Reading Udoidem's Philosopoetry: A True Medium for Conveying Value Patterns and Fortification of Emotions of the Good, Bad, And Ugly
Stephen L. W. Nyeenenwa Department of Philosophy, Rivers State University, Nkpolu – Oroworukwo,
P.M.B. 5080, Port Harcourt, Rivers State, Nigeria.
*Penulis Koresponden: [email protected]
ABSTRACT
Iniobong S. Udoidem’s PHILOSOPOetry morally influences its readers by providing veritable patterns of value, significance, and meaning to life and existence. Udoidem’s PHILOSOPoetry makes one think, imagine, and cultivate moral knowledge, emotions, and imaginative reflections on the issues of life. Adopting the criticality of the Philosophy of Literature, the work helps readers learn how to exercise their moral capacity for approbation and disapprobation, how to exercise their emotional, intellectual, and moral capacities, and how to allow for complex responses. In this article, I will lay bare the work’s worth, building on how it successfully caused amusement and how it successfully led to the robust display of our mental and emotional capacities in producing the good, the bad, the ugly, and those values useful in the exercise of a kind of emotionally inflected understanding which cannot be dissociated from ethical value. By keenly examining some of the poems in PHILOSOPoetry, I deduce that they engender amusement, happiness, anger, and varying moods, which directly follow from the presentation and form of these poems. I choose to pursue this goal by relying on the formalist and reader-response criticism approaches, through which I will unravel the underlying mindset that birthed these morally reflective thoughts. My conclusion is that the various shades of emotions expressed serve to enhance our appreciation of the work and stand as beacons of hope in our search for answers to the frustrating quest,
“Man Know Thyself.”
Keywords: Criticism; violence; food; enslavement; man; one; silence.
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Vol. 2 No. 1, 2022
PINISI JOURNAL OF ART, HUMANITY AND SOCIAL STUDIES
84 1. INTRODUCTION
I will adopt and use the formalist and reader- response methods of literary criticism in the evaluation and assessment of how some poems in S. I. Udoidem’s book, PHILOSOPoetry, heighten and build up, or minimise and reduce the adrenaline in the blood of readers. The mood changes that result are the target of this work, as they lead to what I may refer to severally as laughter, amusement, sadness, hate, anger, wonder, suspense, or fear, and all such reactions aggregate to the state that can be simply called an emotional uptake. The book, PHILOSOPoetry, contains twenty-three poems, so I will randomly select some of the poems in the collection to speak to us while I undertake their evaluation and analysis based on what is evident to us at that time. There is no particular criteria or pattern, but rather I will invest in the poems from which I can draw enough inspiration and understanding and how each of them works towards building up the good, bad, and ugly emotions of readers.
In the formalist tradition, I will be concerned with an unbiased description and evaluation of the object of our inquiry, an emotional upstart in the PHILOSOPoetry, and how the emotional experiences it evokes in us become emotionally sensitive to the issues alluded to in each poem (Goodall, 2016). In my bid to see how the style, dramatic structure, and thematic elements influence the cultivation of moral cognitive knowledge that opens up for emotional bearings to take shape, I will attempt an examination and evaluation of the lexical structure of the poems. I will identify the various amusement elements which are interspersed and hidden within the poems here and there because the poet “in his moments of genuine poetry never mentions by name the emotions he is expressing”
(Dayton, 1999, p. 143). The poems would also be placed and analysed relative to their literary form and monologue, identifying the complex sets of effects they produce as a guide to how the readers explicitly appreciate the aesthetic and emotional start-ups that flow from them and build on them. We will not bother ourselves with the biographical or historical criteria in detail, as it has been established that this will distort the literary features of the poems and might take us away from the theme of the work that I am aiming to analyse.
The emotional outbursts in the PHILOSOPOetry come alive when it is read, so having read this book, here I come with an exhaustive exposition of the same, so that it may function both as a guide and a compass.
Even if you don’t feel so yourself, it will be good as well to wait and do well to rely on our expert guide on how these poems whet our emotional appetites and eventually bow to our superior arguments. I seek to be convinced that some of the poems in PHILOSOPoetry
are indeed beacons of emotional engagement, packed full of moral overload of amusement, hilariousness, laughter, comedy of errors, and also an assemblage of happiness, wonder, suspense, sadness, anger, and displeasure. In order to cross-breed the formalist with the reader- response approach, I will rely on the reader-response approach as a vessel with which to navigate towards gaining an objective understanding of the emotional outflows from the PHILOSOPoetry I do feel inwardly.
The vivid picture I will paint of the works in PHILOSOPoetry will demonstrate how different individuals see the same text differently and will give us the opportunity to locate what role religious, social, and cultural factors play in how I perceive and appreciate works of art generally, as well as the likely assumptions the readers harbour as applicable to the poems in PHILOSOPoetry. One salient point to be remembered about the place of the reader-response critic is its proclivity to accept that all forms of interpretation and reading of literary texts are valid and subsisting, including approving what may seem some of the most outlandish interpretations or readings of a work of literature—the PHILOSOPoetry.
1. AMUSEMENT, LAUGHTER, HUMOUR.
With a steady flow of paradoxes, riddles, and metaphysical innuendos, the poet provided large doses of laughter, amusement, and humour within subtle blotches of scepticism and existentialism. In lines 2 and 3 of the 3rd stanza of the poem, “Being,” the poem boasts,
“Being is becoming; and becoming is being.” But he sharply pulls back almost simultaneously when he says, in the line that follows, “Being is, and not yet.” and reels out what looks like a pun in every way. Here, like one being pulled and pulling another across the line in a tug of war, the poem is pepped up like one overwhelmed, suffused, and dressed in the art of philosophizing, so it becomes the story teller and the creative writer all in one.
Not done, the poem lurches ahead and adroitly diverts our attention to the hiddenness of nature and, at its outer end, the inadequacies of natural man. This is why the Philosopoet declares in line two of the 2nd stanza that “I don’t know what I don’t know but I know I don’t know it” and yet, in the same breath, affirms rather illogically that “I know everything,” thereby touching repeatedly on the vexed problem of the nature of human knowledge.
The scenario created by the poem is one that richly endows the readers with the themes of mirth, laughter, and amusement. The reader has to laugh it all off.
