Description
Book SynopsisThis book is the first comparative work of its kind to provide an extended analysis of the contribution of Kamau Brathwaite and Christopher Okigbo. It considers the poetic works of these two artists as they responded to the transformations taking place within Africa and the Caribbean during the Independence period. Some of the issues discussed include: politics and art, religion, spirituality, traditional culture versus popular culture, language and identity, literature and orality, cyber-culture and identity.
This book highlights some of the similarities and differences in the life and work of these two poets and examines various aspects of their style. It provides a clearer understanding of the stances these artists took on crucial issues that would shape the face of their respective societies way beyond the Independence period.
Trade Review«Scholars have started constructing courses on ‘The Literature of Global Africa’. For such a course a volume which combines Christopher Okigbo with Kamau Braithwaite is worth considering for required reading. Here is poetry which both soars high and digs deep.» (Ali A. Mazrui, D.Phil., (Oxon), C.B.S., Director, Institute of Global Cultural Studies, Binghamton University, SUNY)
«Written with clarity, conviction and what is even better, a calm excitement. It is insightful, and with its ‘multi-tracked’ approach to Kamau and Okigbo, definitely breaks new ground.» (Prof. Gordon Rohlehr, Professor Emeritus of the University of the West Indies, St Augustine Campus, Trinidad and Tobago)
Table of ContentsContents: Brathwaite and Okigbo in Overview – Grounding: Background, Context, and Scope – Language, Culture, and the Artist – Creative Pathways in Selected Poetry by Kamau Brathwaite and Christopher Okigbo – The Okigbo Music: A Study of ‘Distances’ – The Kamau Brathwaite Music: Ritual and Tuk Aesthetics – ‘Something Like a Mass’: Ritual and Ceremony in Okigbo’s ‘Heavensgate’ and ‘Limits’ – ‘I Could Not Hear the Drum’:
Masks and the Importance of Return –
X/Self and the Second Trilogy: Harmony and Departures – Return of the Town Crier?: Okigbo’s ‘Path of Thunder’ and
Labyrinths – Okigbo and Brathwaite in Cyberspace.
