinary people, societies, and realities. In this light, \u201cSongs of the Marketplace\u201d is an expression of disavowal, disconnection, and extrication from an existing poetic institution that conceived poetry mainly in the doctrine of modernism. Radical change was, in fact, paramount in Osundare\u2019s mind as the initial title he had for Songs of the Marketplace<\/em> was \u201cI Sing of Change\u201d.<\/p>\n In the initial manuscript of the collection, there was a section called \u201cEchoes from Canada\u201d; it was later excised due to lack of space. The first few years after 1979 when he returned to his job at Ibadan were not only dedicated to settling down as a lecturer but were also devoted to writing poetry. Most of the poems appeared in Opon Ifa<\/em>, a University of Ibadan-based literary magazine newly established and edited by Femi Osofisan who was growing popular as a playwright with radical aesthetics. Osundare points out that \u201cOsofisan\u2019s commitment to the promotion of literature was single-minded and remarkable. I cannot tell the story of my debut as a published poet without a generous acknowledgement of Opon Ifa<\/em>.\u201d4<\/sup> Osundare himself, along with Sam Asein and Molara Ajayi, was on the editorial board of Opon Ifa<\/em>; and he assisted Osofisan in the editing and production of many issues of the magazine.<\/p>\n But drama still held Osundare\u2019s attention. As soon as he returned from Toronto, he wrote a play that brought his name to visibility, as it was broadcast on the television. Osundare\u2019s secondary school mate, the artist Moyo Ogundipe, who later became Manager of Programmes for NTA \u2013 remembering the talented Thespian from the school days \u2013 had asked Osundare to write a play for the events marking the twenty years of Television in Africa. Osundare was barely a week in the country, having just returned from Canada; he was staying at the Ibadan University Guest House, pending the provision of a more permanent accommodation on campus. He wrote the play in that temporary abode. Entitled The Man Who Walked Away<\/em>, the play was broadcast on TV, and was favourably received by the audience. Encouraged by what he saw as the success of the play, Osundare, in 1982, wrote The State Visit<\/em>, which would sink into limbo probably because of the overwhelming reception his poetry got in the coming years. It was in early 1997 that Wale Oyinlola, a very enterprising Theatre Arts student at Ibadan, decided to direct and produce it as one of the activities marking Osundare\u2019s 50th<\/sup> birthday celebrations. In the following year Osundare would write another dramatic piece titled, The Wedding Car<\/em>.<\/p>\n In the family front, things seemed to be moving smoothly for Osundare. He was not just returning finally \u2013 after an academic sojourn in Canada \u2013 to his wife and son. The family was also blessed with a baby girl, named Osuntola Ibidun, in the month of December of 1979. Osundare\u2019s life now revolved around his family as he had to combine vital family chores with his work and his writing. Adekemi provided the support and comfort at the home front that aided these two enterprises.<\/p>\n 1981 saw Osundare putting his poems together, convinced that the time was ripe for him to bring out a collection. Also this year, he made a mark by winning a prize, with a letter of commendation, from the BBC poetry competition with the poem \u201cSiren\u201d. He approached the scholar and critic Francis Abiola Irele, who would later become a famous authority on African literature. Two things were in Osundare\u2019s mind when he gave the manuscript to Dr. Irele: the respected critic would give the manuscript the kind of judgement Osundare needed to approach a publishing outfit; further, Dr. Irele was himself the publisher of New Horn Press, a publishing company that had recently published Shadows and Dreams<\/em>, a stupendously fine book of poems by Harry Garuba, then a young, new voice on Nigeria\u2019s literary scene. Dr. Irele, with a speed that astonished Osundare, read the poems, and handed the manuscript back to Osundare with useful observations. Expectedly, Dr. Irele asked if Osundare would give the manuscript to his outfit. The answer was an enthusiastic yes. Irele then made the suggestion that the title of the book be changed from \u201cI Sing of Change\u201d to \u201cSongs of the Marketplace\u201d. So Irele it was who served as the baptist for Osundare\u2019s first book of poems, an act for which Osundare remains grateful to this day.