Transitional//EN"> Christopher Okigbo, Poetry Magazine, and the "Lament of the Silent Sisters"
from Research in African Literatures Volume 35, Number 3

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Christopher Okigbo, Poetry Magazine, and the "Lament of the Silent Sisters"

Michael J. C. Echeruo

Syracuse University

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ABSTRACT

Christopher Okigbo thought highly enough of his "Lament of the Silent Sisters" to revise it and submit it to Poetry magazine in May 1963. "I have already been heard in Africa and in Europe, and would want, if possible, to have an audience in America," he wrote to the editor. The poem was not published, not least because of the magazine's policy of not publishing material previously published . . . "anywhere, in any form." This article examines the revisions which Okigbo made to the earlier version of the poem both for the submission to Poetry and for Labyrinths . The revisions show Okigbo working and re-working his themes, generously incorporating material from other writers, and changing the argument and direction of his poem along the way. The paper draws attention to the complex processes that produced the poems and that are required to understand and evaluate them. Much more will be known about these processes when Okigbo's papers (such as survived the Biafra War) become available.

Christopher Okigbo's "Lament of the Silent Sisters," first appeared in Transition 8 (1963): 13–16 as Part I of a projected larger work entitled "Silences," the second part of which, "Lament of the Drums" would appear in Transition 18 (1965): 16–17. The poem was mostly written from about May, and was substantially completed by November 1962, the date Okigbo affixed to the poem on publication in 1963. In an original essay, "The Emergence of the Poet of Destiny: A Study of Okigbo's 'Lament of the Silent Sisters,'" written in 1983 for his Critical Perspectives on Christopher Okigbo, Donatus Nwoga recalls that on a visit to Nsukka in 1963, Okigbo gave him a copy of "The Lament of the Silent Sisters" to read. Okigbo claimed to have "most recently finished" writing it, and wanted to know what Nwoga thought of it (120). Nwoga also notes that, unlike "Lament of the Drums" which appeared in at least four versions, "Silent Sisters" was revised only once afterwards, when it was being prepared for the Labyrinths volume, eventually published in 1971. The version Nwoga read could not have been the same as appeared in Transition 8, because Okigbo would not have referred to the poem as having just been completed. We now know that Okigbo revised "Silent Sisters" prior to the revision for Labyrinths, published posthumously in 1971. Okigbo had told Bernth Lindfors in early 1963 that he was not "entirely satisfied" with the Transition version and was revising it for submission to Poetry. The revision was not as extensive as that to be found in Labyrinths, but it was important enough at the time for Okigbo to declare it "the form in which I want the poem to be preserved," according to Lindors's notes.1 Accordingly, in 1968, as arrangements for Labyrinths were being concluded, Bernth Lindfors suggested to Rajat Neogy, editor of Transition, that he should publish the original (1962) text and the revised (1963) version in Transition. "The canon of Okigbo should be set straight," Lindfors wrote, "before someone publishes his [Okigbo's] collected poems" (Lindfors to Rajat Neogy, 17 Aug. 1968). The request was not granted. In any case, since Okigbo completed a major revision of the poem for Labyrinths, the "finality" of a (revised) 1963 version has become moot. However, because that version has never been published, it is reproduced below in parallel format with the original Transition version, and the final version in Labyrinths. For convenience of reference, the two versions will be referred to in this paper as TRANSITIONSisters" and "LINDFORSMs."

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