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Mandela's Earth and Other Poems
The Nigerian Nobel laureate presents a collection of new poems in homage to South African leader Nelson Mandela, excoriating political corruption and moral flabbiness and meditating on the ambivalences and ambiguities of life and love
70 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1988
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About the author
Wole Soyinka
205 books1,243 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, known as Wole Soyinka, is a Nigerian playwright, novelist, poet, and essayist in the English language. He was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "wide cultural perspective and... poetic overtones fashioning the drama of existence", the first sub-Saharan African to be honoured in that category.
Soyinka was born into a Yoruba family in Abeokuta. In 1954, he attended Government College in Ibadan, and subsequently University College Ibadan and the University of Leeds in England. After studying in Nigeria and the UK, he worked with the Royal Court Theatre in London. He went on to write plays that were produced in both countries, in theatres and on radio. He took an active role in Nigeria's political history and its campaign for independence from British colonial rule. In 1965, he seized the Western Nigeria Broadcasting Service studio and broadcast a demand for the cancellation of the Western Nigeria Regional Elections. In 1967, during the Nigerian Civil War, he was arrested by the federal government of General Yakubu Gowon and put in solitary confinement for two years, for volunteering to be a non-government mediating actor.
Soyinka has been a strong critic of successive Nigerian (and African at large) governments, especially the country's many military dictators, as well as other political tyrannies, including the Mugabe regime in Zimbabwe. Much of his writing has been concerned with "the oppressive boot and the irrelevance of the colour of the foot that wears it". During the regime of General Sani Abacha (1993–98), Soyinka escaped from Nigeria on a motorcycle via the "NADECO Route". Abacha later proclaimed a death sentence against him "in absentia". With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, Soyinka returned to his nation.
In Nigeria, Soyinka was a Professor of Comparative literature (1975 to 1999) at the Obafemi Awolowo University, then called the University of Ifẹ̀. With civilian rule restored to Nigeria in 1999, he was made professor emeritus. While in the United States, he first taught at Cornell University as Goldwin Smith professor for African Studies and Theatre Arts from 1988 to 1991 and then at Emory University, where in 1996 he was appointed Robert W. Woodruff Professor of the Arts. Soyinka has been a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, and has served as scholar-in-residence at New York University's Institute of African American Affairs and at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, California. He has also taught at the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, Harvard and Yale, and was also a Distinguished Scholar in Residence at Duke University in 2008.
In December 2017, Soyinka was awarded the Europe Theatre Prize in the "Special Prize" category, awarded to someone who has "contributed to the realization of cultural events that promote understanding and the exchange of knowledge between peoples".
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
February 4, 2019
As this is the first poetry collection of Wole Soyinka that I read, it is rather tricky to review it since I have no base of comparison to his other collections yet. However, seeing as I am reading my favorite poet Seamus Heaney at present, I will use that as a benchmark instead. Heaney is an incredibly accomplished poet whose poems have allusions, metaphors, and especially references that weigh depth to their meaning and significance. Unfortunately, Soyinka’s does not possess these traits.
I really wanted to give this collection 5 stars because, despite its poetic shortcomings, it did resonate on the political and on Soyinka’s passion to Mandela’s struggle, which was actually the focal point of his Nobel acceptance speech. But setting the benchmark as high as I have, 4 stars would have to suffice.
The slim collection is dived into four sections: Mandela’s Earth; After the Deluge; New York, U.S.A.; Dragonfly at My Windowpane. I did not think the division necessary nor to name each section after the poem that that section started with. There was no aesthetic or poetic gain.
At most, the fundamental criticism is that the poems can be taken at face value, not what one expects from a Nobel winner (even when his genius is in playwrighting):
There is no hidden meaning and nothing to dig into. I even wonder if “brave new world” is not a simple direct reference to Huxley’s text, or perhaps it is something Mandela once said and is being directly referenced. But the room of ambiguity is what I mean—a skillful poet will not leave references open to question, as the whole point of the ‘message’ is then lost.