<\/p>\n The volume enjoyed good reviews. But beyond reviews, it arguably displaced the earlier poetry volumes that sought to draw attention to a new kind of Nigerian poetry and poetics. Its greatest advantage in this regards was and is the much-quoted opening poem of the collection, and the aesthetic ideology that coherently pervades the entire volume. Entitled \u201cPoetry Is\u201d, it became and continues to be a reference point as a metapoem that uncompromisingly sets out what the poet Osundare considers the defining characteristic of the new poetry. The poem begins by negating what was becoming an established canon in Nigerian poetry in English \u2013 the conception of poetry as an \u201cesoteric\u201d literary expression that is not only tediously demanding but also entrenched in what Osundare calls \u201cGrecoroman lore\u201d. This, in other words, is an attack, earlier launched in Chinweizu et al\u2019s Towards the Decolonization of African Literature<\/em>, on the influence of Euro-American modernist tradition on African writing. In fact, Chinweizu et al\u2019s book partly influenced Osundare\u2019s position. Other notable influences on him at this time were Jean-Paul Sartre\u2019s What is Literature<\/em>? and George Thomson\u2019s Marxism and Poetry<\/em>. Osundare\u2019s argument, well put in \u201cPoetry Is\u201d, centres on what constitutes a genuine, accessible poetry, the techniques and protocols of that poetry, and its meaning and usefulness to the audience. The move is to remove poetry from an abstract realm and situate it in society, among a people whose organic connection with poetry would form the most useful factor in the realisation and import of a poem. The shift in paradigm sought is to place poetry, whose idiom and purpose have hitherto been privatist, at the core of the human enterprise in the context of nature and the universe:<\/p>\n Poetry is Poetry is Between the lines, we discern human beings such as the hawkers in a marketplace and the farmers who walk the dusty paths to their farms. We also discern natural phenomena such as the dew, the wind, and the sun. Osundare\u2019s poetic vision, as is made quite clear from this first poem, and as has been demonstrated in volume after volume, recognises the existence of man, woman, boy, girl; it perceives these humans in a natural environment in which they struggle to live. The vision is firmly centred on the generic man. This informs the poem\u2019s conclusion that \u201cPoetry \/ is \/ man \/ meaning \/ to \/ man.\u201d<\/p>\n In line with Osundare\u2019s poetic vision the remaining poems in Songs of the Marketplace<\/em> thematise various issues that affect the lives of the common people in society. In poems such as \u201cExcursions i-iv\u201d (influenced by Osundare\u2019s reading of Michael Harrington\u2019s The Other America<\/em>), \u201cSule Chase\u201d, \u201cThe Nigerian Railway\u201d, \u201cUdoji\u201d, \u201cSiren\u201d, Osundare demonstrates a keen knowledge of the goings-on in Nigeria, and gives a sense of poetic intervention in the daily affairs of society. In other poems, such as \u201cOn Seeing a Benin Mask in a British Museum\u201d, \u201cSoweto\u201d, \u201cNamibia Talks\u201d, \u201cZimbabwe\u201d, and \u201cFor Hiroshima\u201d, Osundare left no one in doubt that he was not only a keen watcher of world affairs, he also thought it was imperative for him as a poet to lend his voice to the articulation of the plight of other humans in other parts of the world. Unlike his predecessors, notably Okibgo and Soyinka, Osundare did not consider it worthy to inscribe himself, either in the form of mythopoeic association with a god\/goddess or of personal odyssey, in his poetry. The volume\u2019s tenor is totally social, and Osundare\u2019s sense of detachment, of socialist realism, distinguishes the poems.<\/p>\n To reiterate. Osundare\u2019s volume would not be the first to exemplify this shift in paradigm. In fact, Osundare\u2019s poetic or artistic gospel is part of a larger design to interrogate the existing literary tradition in Nigeria. And as Biodun Jeyifo points out in his 1987 introduction to Songs of the Marketplace<\/em>, Osundare\u2019s poetic debut coincided with a period seen by many as a time of poetic revolution in Nigeria. The revolution was not just in the size of the poetic production but also in the thematic dimension that poetry had taken. The Nigerian civil war hurt people into writing poetry. Like Ofeimun (as expressed in his The Poet Lied<\/em>), most of the poets were worried that poetry was not duly deployed to the service of the common people. Hence the demotic dimension of poetic art that saw poets and writers with unprecedented social messages. But critics, such as Jeyifo, were quick to notice the peculiar voice of Osundare. For Jeyifo, \u201c[Osundare\u2019s] poetry constitutes a distinct revolution within the new poetic \u2018revolution.