“BEING” also elevates the metaphysical problems of validity and sources of what man knows, as when the Philosopoet tries to juxtapose problems of knowledge with the problems of body, soul, evil, duality, and God’s existence (Udoidem, 1999). And from this
85 point, the Philosopoet turns again to scepticism by
introducing the notion of the perplexing issue of human knowledge with the pressing question: “Does anyone know anything? I don’t know what I don’t know. But I know I don’t know it.” The humourous aspect is in trying to “know everything because I know what I know,” which is an irony, an impossibility planted within the space of man’s emptiness. We can thus declare categorically that the sole aim of the poem
“BEING” is to amuse and excite man, appeal to his inner being, and convince him to accept that all is well.
(Robinson, 2010). Reflex and compound questions and sarcasms add colour to the emotions of humour and amusement being induced in the readers.
Poetic licence in the hands of the poet is the tool with which philosophy, having been given central stage, comes alive, cutting up with ferociousness, dissecting and assembling the epistemological credentials of knowledge. It is after the poem has scattered, pulled down, and cut down unknown dogmas to erect validated truths that it acknowledges this by declaring in the 2nd line of the 7th stanza of the poem,
“KNOWLEDGE,” thus: “So there is permanence in change and change is the only permanent feature”
(Udoidem, 2012, p. 19). The limitedness and limitation of human knowledge is one other thing that urges a different dimension on the emotions of pleasure and wittiness inherent in this poem. It negotiates a comparison between “what we know” and “what we don’t know” and asserts, “One might actually be walking with their heads down” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 19), while thinking erroneously that we are walking on our toes; and on the other hand, we could be lying face down while we are actually standing on our toes. It is Carroll & Carroll (2010), position that “an artwork that fails to secure emotional uptake is aesthetically defective on its own terms.” Moreover, an artwork may fail to secure the emotional responses it mandates because its portrayal of certain characters or situations fails to meet the moral warranting criteria appropriate to the mandated emotion” (p. 260). It is because this poem secures the full emotional uptake of its readers at all times, so that readers are immersed in it, that the poem was able to secure the appropriate emotional responses of amusement instead of the corroding anger and disgruntlement that it seems to convey at first instance.
The poem thus exclaims, with a brainteaser,
“Where do we go from here?” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 19) to end the poem, “Knowledge.” This is the final comment of the poem, so it suffices for us to declare that this poem is an exposition of a paradox in a paradox, like a trial in a trial. It is a paradox squared. Should man give up his pursuit of knowledge and stick to harvesting humour from the humour mill? The paradox and uncertainty woven into this poem are at a cross-roads with the state of contentment and bliss it seeks to
instantiate in pushing for the acknowledgement that knowledge can be dismembered to render it nonplussed and flustered. This explains the logic behind the affirmation and denial when the poem dismembers the words that form the fulcrum of philosophical inquiry. He wonders if the letter “w” is taken from all of “what,”
“when,” “why,” and “where,” and proposes a further deduction by the letter “H” from “hat,” “hen,” “hy,” and
“here.”The remainder theorem applies because their remnant is a translation into misery, frustration, and mental agony (Udoidem, 2012, p. 17).
However, mixed emotions of love and contentment course down the sleeves of being able to know further that “the only thing that is permanent is change, so no condition is permanent.” However, the poet announces that the problem is not yet over because when there is sameness, there is difference as the other face of change and that “difference can only be noticed when there is sameness” (Udoidem 2012, 2012, pp. 18- 19). This explains why the Philosopoet adds that “the list of bifurcations is itself both limited and unlimited,”
which in the main violates the three rules of thought, as we often break protocols when in mirth. The loopholes and imperfections of man here are short of nihilism since man can make up for their distinctness through their appearance, being seen as real, reality, and thought. The poem “Knowledge” thus unveils the emotions driven by the instrumentality of perplexity and certitude of the readers, which produce diverse states of amusement, frustration, mental agony and perplexity.
2. LOVE, SATISFACTION& ADMIRATION
A good number of poems in the PHILOSOPoetry stand to rump up the readers' emotions of love and admiration, so that they will derive optimum satisfaction from the text. In stanza 5 of the poem “GOD,” we are informed that: “Everything in our experience has a purpose. Creation must have a purpose. If there is a purpose, then there must be one whose purpose is the universe” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 14). This is a far-reaching effort directed at emotionally freeing readers from the instability and uncertainty of knowledge derived from fallible man. This is the knowledge that will assist man to escape the rustles and bustles of life and have a smooth passage into a relaxed atmosphere, into the secret place of the Most High, under the security of God’s Majesty and purpose, where the love of God inspires hope and confidence in God’s children. In the poem “GOD”, God is pictured as “a Master Intelligent mind ordering the order,” “the most eminent, most beautiful, most magnificent; His name is God... A Being unlimited in power, Omniscient, of Eternal Existence” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 14). It is the picture of this “BIG” God, sitting bestride the world's affairs, that will lead readers to trust and repose confidence in Him, which issues from the
86 love of God and which satisfies since God promised to
take over the problems that trouble man. The further idea of God’s power and might in the poem “GOD”
takes the reader beyond and above his fears, into the realms of uncertainty and worry, leaving man fulfilled because the sense of satisfaction he gets from God is deep-seated. This accounts for linking Rene Descartes’
Cogito Ego Sum to a human factor who advanced the argument for the validity of human knowledge, directed at making man certain and doubly assured.
So its' presence in this poem serves as an authority and an example of how a man can ascend and reach God through the art of reasoning, which began with the mundane as opposed to the spiritual, and it also demonstrates that his advancement eventually ended with an unshakeable faith in God. Descartes' statement that “Cogito Ergo Sum,” or “I think, therefore I exist,” mitigates the poet's faithlessness and forces him to press upon the readers the full range of emotions that can only come from God. The poem says that for man's sake, he should recognise and cherish the “idea of God (which) is distinctly clear in my mind” and that
“therefore, God exists” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 15).
The poem further down introduces so much suspense and negativity into the discussion of the notion of God’s omniscient and omnipotency by reminding us of the problem of evil in the world. The Philosopoet’scontention here seems to be that although the world is steeped in so much evil, including the problems of natural and man-made disasters, wars, violence, destruction, earthquakes, typhoons, tsunamis, human suffering, hunger, and death, it does not reduce or affect the nature of God’s omnipotence, omnipresence, and omniscience. The Philosopoet invariably referenced the Mediaeval contention on the origin of evil, which they argued did not affect God’s sovereignty. Thus, the poem in reiterating St.
