Tales and Voices is an anthology or collection of poems in honour of a living sage and legend, a prolific writer, with unabashed fecundity across ages, Basorun Seinde Arogbofa, the holder of the distinguished national honour of the Order of the Federal Republic and the title of Principal Emeritus of Nigeria. The book, which has 229 pages, including the list of contributors, is edited by Sola Owonibi and Sunday Afolayan, and was published by John Archers. It has a glossy paper back, and laced in black and lemon colours. The front page is doped with the photograph of Basorun Seinde Arogbofa at about his fifties or early 60s, which bears the emblems of his stern sharp look and the sparseness of the bristles of his corrugated beard.
Tales and Voices is divided into two parts. Part One is “Tribute and Homages” while Part Two is prose. The sub-contents of each part touch on specific attributes of Basorun Seinde Arogbofa and socio-cultural, politico-economic and experiential human attributions that are phenomenally eclectic. The Anthology has a brilliant foreword written by Sola Owonibi and a preface by Susan Akinkurolere-David respectively. Describing Tales and Voices as “an ambitious anthology”, Sola Owonibi gives a foretaste of the book in the foreword by opining that “a third of the poems and short stories eulogise Basorun Seinde Arogbofa. These writings, armored with contemporaneity, lucidity and cultural intimacies, beyond being the eulogy of a legend, serve didactic purposes, as they extol the qualities that made Arogbofa exemplary” p. xii.
Poetry, Tales and Voices
It is noteworthy we are guided by the famous opinion of William Wordsworth to the effect that poetry is “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility”. Therefore, simply put, poetry is about all that we are. Art, including poetry, among many others, helps to; ventilate emotions, give expression to repressed thoughts and social-cultural sensibilities, achieve or improve socialisation and civilisation, preserve culture, valorise individuals or groups and vilify scoundrels, etc. No doubt, art produces the imagination that is behind every civilization, as poets first made a trip to the moon before scientists rode on the imaginativeness of poets to do the unthinkable.
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Tales are natural parts of the traditional storytelling in Africa, and narratives among humans are not only didactic but therapeutic. Tales could be positive, such as legend, panegyric, love songs, work songs, victory songs, and could be negative, such as lamentations, dirge, elegy, funeral songs, and other songs of sorrow, etc. Voices could be loud or low, clear or hoax, euphonious or cacophonous, constructive or destructive, etc., and they could be used to shape or reshape. Given the interdependence of concepts, Tales require Voices, either spoken or written, and whether silent or loud, in order to be heard.
Unpacking Tales and Voices
Tales and Voices contains significant tales about Arogbofa in the subtitle of ‘Tributes and Homages’ where the mentally restless writer is described as kindhearted, supportive, honourable, meek, selfless, rugged, sacrificial, tolerant, inspirational, creative, gallant, agrarian, and an excellent writer who succors than suffocates people. Apart from the eulogies of Arogbofa, other poems in the anthology; teach morals, preach support, recriminate over the parlous state of affairs in Africa, express the desire for freedom, make commentaries about contemporary experiences and bemoan cultural estrangement. Apart from the foregoing, a few poems in the book get philosophical about life, education, the environment, as well as the embattled Nigeria nation, which is artistically reflected to be challenged by hunger, poverty, corruption, perversion of democracy, needless killings and all-round disillusionment and hopelessness.
Beyond the notion of blame-game, the anthology similarly enunciates collective guilt as a radical approach to the needed new positive order in Nigeria. Musing, family romantic affairs, pandemic, valorisation of virtues, and so on, also get the attention of the poems in Part One. Part Two of Tales and Voices contains reviews of two of the literary titles of Arogbofa, To Her and To the Stars Through Bows and Arrows, letter, and testimonies, where Belau Olatunde Gbadamosi describes Arogbofa as “a man of virtues; righteousness, down-to-earth, impeccable, faultless, and flawless character”. P. 184
Acknowledging Arogbofa as tall as Iroko, typifying his unbent physical stature, which also got noticed by my aged mother when she saw him around his 84th birthday anniversary, Gani Enahoro presents him as “a very discerning personality, brilliant, decisive, and knows where, when and how to talk and could figure out what works”. P. 187. The interview part of the anthology, granted by Basorun Arogbofa’s daughter, Folasade Tejumola, offers a kaleidoscopic exhumation of the blurred part of the literary icon that was not mirrored in the other narratives. The interview is also akin to a story told by an insider.
Language and Style of Tales and Voices
The language(s) are lucid, with predominantly the use o