\u2019\u201d6<\/sup> The peculiarity is rooted in Osundare\u2019s technique. With a PhD in Applied Linguistics, and now gaining ground as a teacher of Literary Stylistics, Osundare came to poetry with, as it were, a more word-sensitive mind. That is to say, Stylistics all the more reinforced the wisdom handed to him by his parents that words were objects of seamless aesthetic possibilities. His training in stylistics had a far-reaching effect on him in the sense that his greatest artistic promise, conspicuous in his debut volume, was and is still his intimate understanding and clever, witty deployment of words for the expression of abstract, poetic concepts. Added to that was his aesthetic choice of retaining local and Yoruba traditional concepts in his poetic expression, with the yearning to render his poetry with an authentically Yoruba flavour. Because of Osundare\u2019s almost romantic intimacy with words, and the reasoned option to swathe explicitly social issues in balanced, orality-inclined craft, Jeyifo predicted in 1987 that \u201cit is probable that in due course Osundare will attract attention or achieve recognition as much for his meticulous, consummate deftness in the craft, the technique, the logistics of poetic expression as for his radical utopian views\u201d.7<\/sup> That prediction would soon come to pass as Osundare, volume after volume, inscribed his dazzling poetics on the Nigerian literary terrain.<\/p>\n For Osundare, the interrogation of the existing literary tradition in Nigeria must be total. In the poetic medium as well as in scholarly and critical forums, he insisted on poetry, all forms of art, being a domain for the articulation of the strengths and weaknesses, aspirations and struggles, of all peoples. A notable scholarly piece that captured his theoretical thoughts in those years was the 1986 monograph The Writer as Righter: the African Literary Artist and His Social Obligations<\/em>, first written as an invited chapter for a book by Mbye Cham, the Gambian scholar. To date, there is yet no essay by Osundare that better articulates the belief in the connection between art and society, the compulsive prescription that the artist, the poet, must set his\/her vision on the welfare of society, on the plight of the common people in their daily struggle for survival. The essay itself is a manifestation of Osundare\u2019s wide-ranging reading in socialist aesthetics, in the sociology of arts, and his understanding of Marxist exertions on artistic creation. It also manifested Osundare\u2019s knowledge, at that time, of the received literary tradition in Africa, its growth and evolution in the hands of the first few African writers, its inevitable intersection with African traditional aesthetics. He was fired up by the radical existentialism of Jean-Paul Sartre, by the Africanist, liberationist rhetoric of Ngugi wa Thiong\u2019o, of Ayi Kwei Armah, of Agostinho Neto, of Frantz Fanon; and by the inspirations he got from radical socialist and communist thinkers such as the Caribbean CLR James and Martin Carter, Patrick Wilmot and the African American W. E. B. Du Bois. Osundare was aware too, and used this to buttress his argument, of great English writers who, beyond thematising the fate of the ordinary people in their writings, theorised the undeniable relevance of writing to the society. He ratchets up the humanism of Sidney, of Shelley, of Arnold, of Neruda, of Brecht; he dissects the realism of Dickens, of Balzac, and of the Russian novelists who, in his view, \u201cprepared people\u2019s minds\u201d for the Bolshevik revolution.<\/p>\n Osundare took his time down the lane of world literary canons to prove a point to his precursors, most notably Soyinka and Okigbo whom he most revered, that literature, from time immemorial, had been in the service of humanity. Obviously influenced by the criticisms he read about his precursors, but more importantly by his own critical reading of what they wrote, he had become convinced, along with many others, that the first generation of Anglophone Nigerian writers, especially the poets (Okigbo, Soyinka, Clark), focused their poetics on mythopoeic rendition of personal gods and cults. It does seem that Osundare felt that, for these poets and other writers who had become so Eurocentric in their artistic bearing (for this was what most critics of the trio felt), the proper way to call their attention was to remind them that even the English literary tradition, the entire world literary tradition, was suffused with art for society\u2019s sake. Osundare argues at length in The Writer as Righter<\/em> that every literary tradition in the world has writers who have visions that embrace the downtrodden.