Even ‘Campus, Ile-Ife,’ based on Yoruba myth with its opening—
—is immediately obvious to anyone who quickly grasps the mythological reference. And Soyinka is quite the advocate of Yoruba mythology as his essay collection Myth, Literature and the African World attests. We often see him assert or blend Yoruba mythology with classical Greek mythology in his plays, or even reinvent them, as in The Bacchae of Euripides.
Soyinka’s poetics, too, are rather straightforward in this collection. There are seldom rhyme schemes or refrains. When implemented though, they make for a lighter, easier read, like in ‘The Apotheosis of Master Sergeant Doe’ with its rhyming couplets:
For the most part, Soyinka uses free verse with one key component, alliteration. This lends a more musical, story-like narrative to his poems, which reminds me of the African oral tradition of story-telling. I cannot help but think that this has been easily overlooked in this collection. Not that the poems are based on oral tradition, but that the poet himself is from a rich culture stemming from such a tradition, so that when factored into consideration, then the bulk of these poems come to life and stand on their own and break away from the benchmark poet I assigned Soyinka at the start. Heaney is both a brilliant technical poet and a brilliant lyrical poet, but his has absolutely nothing to do with oral tradition. Soyinka is the master here:
A very playful, musical excerpt I picked out from the poem ‘Muhammad Ali at the Ringside, 1985.’ What comes before and after are lines that depict a whole wonderful story of Ali and the build-up to that momentous fight in boxing history.
In a more somber tone, Soyinka’s alliteration still works and is certainly the most prominent poetic device, like in ‘So Now They Burn the Roof Above Her Head,’ a poem about Winnie Mandela:
Despite shortcomings from the perspective of great western poetry like that of Seamus Heaney, Wole Soyinka is first and foremost a Yoruba, and his interest (or love?) of his cultural roots in mythology and tradition are eminent in his writings, including these poems. Whether they fail or succeed in achieving what they are set out to do is to imply a Eurocentric perspective, as I did at the start of this review. However, to accept them as the voice of ‘another,’ is to embrace the totality of poet and poetics, as I have done at the end. And that, I hope, is a more Afrocentric perspective.
I really wanted to give this collection 5 stars because, despite its poetic shortcomings, it did resonate on the political and on Soyinka’s passion to Mandela’s struggle, which was actually the focal point of his Nobel acceptance speech. But setting the benchmark as high as I have, 4 stars would have to suffice.
The slim collection is dived into four sections: Mandela’s Earth; After the Deluge; New York, U.S.A.; Dragonfly at My Windowpane. I did not think the division necessary nor to name each section after the poem that that section started with. There was no aesthetic or poetic gain.
At most, the fundamental criticism is that the poems can be taken at face value, not what one expects from a Nobel winner (even when his genius is in playwrighting):
Your logic frightens me, Mandela
Your logic frightens me. Those years
Of dreams, of time accelerated in
Visionary hopes, of savoring the task anew,
The call, the tempo primed
To burst in supernovae round a “brave new world”!
Then stillness. Silence. The world closes round
Your sole reality; the rest is … dreams?
There is no hidden meaning and nothing to dig into. I even wonder if “brave new world” is not a simple direct reference to Huxley’s text, or perhaps it is something Mandela once said and is being directly referenced. But the room of ambiguity is what I mean—a skillful poet will not leave references open to question, as the whole point of the ‘message’ is then lost.
Even ‘Campus, Ile-Ife,’ based on Yoruba myth with its opening—
When Ogun slammed his anvil down
The flinty earth of Idanre,
Its shock waves burrowed through millennia,
Surfaced in charged outcrops, sinuous
Offsprings, seven-ridged rockhills of Ile-Ife.
—is immediately obvious to anyone who quickly grasps the mythological reference. And Soyinka is quite the advocate of Yoruba mythology as his essay collection Myth, Literature and the African World attests. We often see him assert or blend Yoruba mythology with classical Greek mythology in his plays, or even reinvent them, as in The Bacchae of Euripides.
Soyinka’s poetics, too, are rather straightforward in this collection. There are seldom rhyme schemes or refrains. When implemented though, they make for a lighter, easier read, like in ‘The Apotheosis of Master Sergeant Doe’ with its rhyming couplets:
Welcome, Master Sergeant to the fold
Your pace was firm, your passage mean and bold.
