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Christopher Okigbo

14 quotes

“I had been itching to talk to you, my brother, for you were there when this bug caught me. My transformation from a hunter of answers into a big question mark had left me restless. Did I hear that finally, I might be getting a burial? Isn’t it relatively late? I have become an invisible poet; no hole is big enough to keep me grounded. I float above limits.”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have listened carefully to you and I want to address you about the things I have heard. I have heard people quote Edward Said. I have heard them say that I was a victim of that pitfall- a casualty of paranoid nationalism. They say that I compromised intellectual integrity. Some even say I subjected my art to the narrowness of tribalism. O’ Lord! What use is a poet if he saves his life, only to be left for a home- a “cultural wasteland”? Should I be happy as strangers devour eke Idemili for dinner?”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“William Blake said it first, and I can’t say it enough: the nation follows the art. That is just the way it is. Cultural erosion is not the same as a cultural handshake. Dante’s universal community must wait if it is arrogant about appreciating the gift of each quilt.”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Remember what I said before, ‘we carry in our worlds that flourish, our worlds that failed.’ You can resort to using learning to liberate people. But is what you are learning the truth? If it is, do you have the means of understanding it? Have those in the school of resentment moved over?”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You asked me when I last thought about the dialectic of utopia and ideology as part of unified political consciousness. I say it is all in seduction. It always comes first. Then it is a struggle. It always exerts a cost. And finally, it is memory—memories of the worlds that failed and the worlds that succeeded. As I see it, you are either looking behind the rising sun or looking in front. I am searching. I am still searching. But I am yet to find the argument that supersedes the moral value.”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is no such thing as a poet trying to express African-ness. Such a thing doesn’t exist. A poet expresses himself.”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“So when I talk of the self, I mean my various selves, because the self is made up of various elements which do not always combine happily. And when I talk of looking inward to myself, I mean turning inward to examine myselves.”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“‘O mother mother earth, unbind me; let this be my last testament …’”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Every work of this kind is necessarily a cry of anguish — of the root extending its branches of coral, of corals extending their roots into each living hour; the swell of the silent sea the great heaving dream at its highest, the thunder of splitting pods — the tears scatter, take root, the cotyledons broken, burgeons into laughter of leaf; or else rot into vital hidden roles in the nitrogen cycle.”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) first seen 1965 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Introduction, Ibadan (October 1965)
“Secret I have told into no ear, save into a dughole, to hold, not to drown with- Secret I have planted into beachsand...”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“THE STARS have departed, the sky in monocle surveys the world under. ‘The stars have departed, and I — where am I?”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Between sleep and walking, I hang up my egg-shells. To you of palm grove, Upon whose bamboo towers”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“AND FROM frame of iron, And in mould of iron... For he ate the dead lion, & was within the corpse —”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“THUNDER that has struck the elephant, the same thunder can make a bruise — condolences: we should forget the names. we should bury the date. the dead should bury the dead — condolences”
Christopher Okigbo (1930–1967) said by 1967 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source