Augustine's said, “the notion of original sin is a personally imputable guilt that justifies eternal damnation” (Echeverria, 2020, p. 73). All human suffering came into the world as a result of man’s fall and sin. God made everything perfect at creation, and He is not the author of suffering. This is where the poet anchors the theme of this poem so that it confers emotions of love and satisfaction by opening the door to the reader’s mind to the unsearchable truths of God’s kingdom, the undeniable fact that God cannot be questioned for the plight of humanity, and that God is not wicked since he will not be tempted by evil. The build-up by the poem, “GOD”, climaxes when it eventually gathers momentum toward building bridges of virtue and emotions of satisfaction, elation, and joy, as its ultimate cognitive achievement, which can competently link man to “GOD” (Carroll & Gibson, 2016, p. 241). The poem provides both cognitive content and aesthetic pleasure to readers. Elizabeth Camp (2016)
gives cognitive benefit and knowledge to its readers. This can only be actuated by reading the poem “GOD” as it enrapts and absorbs the reader, a sort of un-put-down- able read (Carroll, N., & Gibson 2016).
The emotional virtue recollected from the poem,
“GOD,” assists in the purgation and elimination of complexes, offers spiritual renewal, and affords the reader release from tension. This is the position of the Philosopoet. Certain “morally salutary emotions” from the poem “GOD” will lead the audience to develop genuine attitudes and morals that would make them more “empathetic and open-minded.” This would in turn arm the readers to question, criticize, and evaluate their old-held belief systems and convictions about “GOD”
(Lindsey-Warren, & Ringler, 2021), and then relax and fall back on the fact that God, not the Nietzschean “god,”
is powerful, strong, and knowledgeable enough to keep all that which had been committed unto him against that day. This is the emotional state of the readers of “God”
such that they will be happy and merry because “Neither Nietzsche nor Hume had the solution; God cannot be wished away; his notion is so present, so eternal, so real”
(Vattimo, 2007). This poem, therefore, goes a long way towards making the joy of God’s little children overflow with reassuring and abundant joy because, after all, God is in full control.
In the same direction, and still dealing with the same emotional object, the poem “SILENCE” is one that seeks to influence man towards developing the emotions of love and satisfaction. As the saying goes, “Silence is golden, speech is silver,” so we behold the Philosopoet portraying the poem “SILENCE” as a veritable tool for perfection and stabilisation of the emotions of love, joy, and satiety. This is because love is made to stand out from within the passes and rivulets that flow from
“SILENCE” so that its form beams the light of life; and that light is of something of very high worth and esteem, something that would attract a very high premium and be possessed of valuable extrinsic worth if it were to be paid for with cash. In the first line of stanza one and line two of the 2nd stanza, “SILENCE” is described as
“Nature’s creative power.” The Creator needs silence to be at work” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 27), which refers to the creation story in the book of Genesis Chapter 1: 2–28, where the Bible says, “The Earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and God said, Let there be light” (KJV). This imposes on man the bounden duty to hold God in awe, and since God is awesome, He proves His Omnipotency, His creative powers, because, according to the Philosopoet, God acted right. If we loved and cherished God, we would develop such powers and spirits to a large extent, and enjoy the benefits of God's creative powers and its accompaniment.
In the poem PHILOSOPoetry, the first poem in the book PHILOSOPoetry, the concept of silence continues to be echoed to draw us towards the emotional
87 virtues of love and satisfaction. In line 6 of the 2nd stanza
of the poem, PHILOSOPoetry, the poet asks, “Isn’t language the medium of philosophy poetic?” and concludes that “Even in silence, the unspoken philosophy is most poetic” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 1). In these lines, the emphasis is on the invaluable nature of silence as a tool that disarms and overcomes, and one that should be cherished, loved, treasured, enjoyed, and shared for its virtue. This follows the utility of
“SILENCE” in God’s hand at creation, in the acquisition of knowledge, and in setting up orderliness. This is why, in line 3 of the 10th stanza of the poem PHILOSOPoetry, the poem continued to pour sweet encomiums on “SILENCE,” eulogising that “If you had remained silent, you would have been a philosopher.”
The methodology of silence profits beyond measure and explains why the poet added, “But ultimately, both poetry and philosophy end their work in silence”
(Udoidem, 2012). This poem further lends credence to the sanctity of “SILENCE.” The Philosopoet proceeds to picture “SILENCE” as “the greatest hammer”, possessed of the power to break through the darkest abyss, to tear open every obstacle, and leave no trail in its path. The poet ravishes its virtues and shows off the evidence of “SILENCE” as having caused so much devastation, but distinguishes that the violence of
“silence” is restorative, rejuvenating, beneficial, unimpeachable, advantageous, blameless, and praiseworthy. It is a treasured and therapeutic item that should be venerated and esteemed. This is why, even in the face of adversity and affliction, “SILENCE” calls out to all to “Be silent like you were silent.” This is a reference to silence, which also cuts through tragedy and distress like lightning. “Thunder” and
“boomerang” are metaphoric ornamentations for
“SILENCE”, put there to convey the invincibility of
“SILENCE,” the all-conquering attribute, all-powerful nature, and far-reaching aura of “SILENCE.” The antinomy demonstrated here is that the actual characteristics of silence are contrasted with the outward show of its enduring effect on all. It is a sweet agony to be silent. It’s the soul of inventions and discoveries.
“SILENCE” is shown as a combined rendition of metaphor and anticlimax of a series of events and happenings all in one. Silence, by its nature, cannot give rise to thundering and lightning. However, on the obverse aspect of lightning, a lighting blast, normally, we should expect a calm. The teleological supposition that is “SILENCE” is that which rips through, tears apart, and rends in shreds through lightning and thundering. The Philosopoet in the poem “SILENCE” is
“expressing emotion” of love and reverence, while on the contrary, he is set to project the same emotion onto the audience with the intensity with which he feels it.
Hence, “he is making his emotions clear to his audience,
and that is what he is doing to himself” (Maibom, 2017, p. 186). It is through this calm and noiseless show of unassuming greatness and pleasant mightiness that
“SILENCE” leaves behind a trail whose serenity compares, in the obverse, to the flashing of lightning and clapping of thunder.
