Critical Analysis of Gabriel Okara's poems

Critical Analysis of Gabriel Okara's poems

In African literature limited poets are remembered today and Gabriel Okara is one of them, whose name is Gabriel Jibaba Okara born on 25 April, 1921 is one of the most distinguished poets of the African literature. He is a Nigerian poet and novelist who was educated at government college, Umuahia, and later at Yaba higher college. In addition to His poetry and fiction, Gabriel Okara has also written plays and features of broadcasting but he is more notable for his poems. Gabriel Okara also studied journalism at North-western University in 1949.

Moreover, Gabriel Okra’s poem tends to reflect the problems that Africa faces as they torn between the culture of their European colonist and their traditional African heritage. Okara has written many poems but here we are concerned with his 3 poems as enlisted under

·        Once Upon a Time

·        Mystic Drum

·        Were I to choose etc.

So, now let’s take bird’s view in detail.

Once Upon a Time

Once Upon a Time is a poem consisting of 7 stanzas each containing between four and eight lines. The title of this poem Once Upon a Time straight away makes us feel as if we were going back in time, it also makes us feel as if what happened was a fairy tale and it will never happen again. I think that the poet has used this title to make the reader feel as though what he will read.

The speaker in this poem reminisces about a time when people were sincere and caring in their dealings with one another, he speaks regretfully about the present time, when people are not like before. He seems to feel that people have lost the innocence and openness which he now sees in his young son; he wants to regain that innocence. The poem starts with well-known words

“Once Upon a Time

……………………………

Search behind my shadow”

Suggesting that the speaker is going to say is fairy tale, something so far-fetched it might not even be believed. Once Upon a Time was written explaining that what happens when a traditional African culture meets the forces of western way of life.

The poem feels of the conversation between what seems to be father and son, where the father wants to learn from his son how to go back normality and no longer be fake. The poem Once Upon a Time starts by the father telling his son

“Once Upon a Time

They used to laugh with their hearts

and laugh with their eyes

but now they only laugh with their teeth

while their ice-block-cold eyes

Search behind my shadow”

As far as my reading is concerned about this poem here ‘They’ refers to western people who are white also this description in the poem gives the impression of genuine emotion given off by the people. Okara also gives off very negative fake and false feelings as it is very cold description.

Stanza two of the Okara’s poem reveals more of the past when it is said that

There was a time indeed

they used to shake hands with their hearts

But that’s gone,son

Now they shake hands without their hearts

while their left hands search

my empty pockets”

Again this image reveals true and genuine emotion. So in the second stanza this shows that again the people are fake and seem to be using the man to see what they can get.

Stanza three starts with

By this we can understand that the poet is reminding us of how we invite people to our homes and for tea and when the invited person does feel at home once it is okay so in other words we can say that when people invite each other for tea, for dinner then they will allow them to come a couple of times with pleasure but after while they will get fed up and slam the doors shut on you.

Okara says in the second line of stanza

“I have learned to wear many faces”

This shows that he has adapted to using different faces for different occasions when he goes on to saying some of the occasions and their faces. After that summing up stanza four, this stanza has been focused on how people tend to change their facial expressions for different occasions and how for each occasion people tend to have a different smile like a fixed pictures that never changes.

The Poet starts off stanza five by signifying that he also has adapted to the environment around him so to summarise this stanza the writer is saying that there are no true emotions in his words and feelings they are said with just his tongue and not his heart.

In stanza six the poet describes how he used to be. It comes that he is talking to a child or a young man who has not yet experienced the changing of heart who has not yet been influenced by the environment and the society in which he lives. The poet says in the 1^st line of stanza six

“But Believe me, son

Emphasizing with regret

I want to be what I used to be

I want to unlearn how to laugh”

These lines describe his desperation to go back to his old and innocent ways where he felt life was simple his emotions were honest emotions. It also describes his hope and desire to unlearn all the bad habits he has picked up over the years.

In stanza seven he asks the ‘son’ almost pleads with him to ‘show me, son how to laugh; show me how I used to laugh and smile’.

The writer sums up what he has been trying to say throughout the whole poem to the person to the person he is having the conversation with that teach him all the good habits he has lost and teach him to have true emotions.

Conclusion:

The poet Gabriel Okara uses this poem to convey his feelings about the loss of traditional African culture against western influences the overall theme of this poem I about happier times gone past and hopes for a happy ending, for which the writer longs for as in a fairy tale and therefore the use of “Once Upon a time” as the title of this poem.