<\/p>\n Not uncommon with such theoretic rhetoric, Osundare is uncompromising in his heavy-handed, prescriptive statements. He declares that \u201cthe existence of temporal and spiritual oppression which manifests itself in socio-economic and cultural subjugation does not only make the writer\u2019s mission necessary, it makes it inevitable\u201d.8<\/sup> For Osundare, a writer who looks on without denouncing the oppression in the society, without taking a position in favour of the ordinary people, is one that has \u201cmoved from the corridors of power to its bed-chamber\u201d.9<\/sup> With such writers upholding the literary heritage of Africa, Osundare believes, the project of education for emancipation has failed: \u201cthe colonial education of the African has resulted in his domestication rather than liberation, has moulded him into a hapless petit-bourgeois with unconscionable love for foreign values and aristocratic disdain for the common people\u201d.10<\/sup> In the fashion of Chinweizu et al, Osundare comes hard on Soyinka, Okigbo, Clark and Emmanuel Echeruo. He identifies what he calls the Kabiyesi<\/em> (Yoruba for king) syndrome in the burgeoning Nigerian drama and theatre. The heroes in the dramas of Soyinka and other playwrights of his kind \u201care either super men or supernatural men\u201d, thus leaving no room for the elevation of the common person. He sees nothing socialist in Soyinka\u2019s Idanre and Other Poems<\/em>. He faults Chinua Achebe\u2019s novels, especially the first three, for not boldly presenting a \u201cpowerful dialectics between past, present and future\u201d. He dismisses Michael Echeruo\u2019s Mortality<\/em> for being silent on the social and political events of the 1960s. In his view, \u201c[Clark] graduated from the socially weightless, childishly imitative poems of A Reed in the Tide<\/em> to the fresh mellifluity of Casualties<\/em>, a collection whose questionable political vision is reinforced by indiscreet explanatory notes evincing embarrassing political hero-worship\u201d.11<\/sup> The acerbity of Osundare\u2019s tone is unmistakable. This somewhat hostile gesture towards his predecessors would turn out to be an act of clearing space, a vital step towards achieving his own creative space. There is no doubt that he himself was, to a large extent, influenced by their poetry, especially the poetry of Okigbo. In his essay, \u201cNiyi Osundare and His Poetic Choices\u201d, included in The People\u2019s Poet: Emerging Perspectives on Niyi Osundare<\/em>, Tanure Ojaide attempts to show the influence of Okigbo and Soyinka on Osundare. But it is pertinent to point out that Osundare did not, as a matter of fact, imitate the poetry of his predecessors, as the tenor of Ojaide\u2019s essay implies. Osundare was careful not to produce any poetic rendition, especially in his first outing, which might be seen as a vestige of his modernist-influenced predecessors. The influence of these precursors on Osundare, as evident in his first poetry collection, was characterised by anxiety (to echo Harold Bloom\u2019s idea of the anxiety of influence). The relationship was that of tension in which Osundare needed to theoretically, polemically denounce or discredit his precursors\u2019 praxis, not really because they were worthless, but because doing that would turn attention to his supposedly new voice. In other words, Osundare\u2019s debut, both in poetic and theoretic spheres, constituted a strategy that all \u201cstrong\u201d poets, according Bloom, deploy to announce their presence on the literary scene. Bloom in The Anxiety of Influence<\/em> says of the new poet, such as Osundare at this stage: \u201c[to] appropriate the precursor\u2019s landscape for himself, [he] must estrange it further from himself\u201d.12<\/sup> Osundare\u2019s \u201cPoetry Is\u201d and The Writer as Righter<\/em> are clearly his articulation of the estrangement of his precursors\u2019 landscape whose consequence, immediate and long-lasting, projects his own voice as the suitable substitute to the voices of his predecessors.<\/p>\n Osundare\u2019s rhetoric, which has its basis in a materialist conception of art, would not go uncontested. In point of fact, Osundare, while clearing a poetic space for himself, was lending a voice to a familiar debate in modern African literature. He came to the scene at a time when literary criticism in Africa was, in Obi Maduakor\u2019s words, \u201cpitched into two opposing camps: the Leavisians who appreciate works of imaginative literature for their humanising influence; and the Marxist radicals who think that it should radically transform society\u201d.13<\/sup> Although, like most writers in Nigeria, he has been careful not to publicly label himself, it was evident from his theoretical option and poetic praxis that Osundare was inclined to Marxism. What is today regarded as the second-generation of Nigerian poetry in English, inaugurated by the poetry of Ojaide, Ofeimun and Osundare, was formed, as we have seen so far, by a radical, Marxism-rooted, rejection of the status quo in Nigerian modern poetic tradition. Marxism, whether it was parochial or not, conveniently became a label, as Maduakor points out, for the aforementioned trinity of the second-generation poetry, which they shared with other emerging, post-war playwrights and novelists such as Femi Osofisan, Tess Owueme, Bode Sowande, Kole Omotosho, and Festus Iyayi. It is fair, though, to point out that some of them have not really accepted the Marxist label. While some of them have been suspicious of the doctrinaire posture of Marxism, their writings have been often hastily classified as Marxist by critics eager to give them a label.