[Critics have] hinted that Christopher Okigbo … widely accepted as the greatest of modern African poets, was influenced by Ezra Pound…. [It is in the] technical aspects of style that Pound's influence on Okigbo can be fruitfully and meaningfully established.

What has often bothered me is the fact that Okigbo has always, whether deliberately or not, omitted Pound's name from the list of those who have influenced him; and yet Pound's influence on him is enormous…. It is because of the fact that Okigbo might, very likely, have deliberately kept silent about Pound and the fact that Pound's influence is vast and has, it seems to me, helped to make his poetry difficult that I consider this topic worth investigating. (pp. 144-45)

While Okigbo shows the same kind of tendency toward "imagemaking" and "melody-making" that Pound does, it cannot be argued that the former must necessarily have inherited this...