Student Question

What rhythms are present in Christopher Okigbo's poem "V Newcomer"?

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As is true in other poems by Christopher Okigbo, repetition plays an important role in creating the rhythm of the “Newcomer” poem that begins with the words “Time for worship.”  Repetition takes various forms in this poem, including the following forms:

  • The repetition of the entirety of line 1 in line 9 (“Time for worship”).
  • The use of alliteration in such lines as line 2, which repeats the consonants “s” and “l”: “softly sing the bells of exile.”
  • The echo of alliteration in adjacent lines, as in lines 2-3”

softly sing the bells of exile,

the angelus . . .

  • The near-echo of the phrase “softly sing” in line 2 in the phrase “softly sings” in line 4.
  • The repetition of the word “Mask” in lines 5-6.
  • The exact repetition of line 11 in line 13.

In addition to employing the rhythmic effects noted above, Okigbo also employs many instances of accented first syllables – an unusual technique in much English poetry, in which the first syllable of many or even most lines is unaccented.  Placing the accent on the first syllable of a line gives that syllable extra emphasis. Notice, for instance, how the meter in the following two lines emphasizes particularly important words:

Mask over my face

my own mask . . . (5-6)

In line 5, the emphasis is placed on the initial noun; in line 6, the emphasis falls on the key adjective.  Thus, Okigbo repeats phrasing (in this case, the word “mask”), but he doesn’t simply repeat himself; instead, he uses repetition to create precise emphasis on the words he wants to stress in any given line. Lines 5-6 are a perfect example of the way repetition can also involve subtle distinctions.

Here as in other poems by Okigbo, the short lines and heavy emphasis on so many first syllables give the poem a highly rhythmic, lyrical, song-like effect.  Because the lines are short, we pay as much attention to their rhythms as to their denotative meanings.  Readers of this poem will, perhaps, hear echoes of the kinds of effects T. S. Eliot used in his poem “Ash Wednesday,” including such lines as the following:

Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.

Since Eliot was a poet whom Okigbo especially admired, it is not surprising to hear many different kinds of echoes of Eliot in Okigbo’s verse.

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What rhythms are found in Christopher Okigbo's poems "The Passage" and "Newcomer V"?

The poetry of Christopher Okigo, like the verse of other notable writers, arguably depends to a great degree on the interest created by its rhythms.  This is clearly the case, for instance, in Okigbo’s poem “The Passage,” which opens as follows:

BEFORE YOU, mother Idoto,
Naked I stand;
Before your watery presence,
A prodigal
Leaning on an oilbean,
Lost in your legend.
Under your power wait I
on barefoot,
watchman for the watchword
at Heavensgate; 
out of the depths my cry:
give ear and hearken…

Okigo here gives special metrical emphasis to such key words as “Naked,” “Leaning,” “Lost,” “Under,” “watchman,” and “out.” In each case he uses a trochee (example: REBel) rather than the expected iamb (example: reBEL). The brevity of the lines helps create an urgent rhythm, while the repetition of “before” is rhythmic in its own way, as is the alliteration of such words as “Leaning” and “Lost.” By echoing “watchman” in “watchword,” Okigbo adds further rhythmic interest to this opening.

Similar techniques continue to appear as the poem develops, as in the alliteration of “Foreshadow the fire,” the wordplay in “A wagtail, to tell,” the repetition of the whole word “faces,” the repetition of the whole phrase “festivity in black,” and the near-echo of “lovely fragments” in the later phrase “loveliest fragment.”

All in all, Okigbo shows himself attentive to a variety of kinds of rhythms in this poem, and his skillful use of them makes the reader attentive, too.

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