<\/p>\n The opposing camps were constantly in debate, mainly manifesting in the critical and theoretical thoughts going on in Nigerian universities in the 1970s and 1980s. University of Ibadan, Ibadan, University of Nigeria, Nsukka, Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, and Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, became notable bases of Nigerian Marxism. A circle of Marxist thinkers (Biodun Jeyifo, Omafume Onoge, G. G. Darah, Femi Osofisan, Kole Omotoso, Ola Oni, John Ohierhenuan) in the form of the Ibadan-Ife Group emerged, made up of scholars and writers. Osundare identified himself with this group, although he was not a vocal member of it. This group constantly taunted and haunted Soyinka, regarded by many as an archetype of Euro-modernist, and challenged the critical practice and theoretical assumptions of the so-called Leavisian critics and scholars (Dan Izevbaye, Kolawole Ogungbesan, Charles Nnolim, Donatus Nwoga, David Ker, Pius O. Dada, among others) who would be regarded as the pioneers of literary criticism in Nigeria. The debate or quarrel between the Ibadan-Ife Group and the non-Marxist group, in the words of Jeyifo, himself a prominent member of the Marxist group, \u201c[c]entred around our call for application of a rigorous class approach to the analysis and evaluation of the production and reception of works of art and literature in Africa, especially given the fact that a class approach in African literary-critical discourse was at that time decidedly marginal\u201d14 <\/sup>But it was the view of the non-Marxists, the Leavisians, that literature, as an imaginative sphere, could not be subjected to the somewhat unilateral prescriptivism of Marxism, which implied that all literature must be produced and evaluated through the class approach. Their training in formalism favoured a work of literature or criticism that paid attention to the formal properties of literature such as style, characterisation, plot, setting, structure; the tropological dimension of literary expression, the entire gamut of craft. The core of their argument, as repeatedly expressed in their essays, was an adequate attention to the form of literature \u2013 since literature was primarily a product of craft; and a balanced treatment of issues, social and humanistic, in a manner that gave no room to the imposition of one\u2019s idea on the readership. While they did not dispel literature\u2019s desire to serve humanity, they frowned at what they considered the rigid consideration of literature and criticism through dialectical materialism \u2013 that a literary work must express the aspirations of the proletariat in the society. Expectedly, it was in the aspect of what Izevbaye called technical excellence that the formalists launched their attack on the Marxists. Donatus Nwoga, for instance, said \u201c[nobody] should expect a poet to vulgarize his inspiration and strategies to fit into the laziness of those who do not want to make effort to appreciate his achievement\u201d.15<\/sup> Izevbaye concluded on the emergent Marxism-inclined writers of the Osundare generation that \u201cI think there is too much impatience, too little respect for form and especially for language\u201d.16<\/sup> The debate would rage on. Osundare\u2019s poetic praxis played itself into the centre of this debate, as now and then critics and scholars would quote his poetry to buttress their views on the side of Marxism. In many ways, this debate that in fact pre-dated his poetry offered Osundare the latitude to fashion a poetics with a solid base not only in materialism but also in the kind of \u201ctechnical excellence\u201d advocated by the formalist camp. His knowledge of Stylistics proved vital not only for his work as a teacher but also in his capacity as poet highly sensitive to the inner working of words, to the chemistry of sound. Critics and scholars of all persuasions would recognise the \u201cpoetic revolution\u201d of Osundare rooted in a stylistic bravado and a liberationist gospel. Songs of the Marketplace<\/em> turned out to be just a step in this direction, as subsequent volumes presented the Osundare phenomenon in greater depth and degree. In retrospect, Osundare believes, the emergence of the Positive Review Group and their journal of the same name and their influence on contemporary thought and ideas, especially the pivotal motivational roles of scholar-activists like Biodun Jeyifo and Omafume Onoge, deserves more attention by scholars interested in the study of the development of literature, politics, and ideas in Nigeria in the decade between 1975 and 1985.17 <\/sup>Osundare and his wife were blessed with another baby girl, as his last child Bayonle was born on 22 March 1983. She would grow up to be an intelligent, quiet girl. A crucial engagement for Osundare in 1984 was the public lecture he delivered at his alma mater, Amoye Grammar School when it marked its silver jubilee.