In the end, silence takes over the environment and clears away all memory of its adversarial and squamous breath, making it possible for both the ugly and the good to be left behind at the mercy of
“SILENCE,” except for the lingering reflection of the pit- a-pat of the convulsions and pitter-patter of silence rumbling in the distance. Beautiful and venerated emotions of this sort don’t just pass away. In the midst of the silence foisted on all other acts that are contemplated by man, none can generate a genuine response towards establishing utopic states in the objective world.
“SILENCE,” the poet says, although it mistakenly balloons into the ranks and files of the architects of vices, either cooked up or contemplated, it is worth pursuing because “With silence we hear all, even the depths of our being” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 27) and man is assured of his safety. “SILENCE” also infiltrates into and sucks up numerous other natural phenomena, such as lightning and thunder, because these elements similarly “discover the depths of (their) being” in death, where all things pass out and “Silence is the ultimate.” The call in the poem “SILENCE” to speak is the height of how silence commands respect, induces admiration and love in the people who get satisfied on learning that the call is rife,
“O! Silence, speak and break the silence.” This is what is needed to puncture the ominous foreboding of darkness and evil and to truncate emotional sentimentalism. When and if “SILENCE” speaks, then freedom and liberty are guaranteed and granted because, on its threshold, we all learn to be “silent in contemplation,” and “SILENCE,” if and when it becomes a lifestyle, turns all of us into Philosophers knowing. The declaration that follows is apt: “If you had remained silent, you would have been a philosopher” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 3). Who can fault the words of the Prophet?
3. ANGER, GUILT, SUSPENSE, CURIOSITY ANDWONDER
According to D’Arms and Jacobson (2000), “Guilt and anger have been called “moral emotions” precisely because they present their objects in light of such moral concepts as desert, fault, and responsibility.” Hence, moral features of a situation can properly be invoked to contest the appropriateness of guilt and anger as responses to it, and in some cases they suffice to show that the emotion fails to fit “(p. 87). Emotional responses contain certain warranting conditions and moral considerations, such as concern for justice, anger,
88 appeasement, re-orientation, speculation, and incisive
analysis. That being the case, some of the poems in PHILOSOPoetry gravitate towards anger, guilt, suspense, curiosity, and wonder. This has deep roots in the calling of the Philosopoet—the author, as hinted earlier. Our work in this regard is poised to interpret the relevant poems in the PHILOSOPhetry, not only by hanging on to the things expressed, but definitely with respect to things that are not obvious (Seyhan, 2003). It has gained universal acceptance that “when someone reads and understands a poem, he is not merely understanding the poet’s expression of his, the poet’s, emotions; he is expressing emotions of his own in the poet’s words, which have thus become his own words”
(Mikkonen, 2013, p. 101).
In line 3 of the first stanza of the poem,
“BEING,” it answers the question posed in the poem’s introductory line, “What is it?” by saying, “Being is logosed variously.” The language of the poem assumes that its readers know what is meant by the word
“logosed.” The term “logosed” does not refer to a variant of “loosed” or “loosened,” but to the Greek word “logos,” which means “discourse,” “statement,”
“rational content of what is spoken,” and/or “reason.”
In ancient Greek philosophy, it is the reason and the basic controlling principle of the universe, and it also denotes the concept of rational discourse (Lawhead, 2002).When the word “Logos” is viewed from the background of the Philosopoet as a priest, we still arrive at a different meaning. Its meaning in this context conjures up that which is attached to God, and thus it is
“the divine wisdom manifest in the creation, government, and redemption of the world and associated with the Second Person of the Trinity, the Saviour Jesus Christ” (Websters 703). Therefore, the word “BEING” has different meanings, as captured by the poem when it says that “Being is logosed variously.”
Apart from the above descriptions of “BEING”, three other variants of its meaning are those given by Plato, Aristotle, and Heidegger. The use of this word is intended to immerse readers in wonder and suspense, which inspires curiosity and, in the long run, may lead to bouts of anger and dissatisfaction.
In the 1st line of the 4th stanza of the poem
“BEING,” the poem speaks metaphorically, which Hagberg says “is the product of their shared ability to appreciate the power of redescribing, the power of language to make new and different things possible and important—an appreciation which becomes possible only when one’s aim becomes an expanding repertoire of alternative descriptions rather than the one right description” (Starr, 2010, p. 50). The poet uses metaphorical self-construction to relate to its readers the nature of being when it says, “Being is nothing and nothingness is being.” This statement without doubt throws the reader, especially someone who is not
abreast with philosophy, into serious mental torture and confusion and creates a heightened level of suspense. For example, what does it entail saying that “BEING” can’t be known just when the answer seems to be coming to him? Then the poem continues to distance and separate the subject from the object of his inquiry. For example, when in line 4 of the 2nd stanza, it says, “space and time beget distance; that makes being and becoming a form of distancing” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 5).
A casual reader of the text gets very wary and uncomfortable with the act of knowing. How can the same “BEING” become nothing almost instantaneously after “Being is becoming, and becoming is being?” The surprise element and uncertainty that attend to the object of our inquiry is a disturbing phenomenon. It is enough that “being is nothing and nothing is being.”But it raises more questions about whether the being that is nothing is different from the being that is. And how can
“nothingness” itself turn into “being?” And under what circumstances can “nothingness” itself become a
“being”? While the confusion is raking the mind and brain of the reader, the poem proceeds to suggest that
“Non-Being is the foil of Being,” which is what deals the reader a fatal blow. This is because the reader knows, as a basic rule, that “no one can give what he doesn’t have.”
As a result, the stage is set for a rationale revolt as the task approaches fever pitch.The stakes are raised very high for “BEING.”
It is now understood that the poem “BEING”
states certain basic ideas, some rudimentary truths, which make the poem hard and desiccated. They are quite unnerving, and it hurts so badly that the emotional build-up sprouts vices like anger, guilt, suspense, curiosity, and wonder all in quick succession, enough to cause intense provocation and a clash of minds and spirits. The balance tilts in favour of an explanation as to how to unravel the next paradox, that “being and not being are one” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 6). It situates two opposing, distinct events with contrary properties as one,
“being” and “non-being.” The muffled suggestion provided by the poem comes in handy to muffle our anger and guilt of being uninformed and the suspense of being unable to break through the riddle and being made to perpetually wonder, “What is it?” What is “BEING?”
