SOURCE: "Beginning: Christopher Okigbo's 'Four Canzones,'" in World Literature Written in English, Vol. 23, No. 2, Spring, 1984, pp. 315-27.

In the following essay, Wieland examines Okigbo's early poetry, arguing that the "Four Canzones" contains the essential elements of all his works.

It is unfortunate that Christopher Okigbo's first serious poems, "Four Canzones (1957–1961)," have become separated from the rest of his poetry, for they are contiguous with it, providing a fine prelude to the more substantial poetry of Labyrinths and Path of Thunder. It is apprentice work but it is important, offering an introduction both to the metaphysics that underpins his work and to his thematic and formal preoccupations.

The brutal directness of the Path of Thunder poems—"Politicians are back in giant hidden steps of howitzers, of detonators"—appears a less radical departure from his main body of work when read in the context of a poem like "Debtors'...