<\/p>\n 1984 saw Village Voices<\/em> as a successor to Songs of the Marketplace<\/em>. If the latter, with its theoretic, quasi-polemic insight, announced a poet who boasted of the knowledge of the world, of his continent, of his country, and of his fervent dream of transforming the society through poetry, the latter locates and localises his aesthetics in a source-base that would come to encompass and define the entire range of his poetic output to date. It is also useful to see Village Voices<\/em> as a true praxis of the theory which \u201cPoetry Is\u201d propounds. In this vein, the volume is indeed the first uniquely Osundarean creation that launches orality as the most distinctive premise for the appreciation of Osundare\u2019s poetry. Nobody talks about Osundare\u2019s poetry without mentioning its reliance on Yoruba orality; Osundare himself repeatedly gives people the impression that the strength of his poetry is its dependence on orality. It is in Village Voices<\/em>, as the title suggests, that Osundare begins that conscious aestheticisation of Yoruba orality. Village Voices<\/em> is also seminal in its conspicuously thematic unity \u2013 from now on, Osundare would design each of his collections around a central idea with all poems having something to say about the idea. The volume is dedicated to Osundare\u2019s father and this, as we have seen in chapters One and Two, speak volume of his poetic inspiration.<\/p>\n The volume derives its strength from a steady concentration on the folkways of a bucolic community \u2013 certainly Ikere-Ekiti \u2013 that is symbolic of rural life in Africa. Poem after poem, Osundare realises a relentless tenor of a dialectic that seeks to stage rural mores as a needed foundation for a worthwhile existence. The volume\u2019s central message is hinged on Osundare\u2019s conviction that good artistry, a salutary concomitance to good life, can only be found in pastoral societies; that western civilisation, scientific and technological advancement, as well as a sickened sense of urbanisation, have blinded people and they can hardly see the traditional values that can positively enhance their lives. This romanticism permeates the entire volume, and bursts onto Osundare\u2019s finer volumes yet to come.<\/p>\n As though the poems are arranged to portray the details of the activities of a typical day in a village, the volume opens with the title \u201cI wake up this morning\u201d. It becomes immediately obvious that it is not the time of waking up that matters in this poem, but the place where the persona wakes up \u2013 a rural community. The volume is interested in pointing out that such activities are different from the one the civilised, educated readers already know:<\/p>\n I wake up this morning The poem asserts all through the lines that where the persona wakes up is a place where the best of life can be got. It goes on to tell of the healthy activities that take place in this community. Osundare relates activities which he grew up seeing at Ikere-Ekiti, such as spinning and weaving and farming which he witnessed from childhood. But this poem, besides relating the daily activities of the village, also presents the poet Osundare \u2013 his aesthetics and humanism. Coming as a prologue, under the subheading of \u201crising voice\u2026\u201d, it becomes a base for the poet\u2019s self-fashioning, as it operationalises the doctrine encapsulated in \u201cPoetry Is\u201d. Here is a poet that emerges straight and uncontaminated, as it were, from the village; a poet whose voice is one of the many voices of wisdom the volume claims to have collected. In line with his subversive, anti-establishment tendency announced in Songs of the Marketplace<\/em>, this village poet is set to tell kings that their \u201cfart \/ chokes the village nose\u201d. Further, in his words,<\/p>\n My words will not lie like a eunuch wind But the words can only be this potent, the volume implies, when they are situated within a sturdy traditional poetics. In \u201cA Dialogue of the Drum\u201d, this poetics is fully fleshed out, as Osundare draws our attention to the aesthetics begotten of traditional drums in Ikere-Ekiti such as bata<\/em>, omele<\/em>, gangan<\/em>, gbedu<\/em>, ibembe<\/em>, reso<\/em>, ogbele<\/em> and adan<\/em>. Osundare had known all these drums from childhood, had watched his own father perform with some of them (especially bata<\/em>), had himself belonged to a band group that used some of the drums, and had known the languages<\/em> of these drums before he ever thought of becoming a poet. The poem, in short the entire<\/p>\n volume, is a celebration of the rich craft and profound artistry that Osundare grew up witnessing, knowing, and partaking in before the quest for higher education took him away from his native town and cultural base.