SOURCE: "Okigbo's Technique in 'Distances I,'" in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 17, No. 1, Spring, 1986, pp. 73-84.

In the essay below, Haynes analyzes Okigbo's poem "Distances I," offering a line-by-line account of its meanings and techniques.

The following commentary deals with "Distances I" from the point of view of Christopher Okigbo's handling of reference, allusion, textual unity, and speech acts. But I begin with some preliminary remarks by way of justification, since Okigbo's work has been the subject of much polemic. He is said to be obscure, un-African, and elitist and to rely too heavily on an unassimilated modernism derived from the American poets, Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot. The last charge, when directed at the earlier books of Labyrinths, is well founded, but in the "middle" work which includes "Distances," Okigbo transcends his earlier imitativeness and writes some of his best pieces. Unlike Goodwin (Understanding African...