biography
Item set
- Title
- biography
- Description
- A collection of news items related to biography.
Items
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South African Poet "This volume gathers examples from the best work of one of the foremost South African poets of today. The quality that strikes one particularly in Mr. Slater's verse is its ability to achieve a quiet subtlety of rhythm: it flows with a varied cadence, without monotony, carefully preventing its metre from stamping, or its rhyme from rinigng, to the disturbance of its subdued harmonies. Its content is chiefly remarkable for its sensitive feeling for the African landscape. Mr. R. C. K. Ensor's brief biographical note of the poet which introduces the book is most useful." -
Poetry from Africa Gerald Moore first critically evaluates the poems included in the collection edited by Langston Hughes; he suggests that while "the accomplished young Nigerian poets Wole Soyinka, J. P. Clark, Gabriel Okara, and Christopher Okigbo suffer from being placed immediately after no fewer than 22 poems from Ghana and Liberia, of which only four by Kwesi Brew and one (translated from Twi) by A. A. Opoku rise above the level of mediocrity." About another poem by Richard Rive, he suggests that "any reader opening the book at this point might be forgiven for flinging it through the window." On the second review, the biography of L S. Senghor, Moore writes that Armand Guibert puts together this "short biogrpahical introduction, a selection of poetry interlarded with exegesis and footnotes, a couple of prose extracts, a dialogue with the poet, a selection of review notices and a bibliography." -
Far Removed [Excerpt]: "On September 18, 1967, two months after appointing himself major in the Biafran army, Christopher Okigbo--a thirty-seven-year-old patriot, classicist, and poet--was riddled by bullets during a battle to contain the federal Nigerian army in the university town of Nsukka, where he had once worked as the college librarian. Fifty-three Brigade, to which he had attached himself in a dramatic act of solidarity, was in full retreat, with the exception of Okigbo himself, who had decided to hold his ground in an ill-protected bunker. When the enemy arrived, he tried to lob a grenade at a tank. His body was never found. His memory, though, haunts African writing... As Obi Nwakanma's well-researchd biography proves, however, impetuous action was a recurring aspect of his personality. With the exception of his poetry, Okigbo could never settle to anything for very long..." -
And Story [Excerpt]: "There is one story in Mr. Richard Rive's selection which stings the tongue with the real taste of experience. Ironically enough, in this selection of modern English prose from Africa, it is a story translated from the Portuguese. We are not told by whom... What differences can be discerned between teh handling of the language by native English speakers like Jack Cope and by writers approaching it from another culture, with another music in their ears, like Achebe and Kariara? What popular idoms or dialects of English exist in Africa, and have any of these writers been able to come to terms with them? ... Again, there is none of the experimental prose now appearing in west Africa in the work of writers like Ibrahim Tahir, Gabriel Okara, and Babatunde Jones. All these are incomparably more interesting and liberating than most of what is offered here, with its conventional plots and undistinguished writing..." -
African Exports [Excerpt]: "Today the African novelist is established, not only in profusion among O and A level syllabuses within Africa but also in numerous English literature courses in the Western world... Complementing today's easy availability of the work of African authors (Heinemann's excellent 'African Writers Series' has nearly 150 titles to its credit), Evans Brothers have begun publishing a 'Modern African Writers' series... Each volume adopts a similar pattern, with a brief biographical introduction followed by a critical analysis resting on an exploration of the writer's major works. Thus the aim is fulfiled of telling us something about the present state of criticism in African literature as well as about the work of its principal exponents. 'Schools' are rigorously excluded. Short but useful bibliographies (including lists of critical works as well) and indexes (that for the Okigbo volume, compiled by Valerie Chandler, is a model of its kind) compete the books..." -
Paperbacks "A collection of essays on South African Literature." -
A fine and private place? "So it was natural, however unwise, of Charles Madge to let the word "boy" be the climax of his tribute." -
Piecing his father together "Why fiction? Why not a biography? One word answers both questions spaciousness: Soyinka must have realised soon after reading the content of the box that he had an absolute plethora of material at his disposal." -
The poet in the bull-ring Peter Alexander has written a good book: he has drawn the composite portrait of a fantastist, which is a hard thing to do. He has made Roy Campbell recognizable: there are only so many human types, and reading this biography, you reminded of others, both real and fictional, with the same conflicts of tempermanent.