At this point, the poem initiates a healthy engagement by explaining that, “Out of nothing, it is said, the Creator created something,” which is why the other truths become self-evident, “Nemo quod non habet,” only from God can something come out of nothing, only God can give to nature what it lacked, because God is everything and has it all in His nature prior. This is why a being is and a being is not, because being and not being are one with God. Riddle resolved. This is the main difference between expressing an emotion and arousing one through a poem. When this happens, then “a person expressing emotion, on the contrary, is treating himself
89 and his audience in the same kind of way; he is making
his emotions clear to his audience, and that is what he is doing to himself” (d’Arms & Jacobson, 2000, p. 186).
The next poem, “NATURE” in Chapter Three, is directed at nurturing the people’s curiosity and wonder, with a good chance that it will relapse into suspense, guilt, and anger. This explains why it opened with a booby-trap-like question, “What is it?” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 7); a primarily metaphysical question tossed into uncharted territory – from philosophy to literature and the arts – like a decoy, a land-mine ready to explode on contact.We immediately recall the poem
“PHILOSOPoetry” in Chapter One of the book, on page 1, questioning: “Can there be philosophy without poetry?” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 1). This question under review comes with a rather uncertain and pessimistic outlook on knowledge and the knowing process. Maybe a man should not answer this question since any answer provided will be used against his person, because not all philosophy is poetry, but all philosophy is literature, a work of art.
In “Nature”, the Philosopoet employs the Socratic dialectical midwife methodology to deliver the knowledge that all have innately when the question referenced above is asked, which if completed would become “What is nature?” in its form. It is pertinent to hold that rhetorical questioning is good for dialectical midwifing of knowledge and critical analysis because even “Nature in its hiddenness is critical of itself”
(Udoidem, 2012, p. 7). The retorts and answers that follow on the initial question beat our imaginations as they are tailored to agitate and aggravate the sense of danger building up in the reader. The reader is forced to ask, “Is nature critical of itself?” With no definite answers following, the reader continues his ascent into the realms of the esoteric and asks, “In which ways exactly is nature’s self-examination undertaken?” This is the end of what the poem wants to enact: an atmosphere of tension, irritability, and wonder borne out of unmet and insatiable perplexity. Then the bombshell is dumped on the trail of the inquiry and it comes to arrest and thrill the audience with the brainteaser, “Nature unfolds but at the same time it hides” (Udoidem 2012, p.
8), adding further complexity to the text.The poem seeks to become a secret weapon of mortification and transmogrification to the terrestrial, corporeal formation of the intellect and understanding, being gradually built to catapult its readers to become wholly engrossed in and yearning for “the sweet honey with which to swallow the bitter herbs of philosophy” (Udoidem, 2012, p. vi). This poem deliberately explores methods of philosophical engagement, including speculation, questioning, analysis, and criticism, so that philosophy would be brought down from its high Olympus, from the solace of the gods, to the mundane world of man and his chthonic human routines. The inability to fill the
chasm and abyss between both is anticipated to create a sort of uncertainty and which would breed contempt, while certainty about the impossibility of striking a balance between substitutivity and transcendentals of both worlds goes on to reenact serious confusion in the minds of readers (Lycan, 2018, pp. 15, 18).
The next bus-stop headed in the same direction is the statement drawn from the poem “REALITY” on page 12 of PHILOSOPoetry, which seeks to advance the notions of “reality”, “ideas”, “appearance”, “rational”,
“phenomena” and “noumena” rather covertly ends up actually proclaiming that these are not knowable (Udoidem, 2012, p. 12). It consequently raises the stakes in favour of perplexity, wonder, and a sense of unresolvable “awe” in the readers. This trend, an interplay between what man can know and what man cannot know, whether knowledge is possible and whether knowledge is not possible, continues to baffle and hypnotise man, while the reader of this poem is confronted with the otherwise “scandalous” question posed with respect to the poem “GOD” in line 1, stanza 1, line 2 of the 11th stanza of the poem “GOD.” It asks,
“Does God exist?”Philosophical inquiry into the entirety of human existence, human nature, the cogito in the conscious, and the workings of the mind. This is the hallmark and beauty of philosophy: no area of life and existence is sacrosanct or free from being investigated.
But the Philosopoet knows that this trend is unfamiliar territory for readers of this poem, so what is kept in stock for them is surprise and suspense.
The question, “Does God exist?” is a metaphysical quest meant to be swallowed and internalised by the reader. This question touches on the fundamental basis of man’s existence and can incite anger and violence. Why should someone question the existence of God when he is ordinarily supposed to know that God exists? It also raises the stakes for stoking the fire of guilt, suspense, and wonder. The guilt here is associated with being labelled a heretic for asking or being asked that kind of question. It refers to someone who denies the revealed truth about Jesus Christ and God. The suspense will stem from fears of the unknown;
will God not punish him for questioning his existence? It will also leave practitioners in awe.The reader's mind will begin to wander, wonder, and oscillate between options, and will advance as intended by the poem, courting the insights from abstraction and illumination to attain the truth being bandied about by the philosopher in the poem. In this way, the poem “GOD” similarly yields emotions of anger, guilt, wonder, and suspense in its readers (d’Arms & Jacobson, 2000, pp. 186, 187).
The poem “MAN” in Chapter Ten opens with the whimsical and fascinating question, “What is he?” which merely restates the eccentric, mercurial, and quixotic nature of man. The terminal idea is the underlying fact that man is shrouded in so much mystery,
90 unpredictability, and unknowability. The sense of
wonder aroused is further reinforced as the second line tries to explain that man is “an enigma to the core.” This prompts the notion that “MAN” is mysterious, an agent to wonder and worry about so much, and a source of curiosity, indeterminacy, fear, and guilt, which is underscored by the fact that the poem further says of him, “Even the Creator beholds him with awe”
(Udoidem, 2012, p. 25). This the poet leaves at the foot of the Biblical injunction found in Genesis Chapter 6 verse 6 (KJV), which tells us that even God, the Creator of heaven and earth, at some point said it regretted him that he made man. This makes the problem of humankind impregnable and beyond remedy. The problem that this poem seeks to push is that, if man is such a mystery and an enigma that he could hold the Almighty God in “awe,” then ordinary mortals like the readers should see “MAN” in utmost astonishment, total consternation, shock, and dread.
The poem's cross-reference to the Delphic Command in the discourse “MAN KNOW THYSELF”
articulates and clarifies the emotion of fear and wonder under reference, and seeks to make man the sole arbiter of elegantiarum of human behaviour and taste. This is why the poem resignedly exclaims, somewhat irritably in the 6th line of the 2nd stanza, “What a self-delusion!”
