Contemporary Nigerian Poetry: Of Poetic Subject and Style: A Critical Analysis of Davidson Iwunze’s A Spring of Longings

From classical Greece and Rome through the annals of various world literatures, poesy has been held to be an art charged with utilitarian functions. It is this role that Aristotle, Horace, Sidney, and others have variously defended in their treaties. On the African landscape, the case is no different. From traditional to modern eras, poetry has been celebrated for its social functions, especially in pleasing and shaping the society. Writers of each phase of Nigerian poetry (including prose fiction and drama) have observed the idea that their craft is for the social good, and as such directed their works towards that end. They have always raised critical issues that affect their tribal and larger national existence. Dishearteningly, in recent times, some critics have raised alarm that later generation of Nigerian writers have abandoned their traditional call and veered around, headed to drown in eroticism or “fleshly” art. It is also alleged that contemporary Nigerian poets have also reneged on the principles guiding their art resulting in “jigsaw puzzles” and mere “versified intelligibilities” as poetry. That implies repudiation and murder of truth, beauty, and reason, which for ages, have been the guiding spirit, the effulgence of poetic musing. A study of selected poems of Iwunze’s in A Spring of Longings (2021) shows that he makes no significant attempt at bringing lofty matters to the table. The volume is replete with fancy, ephemeralities, and elegiacs, turning blind eyes on enormous and serious political, social, economic, religious and cultural subjects that threaten the entire polity. Some of his stylistic experimentations are mere fragmentations and unacceptable to the principles of poetic composition. These reaffirm the critical judgement of Nnolim and Anyokwu that later generation of Nigerian poets are fleshly, careless, and lost.