[In the essay below, Egudu characterizes Okigbo as "the most significant poet" of his generation.]

Christopher Okigbo is obviously the most significant poet of [1960s Nigeria] not only because of his national relevance but also because of his artistic excellence. He can rightly be described as the poet of Nigerian history, for there is a movement in his work which parallels that of the history of Nigeria from her contact with the white man to the early stages of the civil war, when Okigbo died. Heavensgate and Limits are a re-enactment of the cultural (especially religious) alienation which the country experienced during the colonial era; "Distances" is a conclusion to Heavensgate and Limits, and a final reversion to indigenous traditional religion; "Silences: Lament of the Silent Sisters" and "Lament of the Drums" are a study in Nigeria's post-colonial politics with its confusion and lack of any sense of direction which led to the disillusionment of the masses; and "Path of Thunder" is an assessment of the coup d'état of January 1966 and a verdict that is also a prophecy of war.

If Okigbo's poetry is "one long elaborate poem" as one critic remarked, [O. R. Dathorne, Journal of Commonwealth Literature, No. 5, 1968], or if it has "organic relatedness" as another observed [S. O. Anozie, Christopher Okigbo, 1972], and as the poet himself stated the binding link must be sought in the story of the country from the colonial period to the beginning of the civil war rather than in any other source. In spite of Anozie's argument that what makes all of Okigbo's poems one long poem is verbal linkage, the fact remains that each sequence of poems except perhaps "Four Canzones" crystallizes around a chapter in Nigeria's historical experience. If Okigbo is the hero of most of his poems, he is so only in the sense that he carries the burden of his people's cultural and historical evolution. The sufferings of a nation can also be seen as those of any one man in the country.

Okigbo's poetry is therefore much less personal than many people think. The religious conflict which is dealt with extensively in Heavensgate and Limits, for example, is grounded in firm historical reality. In Chinua Achebe's Arrow of God which (like Things Fall Apart) deals with the same period of Nigerian history, we read as follows:

Mr. Goodcountry told the converts of Umuaro about the early Christians of the Niger Delta who fought the bad customs of their people, destroyed shrines and killed the sacred iguana. He told them of Joshua Hart, his kinsman, who suffered martyrdom in Bonny.

"If we are Christians, we must be ready to die for the faith", he said. "You must be ready to kill the python as the people of the rivers killed the iguana…. It is nothing but a snake, the snake that deceived our first mother, Eve. If you are afraid to kill it do not count yourself a Christian."

We may compare this passage with the following lines from Limits, which show a similar hostile attitude toward the animal totems that represent the gods of the indigenous religion:

      Their talons they drew out of their scabbard,
      Upon the tree trunks, as if on fire-clay,
      Their beaks they sharpened,
      And spread like eagles their felt-wings,
      And descended upon the twin gods of Irkalla
 
      And the ornaments of him,
      And the beads about his tail,
      And the carapace of her,
      And her shell, they divided.
 
                                 Limits (XI)
 
     AND THE gods lie in state
      And the gods lie in state
      Without the long-drum.
 
      And the gods lie unsung,
      Veiled only with mould,
      Behind the shrinehouse.
 
                                 Limits

The twin gods here are the same "twin gods of the forest" mentioned earlier in the poem Okigbo tells us in a footnote that they are "the tortoise and the python." Their religious significance as totems is similar to that of the sacred iguana and the royal python in Arrow of God.

Besides, in Heavensgate and Limits, Okigbo mentions two Christian historical characters by name: Leidan and Flannagan. The Rev. Fr. Leidan and the Rev. Fr. Flannagan were missionaries at Onitsha early in the 1940s. They thus took part in the suppression of indigenous religion. In Heavensgate (IV) Leidan is referred to as the "archtyrant of the holy sea," the phrase being a pun on "Holy See," and in Limits (VII) it is Flannagan who

      Preached the Pope's message,
      To where drowning nuns suspired,
      Asking the key-word from stone;
      and he said:
 
           To sow the fireseed among grasses,
      and lo, to keep it till it burns out …

It is significant that these examples of historical relevance and factual links are found in Okigbo's early poetry, for it is often with reference to his early work that critics have asserted that Okigbo was pursuing "art for its own sake" [Christopher Okigbo, 1972], or that "meaning" was not his concern [Studies in Black Literature 1, 1976]. Okigbo himself gave this impression that he did not care for meaning: "Personally I don't think that I have ever set out to communicate a meaning. It is enough that I try to communicate experience which I consider significant". In spite of this statement, however, there is meaning in his poetry—meaning that is historical, not just personal, though it is coloured by personal experience. Indeed even "Four Canzones," Okigbo's earliest poem which has no overt historical links still has much social relevance. The first and third canzones compare and contrast the city and the village and find that the latter possesses all the blessings which the former lacks. The second canzone is a social comment, while the fourth deals with a private love experience. In this way "Four Canzones" constitutes a logical introduction to Okigbo's later poetry, giving an early hint of the three major areas of experience which were to be developed in his poetry: namely, cultural atavism (nostalgia), socio-political problems, and the nature of carnal love. Thus of all Nigerian poets, Okigbo can be said to be the most Nigerian from the point of view of not just nationality alone but, most importantly, of comprehensive national consciousness. Hence his central position in the growth of Nigerian poetry.

This consciousness is not limited to the content of Okigbo's poetry; it is also present in the form of his verse. More than any other Nigerian poet writing in English, Okigbo has explored and exploited the art of his indigenous (Igbo) traditional oral literature and the vernacular rhetoric of his people. The incantatory quality of his poems derives from the musical nature of Nigerian oral poetry, at times adopting its very form. Okigbo has also drawn some of his images from Nigerian folk tales and from the local environment. For example, the image of a bird standing "on one leg" in the second section of "The Passage" recalls the story of a fowl that went to a strange land and stood on one leg because it did not understand the customs of the people of that place. The experience re-enacted in the poem is that of solitude in spiritual (religious) exile, when, though the protagonist had been initiated into Christianity, he was ignorant of the customs of the new religion, and had therefore to stand apart, at a loss, like a bird on one leg. Examples of imagery based on the local environment are rife in Okigbo's poetry. Many of his poems are set against the background of shrines in groves which are customarily the scene of traditional religious worship and sacrifice. He can also fashion a specific image out of a particular feature of his rural surroundings: "Faces of black like long black columns of ants" ["The Passage"]. Furthermore, Okigbo enhances the form of some of his poems by working into them vernacular expressions which have been translated literally. In "Lament of the Lavender Mist" for example, he equates the lady of the poem with "Kernels of the waters of the sky"; this is a word-for-word translation of the Igbo term for hailstone, itself an object considered by the Igbo people to be a symbol of purity and delicate beauty. Also the expression "shadow of rain" in "Eyes watch the stones" is a direct translation of the Igbo term for the nimbus cloud which is the harbinger of rain.

By means of these and other artistic devices, Okigbo gave his poetry the imprint of Africanity, and subsequent poets nave seen this as a major factor in making Nigerian poetry truly Nigerian in spite of its being written in English.