(Udoidem, 2012, p. 25). The poem “MAN” is an unending potpourri of philosophically engaging riddles and puzzles designed to accentuate the bizarre, outlandish, and incomprehensible nature of man. How man bamboozles man, how this seething perplexity of the being called “MAN” has been at the centre of man’s self-delusion. The ultimate purpose, if the long-drawn quest to unravel and decode the recondite, nebulous, and arcane object called “man” meets with dismal setbacks and disappointment, as depicted in PHILOSOPoetry, then would be to remain an object of awe, wonder, discontent, and fear. What would come of a man? Is that what would be left hanging on the lips of everyone?
The enquiry about man is unending, although proclaimed “unknowable” and “unexplainable,” so even the poet’s act of questioning the nature of man negatively by asking, “What is man?” is a tainted censure against trying to “find out.” The inquiry simply becomes endless, wary, and we are left wondering when we realise that all that subsists will be “endless questions and endless answers” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 25).
Since man’s nature cannot be inquired into because the outcome has always been wrong answers, the poem cautions, “Stop raising the question.” Do not raise the question. It will end in doom (Udoidem, 2012, p. 25).
But the philosopher seeks not just an engagement, but a
“Philosophical Engagement” through speculation, evaluation, and criticality. The poem terminates in an
anticlimax, a return to the same “vices” and methods that exacerbated and aroused in man the emotions of fear, wonder, curiosity, anger, and guilt, and which a return to the art of questioning, merely because man is and ought to remain a questioning being. Why was the man abruptly barred from taking the path of questioning?
Why was “questioning” hitherto condemned and loathed? This latter recommendation, although it seeks to negate the solution earlier given on how to unscramble
“MAN,” has good prospects. It shows that the Philosopoet did not only set out to infuriate and intimidate man, but sought to gently and gradually disentangle man from the stranglehold of nature and culture, which beclouds his true identity. “MAN” ought to be led to the light now beaming at the end of the tunnel. If we are to be silent, or to “stop raising the question” of “what is man” as a resume for solving man’s enigmatic composition, then man will dramatically continue to hide beneath the nature of man that is unidentified, and the man that is “a questioning being”
will frizzle into nothingness. That would imply that the enigmatic and mysterious attributes that stalk “MAN”
would remain an endless source of wonder, curiosity, fear, and anger at why man cannot be deciphered. This entails a complete return to the beginning, anti- climactically, “What is man?”. The only viable way out, therefore, will be to keep man as he was created, “a questioning being” (Udoidem 2012, p. 25).
The other poems that tore into man’s fears, worries, curiosity, fear and anger are “FOOD,”
“HUNGER,” “WAR,” and “VIOLENCE.” I will attempt to treat the elements that invoked these emotions in a juxtaposed position as they appeal to us. In the poem
“FOOD,” the excitement that naturally follows the sight and smell of food, with the whetting of the appetites and salivating, is smothered in the applesauce of food when it is labelled the “tormentor of the human race.” This is aggravated when the poem adds that food is actually
“the cause of ALL human troubles and problems”
(Udoidem 2012, p. 35). The spate of the emotions of readers turns into those of morbid fear, apprehension, anger, and rage. Why should this life-sustaining and so- relishing “food” turn into a human betrayer, detractor, heckler, and Kafkaesque of sorts? The poem proceeds to substantiate and build more points for his stand on the depravity of food, with further proof that food is
“malevolent” personified. Whatever causes man to “fight for power in order to control food” or “go to war in order to gain power” in order to control food supply and distribution is wicked and pernicious (Udoidem 2012).
Food is shown to be so powerful that it turns men into addicts and prisoners of “FOOD.” This invariably makes food the number one instrument of human misery, pain, and suffering. This should make man despise eating
“food” at the high cost of suffering from “kwashiorkor,”
but man continues to rely on it not for fear of
91 kwashiorkor but for a greater fear of suffering from “a
sickness called hunger.”
The poem continues with its onslaught on the freedom and liberty of man, causing the first disobedience when, in line three of the 6th stanza,
“hunger for food caused Adam and Eve our freedom.”
This reminds one of the continuous struggle of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) for funding and improvement of the standards of the fallen standard of education in Nigeria against a recalcitrant and unyielding Federal Government manned by people whose children and wards do not attend Nigerian universities. Founded in 1978 and currently headed by Professor Victor Emmanuel Osedeke, the Federal Government’s take is that food is at the centre of the incessant feud as its “domestic policy ingredient”
(Udoidem 2012, p. 41). It is to be noted that since 1999, when democracy returned to Nigeria, a total of 1,543 days, or 4 years, 76 days have been spent by ASUU on industrial strike action to press for fair wages and improved funding. The last strike, which commenced on February 14, 2022, was to demand fair wages in addition to the full implementation of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) and Memorandum of Action (MoA) signed between ASUU and the Federal Government. This is reminiscent of the duty assigned to food when “each fights to contain its own” (Udoidem 2012, p. 41), which explains why the Federal Government is dragging its feet in meeting its obligation to Nigerian universities. This reminds us of the appellation, “NO WORK, NO PAY,” given to ASUU to compel it to forsake the strike and continue to work and suffer and smile all at once. It is a big kudos to ASUU for accepting to starve to improve the condition of Nigerian universities as stated in “FOOD AND WAR” that “Give me peace and take the food, and the world will be a better place to leave in” (Udoidem 2012, p. 41). If ASUU has enjoyed this grand treat and come out unscathed since 1978, then we should all do it and better ASUU. Maybe it will serve as the “quest for ONE answer that answers all the questions” (Udoidem 2012, p. 2). This surely ensures that the circle of fear, anger, and guilt continues because we become what we eat in body and in death, especially considering the fact that
“It is the food that adorns the body that poisons the body; Death is the ultimate desire.”
Thus, the Philosopoet presses on, that food is the master tormentor, a treacherous captor that enslaves and poisons the human body with its sweet “overdose”
and bitter “complications.” So it is that food interplay works up the emotions of fear, curiosity, and hate targeted at food, and builds formidably, taking time to explore the options, the sickness, the cure, and the medicine. Food continues its crazed run, but as the architect of so many vices, it launches vicious attacks on the personality of mankind. In fact, the poem shows that
food now stands at the centre of “obesity”—the product of overdose—and links up with “anorexia”—the result of food refusal, and, in the long run, becomes
“Kwashiorkor,” a symptom of a lack of nutritious food (Udoidem 2012, p. 37). Pray it stays there and does not invite its next-of-kin, “anorexia nervosa.” The ending of
“FOOD” in the 1st–3rd lines of the 18th stanza calls for an all-out antagonism to food in a climax of events. “O!
