Afam Akeh: Letter Home & Biafran Nights – The poet as priest
Ikhide
Cornelius Hamelberg
Up-dated
Don Ikhide,
Indeed this is the digital age and now
Now I know where you’re at...
(Idleness & boredom speaking here):
Nostalgia thy name is Ikheloa
She must have been something else - He says
“words fail me each time I remember.”! Him probably feeling weak in the knees
Oh Don Ikheloa’s enthusiasm,
“wondrous and enchanting even under England’s moody skies ( like Wordsworth)
communing in a lazy haze”
With John Donne it was “The Canonization.”
With Ikhide it’s Akeh’s glorification, another kind of beatification - as Ginsberg wrote - Poet is priest – and oh oh! Ikheloa !
Oh his appreciation/ Criticism / critical positions about one of his favorite poets, - he quotes him profusely but his poet is not quite open for dissection, not Like a patient etherized upon a table .
Oh Ikheloa! Such enthusiasm! Such magical enchantment! And such encouragements, such ecstasy! Such pure delight under England’s languid language sky!
This evening, the moon not so sad over here in cyberspace, listen Brother-man, not only over Syria: THE MOON IS SAD ! - the clouds they’ve already cried all night, and Brother man Ik-he-loa imbued with all the language tools under his belt and all that it takes – this praise singer, at ease with the world and himself, this Tunde Nightingale , to give vent to full-throated praise: “the majesty of Akeh’s words” etc in spite of which he cries that “Each of these writers and many more of their generation deserves the prize and more – not just for their books, but for a lifetime of selfless dedication to the cause of world literature.”
“This is not your mother’s poetry” Papa Ikhide continues as if talking about the mother of all poetry - maybe even “the father of Modern Nigerian poetry ” when Ikhide sings like this you never know what posterity may bringout of the coffin – someone may even exclaim like the brother in this ad - “holy mother of God!” – and forget to say astagfirullah!
And so Don Ikhide goes on and on and on and on till I hear the lady muse whisper in my ear say,
Hello there! Where’s Transströmer , is he still writing in his native tongue?
Takes us back to
And these three issues raised in
A Challenge to Poetic Generosity » 3:AM Magazine
These general questions for discussion:
1. Is “a poem’s ornamentalisation is a consequence of its own agency rather than of the collective cultural imagination’s requirement for a territory distinct from the shabbiness and clutter of the everyday. Such a position patronises because it affects to scold the poem for shunning the soiled language of acquisition and exchange whilst simultaneously indulging its capacity to do so “(Question: When do clichés become clichés?
2. “Underpinning an understanding of the generosity of, for example, Zadie Smith, is a plexus of liberal humanist vagaries handed down from E.M. Forster, all of which come down to little more than a proposal that literature should – and here’s another baggy idea – enrich the community to which it is addressed.” (A relevance which only the reader can confirm – ama thinking about re “-books that apparently only their relatives and friends read...”
3. Some matters in this paragraph about generosity that I*m sure should interest you...” what we’re faced with here is an overworn division between writing which is well-wrought and accessible and that which wields its complexity to conceal an absence of craftsmanship. Raine’s conviction that the poets in the ‘postmodern poetic school’ aspire to difficulty for its own sake has a motivation coextensive with the one which drives the celebration of generosity. Difficult poetry, we’re asked to believe, padlocks the gate behind itself, refusing entry to members of a vaguely-defined public who come in search of enrichment. What Raine neglects is the fact that there is another form of literary generosity, namely one which trusts its readership to do the work and, in doing so, generates new communities of response. Raworth’s unexpected diversions, garden-path sentences, and abrupt slips into profanity (see ‘Baggage Claim’: ‘a lacy white statue parched/ bronze beneath shit on a stick’) call for these in ways which are unceasingly unpredictable. He might be careless when it comes to anthologising his own work, but when it comes to the writing itself he’s anything but.”
From Seamus country: Poetic CHampions compose
Hopefully, soon see you here – ticket available; Don I and I “will fly”?
Sincerely,
Ikhide
From: Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
To: usaafric...@googlegroups.com
Cc: Toyin Falola <USAAfric...@googlegroups.com>; "Ed...@yahoogroups.com" <Ed...@yahoogroups.com>; "krazi...@yahoogroups.com" <krazi...@yahoogroups.com>; Ikhide <xok...@yahoo.com>
Sent: Saturday, September 21, 2013 5:02 PM
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: Afam Akeh: Letter Home & Biafran Nights – The poet as priest
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