
Sculpt of West African-born writer, Phillis Wheatley, 1973. ELIZABETH CATLETT / SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM. Collage by THE REPUBLIC.
the ministry of ARTS / BOOKS DEPT.
How Should One Read a Poem?

Sculpt of West African-born writer, Phillis Wheatley, 1973. ELIZABETH CATLETT / SMITHSONIAN AMERICAN ART MUSEUM. Collage by THE REPUBLIC.
the ministry of ARTS / BOOKS DEPT.
How Should One Read a Poem?
When I started writing poetry in 2021, squeezed in the slipshod generation of Facebook poets, I had no profound knowledge of the essence and technicalities of the genre. Even as I write this essay, I am in the process of educating myself about the particularities of how a poem should be written. I didn’t know what odd relations that language, to paraphrase W. H. Auden, must achieve with poetry, unlike other genres where you could easily subvert diction. I also did not take a considerable amount of my time to learn the utmost importance of prosody and other essential traits of poetry such as subject matter, form, content, and lineation. Like many beginners who showed keen, yet impatient interest in the art, I was only fascinated by the writers whose glib nature of poems made a delirious impression on me and the thrilling reality of being published in journals. Enthused by this chemical rush, I would write slovenly on papers, using words with a jab of catchy diction masqueraded as poems, often about mothers and fathers, and submit them to magazines—just as many still do today.
It is not that these writings are entirely useless—at least they strive to score some points for their relatable instances, often told in pert prose, broken into stanzas—but that they, in great due, lack substance and poetic merit. In some, the subject matter is shattered, possessing no direction; while in others, the prosody is not well internalized. For some poets, in attempting a specific form, the rules are completely disrupted—often marked by an indolent study of the laws binding it—and therefore, content obscures the form. While most would have proclaimed that rules are meant to be subverted or broken, poetry is a rigid work of art where such mindset is shirked to a very large extent.
Every attempted form of art relies on passion, but it takes a commendable and diligent attitude for the artist to take their sufficient time and effort in brushing up their artistic tools. And poetry, I must reassert, is an art expected to be ventured with due, if not extreme, diligence—an art that shuts all its doors against laziness. In his essay-review of Nick Laird’s technical poetry, the formidable American poet and critic, Stephen Yenser, while identifying the issue of form and technique, argues: ‘today metre has given way to free verse, which, though it encourages idiosyncratic lineation, undermines uniqueness.’ Poets today, as Yenser observes, only pay attention to content, often ‘determined by a large point of view or sociopolitical orientation’, in the place of giving their most attention to form and technique. Whereas it is the latter that beautifies the content at hand.
THE IMPORTANCE OF THE CRITIC
Yet, a flaw persists in contemporary Nigerian poetry where criticism is envisaged by many writers as hate that is never meant to be embraced in good graces. The emergence of critics like Arasi Kamolideen (Ancci), Carl Terver, Paul Liam, Kayode Faniyi, and Chimezie Chika, to mention a few, in the last few years has pre-eminently shaken Nigeria’s literary space. Criticism, any kind of critical practice, according to one of the finest American literary critics, Helen Vendler, in her interview with Paris Review, ought to be backed by evidence from the text and bereft of generalizations or mere rhetorical assertions. Despite the well-founded criticisms from these intellectuals, who point out the defects in contemporary Nigerian poetry and, out of a charitable attitude, abundantly outline ways the genre can be redeemed, they have only been met with resistance and a series of backlashes on social media (mostly on X). Whereas a literary society that struggles for the reclusion of the art of criticism is bound to mediocrity and, if care is not taken, final doom.
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With Ancci’s pronouncements on the decline of love poetry to Terver’s critique, in ‘O’Griefa’, of the importunate abuse of the single trope, ‘body’, and other deficiencies that have been identified by critics, one would have expected the gradual importation of new ideas and technical innovations in the consequential works pushed forth. In contrast, the situation has worsened, with young and aspiring writers trying to establish themselves by emulating the same flawed techniques that arose from the condescension existing poets have towards critics. Every writer, to re-echo Auden’s sentiment, can never do the absolute justice of pronouncing exactly how good or bad their work is. It is the ideal place for a critic to carry out this bidding in the best possible way that is most convenient to them. While some have accused the critics of being prejudiced or biased in their judgments, it is crucial to recognize that bias is not a valid reason for writers to dismiss the literary flaws identified in their poetry. After all, everyone is subject to their own prejudices. Critics are undertaking what a good reader should do, which, as Virginia Woolf postulates, in her essay ‘How Should One Read a Book’, is to:
Give the writer the benefit of every doubt; the help of all his imagination; will follow as closely, interpret as intelligently as he can. In the next place, he will judge with the utmost severity. Every book, he will remember, has the right to be judged by the best of its kind.
It is not to disregard holistically or police the entire society of Nigerian poetry, but to proclaim in all earnestness that one might be witnessing the gradual necrophily of it, owing to the untoward and lackadaisical attitude of writers to criticism and critics alike. However, the country has been blessed with the timely and uncommon poetics of a handful of writers such as O. Jeremiah Agbaakin, Gbenga Adeshina, Umar Abubakar Sidi, Gbenga Adeoba, Pamilerin Jacob, Sadiq Dzukogi, Ernest Ogunyemi, among a few other interesting contemporaries. That is not enough for a country to revel in. The new generation of Nigerian poets, raised on the fundamentals of poetry, should heed criticism and strive to produce impressive works of art that avoid persistent tropes, clichés, and hackneyed figurations.
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In her latest essay, ‘The Critic as a Friend’, Merve Emre substantiates the work of a critic towards literary texts:
Generosity, commensurability, conversation—how calm, how dispassionate these words can seem. They do not, however, mean that the critic must be uncritical or mild-mannered. Far from it. It would be wrong to confuse generosity with approval, or commensurability with inattention.
This assertion is what one could contend that the writers should learn to embrace rather than the constant series of ad hominems and vituperations thrown unnecessarily at critics or critical texts—especially when such criticisms are apt most of the times, if not all the time. There’s a lot to say on this contention, but I will conclude here with ‘Introduction to Poetry’, a poem by Billy Collins, one of America’s most acute poets, which reads:
I ask them to take a poem
and hold it up to the light
like a color slide
or press an ear against its hive.
I say drop a mouse into a poem
and watch him probe his way out,
or walk inside the poem’s room
and feel the walls for a light switch.
I want them to waterski
across the surface of a poem
waving at the author’s name on the shore.
But all they want to do
is tie the poem to a chair with rope
and torture a confession out of it.
They begin beating it with a hose
to find out what it really means⎈
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