Food, why the rigidity, why the dungeon; I despise you because you take away my freedom; I wish I could be free to exercise my freedom again,” it cries (Udoidem 2012, p. 37).This douses all hope of recovery from the irate bashings of food, which holds man as a perpetual slave, a handmaid, and in bondage to the immanent intrigues and interplays of food. The unending demand for food and honed desires lies at the base wherein the alliteration just chimes, “The struggle for food is everlasting.” From cradle to grave, there is a craving for food (Udoidem 2012). The fear and worry factor remain the only things haunting this captive in chains from the food enterprise. Too bad a deal!
The next poem, “HUNGER,” opens us to a threatening manoeuvre that stuns and leaves us livid.
“What a monster!” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 39), thunders the opening line. But like coming to the rescue, the 2nd to 4th lines of the 1st stanza stop short and rather portray hunger as a terrible omen, an irreconcilable harbinger of all evil that could happen to man like its brother “FOOD”
(Udoidem, 2012). The image this poem cuts is like a choke-slam on the entire human race, pouring out a deluge of hate, anger, and suspense of the basest form.
The poet does not hide his feelings that he dislikes
“hunger.” The poem dispenses with all virtues like fondness and devotion. In lines 9–12, “HUNGER” is shown as it eclipses the zeal for living because “Hunger”
comes to assume the state of preference for food, love, sex, and knowledge, and becomes the “cosmic tyrant”
(Udoidem 2012, p. 39). Brandishing its monstrousity,
“FOOD” herds all humanity to kowtow to its insane commands, infused and laden with threats of hunting
“man out of his sense.” Now if a hungry man is an angry man, so that “hunger and anger would go together,” but as soon as food has satisfied “hunger,” anger is fired up, so that “man then has the power to execute his anger”
(Udoidem 2012, p. 39), would it be sensible to satisfy
“hunger?” Maybe this vindicates and justifies General Gowon’s Nigerian Army’s use of “hunger” as a lethal weapon against the Biafran soldiers during the Nigerian Civil War between 1967 and 1970. Although not directly prompted by “hunger”, what good is deduction if it cannot unravel hidden secrets? This is what philosophy can do, everything, and is “the only” science that should be pursued, for it is the only thing that can free the human mind from ideological bigotry and intellectual mediocrity (Udoidem, 2012, p. 9).
92 The poems “WAR” and “VIOLENCE” resound
with reverberations of gloominess, fear, despondency, despair, suffering, disaster, and despicable evil in the land. The direct implication is that human suffering would be taken to greater heights beyond the realms of mitigation and moderation wherever these twosome are present. The 1st and 2nd lines of “WAR” conjure up trepidation and nervousness as they announce and call out for “tanks, ammunition, grenades, spears, guns, and machines,” the darkest instruments of death, as in products for marketing and advertisement slots. But, which market displays instruments of mass destruction and extermination as economic goods? This enures to the Philosopoet’s distaste for and hatred for the manufacture and sale of war ammunition and war hardware.”WAR” awakens use of onomatopoeia, dimensions that bring to life the distrust and hate for these vices, and the poem calls and refers to them with several name-calling outbursts like, “murder” when a soldier is killed at home, but termed “Patriots”
(Udoidem 2012, p. 43) when they are killed in war in foreign lands. These are lies and international scams.
Euphemistic nomenclatures are to moderate the use of
“WAR” by the imperialists as a means of population control. As the war monger, the person who makes and makes the war thingamajigs, gets richer, the terrifying thing becomes unbearable. They sell cheap, easily lethal goods to expand their economic surplus.The poem uses this experience to warn the developing nations to be wary and stop lining the pockets of the colonisers and war agents with blood money.
The poem “Violence” at first glance shows off the Philosopoet’s estimation and reflection on all forms of harassment and bludgeoning of human beings by violence, which are but forms of outrage and distortion caused by unprovoked aggressiveness and vehemence.
This is why the poem opens with a touch of
“SILENCE,” which is explained dramatically through irony, metaphor, and paradox. The poem thus opens by saying, “Silence, the greatest hammer.” In this thismetaphoric comparison, the poem here seeks to expose certain attributes that are “something quasi- religious and highly special, and specialised in knowledge that was conveyed by means of verse” (Soy Ribiero 99). To show the poet’s metaphoric utility of
“violence,” the poem explores areas of confluence between it and “light.” This “light” is possessed with the “force of separation and difference; piercing, sighting, and finding; ocean tumbling and waves;
tranquil aggression; bombarding rocks and forcing its way.” This force reminds us of the powers inherent in philosophy “(Udoidem 1992, p. 9). The violence that shows through “light” is one that is toughened by its simplicity and ordinariness, but that has a far greater reach and effect, namely the dividing asunder of rocks, oceans, and waves. This is slow, pervasive violence, and
it is possessed of so much power and aggression, as much as the untamed violence of nature’s forces like tornados and floods. This imbues light with something esoteric and quasi-religious, visible only in the specialised knowledge that emerges from “light” or philosophical inquiry.conveyance of this knowledge through poetry makes it both assured and available to the reader. Thus, “If you are still perplexed about the nature of philosophy, then philosophy has bewitched your mind.” Welcome to the club, for this is the starting point of philosophy. Light sheds light on reality, as philosophy does, like one bewitched.
Violence is again contradistinguished from
“Philosophy”, which the Philosopoet uses metaphorically and describes as “effeminate in its orgy” and as that which rapes the “virgin and opens the horizon” with its policy of no-holds-barred approach to everything and every issue. Uncharted waters are mapped, traversed, and discovered by philosophy. This gives rise to virgin ideas and the birth of new ideas. According to Udoidem (2012), philosophy here becomes “effeminate” and proceeds to rape the virgin uncharted body of beliefs through the instrumentality of “lightening, thundering, and boomerang” (p. 47), doing violence to dogmatism and mere opinions. Philosophy thus stands as the only
“science” that should be pursued, for it alone possesses the tool that will “free the human mind from ideological bigotry and intellectual mediocrity” (Udoidem 1992, p.
