SOURCE: "Okigbo's Portrait of the Artist as a Sunbird: A Reading of Heavensgate (1962)," in African Literature Today, No. 6, 1973, pp. 1-14.

In the excerpt below, Izevbaye delineates the interplay of sources Okigbo employs in Heavensgate and Limits.

The year 1971 saw the publication by Heinemann Educational Books of Labyrinths with Path of Thunder, a collection which is in one respect the final edition of Okigbo's work although, because of the omission of the Canzones and at least two of the later poems, its finality consists not in completeness but in saving editors of Okigbo's poems the trouble of having to decide what the poet actually wrote or intended to write. An additional value of this collection is the poet's introductory interpretation or, as interpretations are never known to be final, a description of the design of the poems which should become the basis of future interpretations. By thus providing the...