SOURCE: "Death and the Artist: An Appreciation of Okigbo's Poetry," in Research in African Literatures, Vol. 13, No. 1, Spring, 1982, pp. 44-52.

In the essay below, Izevbaye examines the ways in which the theme of death influences the form of Okigbo's poetry.

The attempt to understand death and the need to master its sorrow have given birth to various African forms of artistic expression, whether these occur as "the ambivalence, often found in funeral songs, [which] helps to adjust the shock and grief which death brings to the living" [Gerald Moore, Africa, Vol. 38, 1968], or as a representation of the language of the dead in the speech of mmonwu, the masquerade. Such a representation is logical in the context of Uche Okeke's view [Tales of the Land of Death, 1971] that the basis for the representational art of the mask makers may be found in the Igbo world view that the land...