The Mystic Drum"

Gabriel Okara, the Nigerian poet and novelist, has infused his poetry with images of his Nigerian delta birthplace and his writing welds the concept of his native language Ijaw with the English vocabulary. “The Mystic Drum” is an African poem both in content and form. Being an African, Okara goes back to his roots in history, religion and culture and folklore. Through its image and symbol, rhythm and tone, the poem expresses the subtle nuances of an African experience. In a way this poem justifies the modernist dictum, ‘A poem should not mean, but be’. In African folklore, the beating of drums has ritualistic and therefore mystical significance. The beating of the drum unites the mind and heart of the drum beater with the outer world of nature. But the idea of cosmic unity in the poem does not last long. There is an end to this beating of the drum. The poem’s thematic emphasis is not upon how man and nature became one when the mystic drum beats within him; but it’s about the brevity of this experience. The return to the reality makes the poet sing: ‘never to beat so loud any more’.

Here there is the dialectic between tradition and influences. There is no overt references to the neo-colonialism or cultural imperialism, and unlike Ngugi, Okara does not relate the problem of culture to the economic sphere.

When we are talking about The Mystic Drum so it is essentially to tell that it is a love poem:

“This was a lady I loved. And she coyly was not responding directly, but I adored her. Her demeanor seemed to mask her true feelings; at a distance, she seemed adoring, however, on coming closer, she was, after all, not what she seemed.”

This lady may stand as an emblem that represents the lure of Western life; how it seemed appealing at first but later came across as distasteful to the poet.

The drum in African poetry generally stands for the spiritual pulse of traditional African life. The poet asserts that first, as the drum beat inside him, fishes danced in the rivers and men and women danced on the land to the rhythm of the drum. But standing behind the tree, there stood an outsider who smiled with an air of indifference at the richness of their culture. However, the drum still continued to beat rippling the air with quickened tempo compelling the dead to dance and sing with their shadows. The ancestral glory overpowers other considerations. So powerful is the mystic drum, that it brings back even the dead alive. The rhythm of the drum is the aching for an ideal Nigerian State of harmony.

The outsider still continued to smile at the culture from the distance. The outsider stands for Western Imperialism that has looked down upon anything Eastern, non-Western, alien and therefore, ‘incomprehensible for their own good’ as ‘The Other’. The African culture is so much in tune with nature that the mystic drum invokes the sun, the moon, the river gods and the trees began to dance.

The gap finally gets bridged between humanity and nature, the animal world and human world, the hydrosphere and lithosphere that fishes turned men, and men became fishes. But later as the mystic drum stopped beating, men became men, and fishes became fishes. Life now became dry, logical and mechanical thanks to Western Scientific Imperialism and everything found its place. Leaves started sprouting on the woman; she started to flourish on the land. Gradually her roots struck the ground. Spreading a kind of parched rationalism, smoke issued from her lips and her lips parted in smile. The term ’smoke’ is also suggestive of the pollution caused by industrialization, and also the clouding of morals.. Ultimately, the speaker was left in ‘belching darkness’, completely cut off from the heart of his culture, and he packed off the mystic drum not to beat loudly anymore. The ‘belching darkness” alludes to the futility and hollowness of the imposed existence.

The outsider, at first, only has an objective role standing behind a tree. Eventually, she intrudes and tries to weave their spiritual life. The ‘leaves around her waist’ are very much suggestive of Eve who adorned the same after losing her innocence. Leaves stop growing on the trees but only sprout on her head signifying ‘deforestation.” The refrain reminds us again and again, that this Eve turns out to be the eve of Nigerian damnation.

Were I to choose

Gabriel Okara, a Nigerian poet, is immersed in folk-tradition and ballad. One can discern influences of native tradition and English romantic tradition and he often tries to create a synthesis between the two. He often utilizes ‘transliteration’ and thereby renders his poems regional, yet universal. His poems are often marked for their lyrical musicality.

Gabriel Okara’s “Were I to Choose” is reminiscent of Yeats’ “Adam’s Curse.” Adam toiling in the soil can be compared to the Negros working in the soil. They broke the stone themselves which was their very foundation. The red streams are symbolic of the multilingual diversity that reaches the womb Africa.

In this poem Gabriel Okara wants to free himself from the imprisonment of his dark ‘halo that is generally considered as ‘blessed; but seems dark to him. His conflict is not being able to choose from the different languages. He is torn between worlds. The poet likens his predicament with mingling with dust during the month December to February in Nigeria. The throat is dry and he is unable to speak out. He is delirious ass the flames of torture are burning his existence. The colonial period has made the poet an amalgam of European and African Cultures, and now he finds himself in a no man’s land. He relishes the idea of resolving the crisis by seeking refuge in the silence of the grave. He then would be cheating the worms because he would enjoy that state of affairs so these are the things which are discussed by Gabriel Okara in this poem.