9). This is what the poem “violence” conceals when it is taunted to be “rapping the virgin”, which happens when
“thought, speech, understanding, and interpretation”
philosophy pries open the horizons of knowledge and understanding.
Then “love” is presented as one of the forms of this peculiar type of “violence,” being itself irresistible and devastating in how it sometimes turns out to be a harbinger of “frustration, disappointment, and headaches” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 47). The real violence of the art of living comes to the fore in how we live and grow in love. The poet metaphorically pictures love as a violent trait of human existence because, in loving, we sometimes disappoint the ones we love, thus leaving them devastated, disappointed, and with headaches. It is love that makes a young lady submit to a man, who will always graduate to tying the nuptial knot. Consent granted, like that handed over to philosophy, can break the hymen and open the door to conception and procreation. The place of love here is that it causes a violent interruption and alteration of the status quo and that it can only replace or replenish itself, as only a true reflection of forceful and fierce changes can be connected or held up by what the Philosopoet calls “all moments of fierce aggression” (Udoidem, 2012, p.47). This is the stage of what the Philosopoet refers to as “violence,” which reverts from the surreal to the real. This is the climacteric as it builds up from the lesser and non-violent violence to
93 the instances of obvious violence. At this point, the
references only point us to why we fear because of the instantiations of fear, suspense, guilt, and curiosity in the readers as we are called to explain “domestic battering, quarrels, and conflicts” in a household. In this way, the philosopher is led to think about “sickness,”
“affliction,” “disaffection,” “estrangement,” and more.
He is also encouraged to think about “gun shots, bombs, and sudden death,” which are the destructive agents of
“violence.”
The poem astutely criticises the rash of violence that ignores “The Lord God and no other,” which is why the world is still experiencing “The War of words, catapults, tanks, and arsenals,” which now fills the world with “fear, dread, trepidation, and anxiety”
(Udoidem 2012, p. 48). The question concealed within the epistrophe-like ellipsis can be spotted in line 4 of the 6th stanza, whose tribulation is that “the war of words, catapults, tanks, and arsenals” is brought about by
“revolt, revenge, revolution?” (Udoidem, 2012, p. 48). If the development that results remains undecipherable, then why “violence, violence, violence”? This leaves a window of unattended emotional expressions of fear and suspense hanging loose within the reader and critic.
Through the use of metaphors and paradox, The Philosophet thus made quick his unenviable success in stinging us to the strange realisation that literature and works of literature like PHILOSOPHY do indeed impale us with emotions of fear, hatred, and suspense. The reader may try so hard to hide the emotions of guilt and wonder here, but the more predominant passions like anger, suspense, and wonder in this context are an obvious reference to the reality that each of us faces daily and which the tools of metaphor, alliteration, simile, and language have put before us. We devoured it without hesitation.
4. CONCLUSION
To understand and explain the poems in PHILOSOPoetry, I used formalist and reader-response criticism, which are two different types of criticism. The formalist approach demonstrated how the poem
“Violence” uses metaphor to show that, in its first part,
“violence” is used euphemistically to denote the supportive and beneficial aspects of violence, which exudes warmth, passion, and responsiveness through silence, light, philosophy, and love. I proceeded to interpret this poem as it fosters activities that resemble tilling and ploughing and which upset and dig up whole trends and break new grounds in order to establish justified true beliefs. We also argued that this aspect of
“violence” is the effeminate aspect of it, with which
“violence” creates and recreates benign ties with reality and with which it builds a safe haven for emergent ideas through “conception, birth, life, and death” (Udoidem
2012, p. 47). These constructive ideas can only come to be born if the old die, the “hymen” is torn open and broken, and rocks and “the great abyss” are scattered, torn apart, and ripped through with the force of a “hammer” like
“thundering.” Our explanation goes on to say that only after light has pierced through the darkness,
“bombarded the rocks, and forced its way” can it rape the virgin by bringing down the towering edifices to be rebuilt on solid ground. This “virgin” gets raped through the violence of tilling and seed multiplication, which gets the horizon opened. In order for the seeds of knowledge and wisdom to grow, they must be planted in soil that is already ready for them.
In the same vein, I interpreted the poem “FOOD”
using the formalist approach, wherein we saw it as a source of so much conflict and human suffering. The desire to eat food, produce food, and supply food has been left at the doorstep of man’s agitation and wars. This I deduced from the poem “FOOD.” Food has been a grievous tormentor, inhibitor, distributor, competitor, and compactor of human agony, herding man to his destruction. This is especially true whenever food gets scarce, absent, hoarded, or grows insufficient where it is used as bait by the tempter. I pointed out that although religion has tried to curb gluttony and greediness, its search, demand, and consumption are “everlasting,” often tilting into addiction and “enslavement.” On the reader- response platform, we have linked the insanity of food rejection and abandonment as revealed in the struggle of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) with the Federal Government since 1978. Tailing the cue from stanza 10, “But alas, man does not live by bread alone; in refusing the food, the Master gained his freedom,” we applaud and celebrate the unwavering and steadfast position of ASUU in the face of the Federal Government’s
“NO WORK, NO PAY.” In the long run, it will work toward a goal of freeing and liberating the educational system from a seemingly hostile, heartless, and destitute federal government that's agreed to things with ASUU and then failed to keep them.
On the platform of the reader-response approach, we have shown that the Philosopoet intended to fill the reader with awe and suspense with the poem, “Violence.”
The intention is that the readers will be moved to explore and engage in the rigours of speculative philosophical sagacity. The poet works through the tools of puzzlement, paradox, irony, and metaphor to show that if we become philosophers, we can use the “violence” of speculation and critical analysis to unlock the “truth” and rejuvenate knowledge and the knowing process. One such engagement is that drawn from how the Philosopoet says that love and light are tools in the hand of “violence” to hammer and break through rocks, blast with lightning speed at tranquil waters, and bombard rocks to nurse passions and emotions of awe and suspense. Philosophy is brought on–board the boat of love to extract “nature's
94 nectar” (Udoidem 2012, p. 47). The reader and audience
get enwrapped in moments of “fierce aggression,” which guarantees that they cannot hold back their “fear, dread, trepidation, and anxiety,” and the ensuing scenario can only be that of a chain reaction of “violence, violence, violence” (Udoidem 2012, p, 48). These were the central themes and goals of the Philopoetry poems: to turn everyone into philosophers capable of uniting and unmasking knowledge and midwifeing wisdom through dialectics.
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