<\/p>\n Village Voices<\/em>, therefore, alerts us to one vital fact: Osundare is a man, a poet, whose subject, poetic vision, and aesthetics are overwhelmingly influenced by orality. He has consistently pointed out at different forums that there is just no way he could have avoided orality when he grew up in a society with such rich and viable oral culture; when he was an oral artist (a traditional musician) before he became a modern poet; when his parents were oral artists (singer, drummer, story teller, conversationalist) who first exposed him to the literary nuances of words. It was therefore not really a matter of choice for Osundare to deploy Yoruba orality; what is more a choice for him was\/has been his resolve to stretch this orality in the direction of consummate political and humanistic thematics. What Osundare has really done in Village Voices<\/em> is to enfold his usual political theme in Yoruba traditional lore, using Yoruba proverbs and speech pattern to condemn bad leaders, to awaken the people\u2019s collective sensibility towards their self-emancipation, and to call attention, through a pastoral perspective, to the evils that go on in a society. Vivid in Village Voices<\/em> is Osundare\u2019s intention to give voice to the villagers who are voiceless in a culturally and socio-politically warped post-colonial nation. This is the impression one gets from reading poems such as \u201cThe new farmer\u2019s bank\u201d, \u201cA villager\u2019s protest\u201d and all the poems collected under the subtitle \u201cVoices of anger and indictment\u201d. Some poems express Osundare\u2019s personal experience; one of such is \u201cA reunion\u201d in which he recounts the experience of meeting his former primary school classmate as a cleaner at the university guest house where he, Osundare, now a university lecturer, to his absolute surprise, had called for room service and it was this old classmate who came to run the errand.<\/p>\n Like Songs of the Marketplace<\/em>, Village Voices<\/em> stirred the literary scene especially at Ibadan where Osundare and his contemporaries were engaging in extra-literary, intellectual activities to disrupt what they saw as the complacency of the literati and the intellectual class. It was at this time that the Marxist ferment was strong across Nigeria. The ideas of the left had been widely disseminated by Positive Review<\/em>, the radical journal run by Biodun Jeyifo, Omafume Onoge, Kole Omotoso, Femi Osofisan, John Ohierhenuan, G. G. Darah, among others. As I pointed out earlier, Osundare was not only heavily influenced by the ideas of these Marxists who were mostly his colleagues, he saw himself as one of them. At this time, he had proved his mettle in the academia with a number of journal publications, appearing in such notable journals as African Literature Today<\/em>, and Ufahamu<\/em>. Being the first son, the tradition demanded that he shoulder most of the responsibilities, even if not materially but morally. He had been prepared for this task. But, in spite of his reverence for his culture, he was taken aback by some of the traditional demands which he saw as excessive. By the community standards, his father was a great man \u2013 an accomplished yam and cocoa farmer, with wives and many children; a man of traditional and social significance: a drummer, composer, singer, and humorist, nicknamed Ariyoosu (the one whose presence brings joy like the new moon). The entire community saw Osundare\u2019s father as deserving of a great funeral. In their eyes, this would not be a problem because his heir had bagged a doctorate, was a university lecturer, a writer with rising popularity. They equated Osundare\u2019s achievements with the kind of riches that should give his father the best funeral. A huge budget was placed before Osundare. He possibly did not have the money they wanted from him; further, he thought that the budget was outrageous. With difficulty, he got his kinsmen, some of them very reluctant, to trim down the budget. The funeral was held successfully, although not without some grumbling that Baba (Osundare\u2019s father) deserved more. \u201cBut the event,\u201d according to Osundare, \u201cbrought home to me the terrible excesses of some Yoruba traditional practices, especially those ones that could make you bankrupt in an attempt to satisfy traditional expectations. I love Yoruba culture \u2013 but without its owambe <\/em>excesses.