How and why Achebe crossed the generic boundary between fiction and poetry in the
period of the Nigerian civil war and after should be of interest not only to critics of African
literature but also to anyone concerned with the relationship of literature to social history,
especially during periods of great social and psychological disturbances. It is obvious, of
course, that poetry was there all the time in the lyrical texture of Achebe's fictional writings,
but poetry as a distinctive creative form and a consciously structured genre was not part of …