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Theories of African Poetry
- New Literary History
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 50, Number 4, Autumn 2019
- pp. 581-607
- 10.1353/nlh.2019.0058
- Article
- Additional Information
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Abstract:
Lyric theory, reenergized and consolidated as a term by recent debates, largely takes for granted a set of American and European touchstones, while African literature is too rarely considered a source for theory. What might African poets writing in English have to teach us both about lyric poetry and about the role of race in literary theory? This essay considers theories of African poetry—theories about and arising from poems—under the rubrics of animism, left Pan-Africanism, and diaspora. From Wole Soyinka's quarrel with Negritude fifty years ago to poems published in the last five years—by Harry Garuba, Niran Okewole, Tjawangwa Dema, Tsitsi Jaji, and Safia Elhillo—these poets' work is not just culturally but formally and philosophically diverse. Offering multiple modes of sensuous thinking about Africa, poetry, and race, these poems model a public kind of theorizing allied with rather than opposed to embodiment.