\u201d21<\/sup><\/p>\n What was crucial to Osundare was not spending money on ostentatious funeral, but the legacy his father left behind and how it could be sustained. Aguntasoolo was a man of his time but also a man of the future; or, precisely, a man who envisaged a space in the unfolding modernity for his children. There was a special bond between his first son Niyi and himself; he prayerfully watched how his son would become a western-educated version of him. After the gift of a fountain pen for his son, he had eagerly followed the progress of the boy through the stages of western education. His dream came fulfilled as he bristled with boundless joy the day his son brought a copy of his first collection Songs of the Marketplace<\/em> to him. Osundare himself better describes the emotion of his father:<\/p>\n I will never forget the smile on his face and the pleasure in his soul the day I showed him my first book in 1983. He removed his cap, touched his head with the book, and said a very, very deep prayer. Then he sent for a keg of palm wine, summoned his friends, and proudly displayed what he said was the new addition to his family\u2019s wealth. Father didn\u2019t know how to read and write. In fact, he held the book upside down while trying to \u2018read\u2019 it. But he thumbed its pages, felt its texture, gauged its weight, and insisted on keeping the copy I brought. When one of his colleagues asked what use was the book to a man who could not read, Father shot back in his characteristically assertive way: \u2018Iwe ni me mo; mo mi nu mi. Ki me mi wee, iwee mo mi<\/em> (I may not know the book, but I surely know my inside\/mind. I may not know this book, but this book knows me).22<\/sup><\/p>\n Aguntasoolo\u2019s deep conviction was that great wisdom, the type that would propel one to greatness, resided in a book, and his son, now able to write a book, was already imbued with that greatness. Osundare was a son after his father\u2019s heart; he himself continues to cling, even if sentimentally, to the belief that without having the father he had he would not today have been the poet he is.<\/p>\n Notes<\/strong><\/p>\n Revolution within the Poetic Revolution<\/strong>
\n<\/p>\n
\nthe hawker\u2019s ditty
\nthe eloquence of the gong
\nthe lyric of the marketplace
\nthe luminous ray
\nof the grass\u2019s morning dew<\/p>\n
\nwhat the soft wind
\nmusics to the dancing leaf
\nwhat the sole tells the dusty path
\nwhat the bee hums to the alluring nectar
\nwhat rainfall croons to the lowering eaves.5<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\nAppropriating the Precursor\u2019s Landscape<\/h4>\n
\n<\/p>\n
\n<\/p>\nBut this Book Knows Me<\/h4>\n
\nwith a song in my throat
\na youthful breeze harps the leaves
\nrising feet drum the road
\nto meet the upland sun
\nmy sole treads the dew
\nrousing my body
\nto the virgin cool of earth.18<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\nfluttering leaves in a barren forest
\nmy words will climb the tree of wisdom
\nfeed multitudes with fruits of thought
\nand plant the earth with potent seeds.19<\/sup><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\n
\n1985 brought the pang of death. On 19 January Osundare woke up to the tragedy that his father, his greatest poetic influence, had crossed the river of life to the land of his ancestors. It was after a brief illness. Usually, Osundare\u2019s father was never sick; his amazing reserve of energy and strength was expended on his farms. According to Osundare, \u201cBaba was a man with the strength of iron. The only time he slept in a hospital was during the illness that led to his death. I was by his bedside most of the five days he spent in hospital, but missed his dying moment because I was away in search of his medication. My mother was at his bedside throughout, and never missed that moment.\u201d20<\/sup><\/p>\n\n
\n
\n
\nUnlike most poets in Nigeria, Osundare did not publish a collection of poetry until he was through with his formal academic studies and had secured a place as a lecturer at University of Ibadan. This may seem of no consequence for the making of any poet. But it seems to bear some significance for Osundare who burst onto the scene in the early 1980s with an innovative poetic voice. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1970,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essays"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2118,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/2118"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue21\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}