Lean your entry, in studied Savior’s form
Combat fatigued, self-styled a cleansing storm.
For the most part, Soyinka uses free verse with one key component, alliteration. This lends a more musical, story-like narrative to his poems, which reminds me of the African oral tradition of story-telling. I cannot help but think that this has been easily overlooked in this collection. Not that the poems are based on oral tradition, but that the poet himself is from a rich culture stemming from such a tradition, so that when factored into consideration, then the bulk of these poems come to life and stand on their own and break away from the benchmark poet I assigned Soyinka at the start. Heaney is both a brilliant technical poet and a brilliant lyrical poet, but his has absolutely nothing to do with oral tradition. Soyinka is the master here:
What music hurts the massive head tonight, Ali!
The drums, the tin cans, the guitars and mibra of Zaire?
Ae-lee! Aa-lee! Aa-lee Bomaye! Bomaye!
The Rumble in the Jungle? Beauty and the Beast?
Roll call of Bum-a-Month. The rope-a-dope?
The Thrilla-in-Manilla?—Ah-lee! Ah-lee!
“The closest thing to death,” you said. Was that
The greatest, saddest prophesy of all? Oh, Ali!
A very playful, musical excerpt I picked out from the poem ‘Muhammad Ali at the Ringside, 1985.’ What comes before and after are lines that depict a whole wonderful story of Ali and the build-up to that momentous fight in boxing history.
In a more somber tone, Soyinka’s alliteration still works and is certainly the most prominent poetic device, like in ‘So Now They Burn the Roof Above Her Head,’ a poem about Winnie Mandela:
I know they took the spread away, Mandela
And now they burn the roof above her head.
How could they know, these living dead
The flames their fumbling hands have fanned
Inscribe the very colors they proscribe
Across the darkest nights.
Despite shortcomings from the perspective of great western poetry like that of Seamus Heaney, Wole Soyinka is first and foremost a Yoruba, and his interest (or love?) of his cultural roots in mythology and tradition are eminent in his writings, including these poems. Whether they fail or succeed in achieving what they are set out to do is to imply a Eurocentric perspective, as I did at the start of this review. However, to accept them as the voice of ‘another,’ is to embrace the totality of poet and poetics, as I have done at the end. And that, I hope, is a more Afrocentric perspective.
November 10, 2021
This is an incredibly great honor to Nelson Mandela. It's as close to "poetry in motion" one can get. It's similar to reading the history and biography of Mandela in one book. This book of poetry doesn't surmise anything at all; it's an actual poetic version of the struggles, conflicts, and difficulties one man had to endure. There are not so subtle comments about society and culture throughout. It's like a treasure hunt because once you read one reference, there will be a profound desire to read others, and when that happens, it will be like finding gold. This is a very quick read. I know I'm just now posting an update, but I finished reading it at the end of August. I just was not able to get online to post a review. Life is like that at times. When I reread a few of the poems, it really made me appreciate what I have and how fortunate I am. I can complain about being busy everyday or not being able to get online, but I don't have to deal with near as many of the problems Mandela did. These poems will truly make you think about life and what you are contributing to others, society, this world, and history.
May 13, 2015
A few glimpses of beauty along with political thought and a little history. So-so. The later poems after the ones about Winnie and Nelson Mandela, New York, and Muhammad Ali I didn't really enjoy at all. Soyinka knows the mechanics of poetry, but what he writes about in this short collection is just not my cup of tea.
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November 19, 2021I think his plays are just better than his poems. These felt dated, and not just because of the '80s politics.
Hard to imagine much being better than his plays, though.
Hard to imagine much being better than his plays, though.
May 15, 2016
Funeral sermon, Soweto
The Apotheosis of Master Sergeant Doe
"To mask the real, the world is turned a stage,
A rampant play of symbols masks a people's rage."
This film star/space star/mayor/or porn queen
Toothsomely pledges: ''New York loves you!"
Forgive my innocence, does New York *know* me?
The Apotheosis of Master Sergeant Doe
"To mask the real, the world is turned a stage,
A rampant play of symbols masks a people's rage."
This film star/space star/mayor/or porn queen
Toothsomely pledges: ''New York loves you!"
Forgive my innocence, does New York *know* me?
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews