Season by Wole Soyinka

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Season by Wole Soyinka

There seems to be a strange contrast between his choice of the word

“decay”, which suggests things going to ruin and the final sentiment

where the word “promise” indicates hope. I get the sense that

Soyinka’s poem is contrived. He feels the urge to speak lyrically

about this subject but does not seem to have found his authentic

voice, or perhaps the theme is too complex for him to address in a

sixteen line poem. This is reflected in lines such as “Pollen is

mating time” which not only fails to make sense but is also rather

clumsy.

This poem begs comparison with Achebe’s “Refugee Mother and Child”

that redefines aesthetics through comparison with traditional Western

sensibilities. He shows the harsh reality of humans on the brink of

starvation whilst Soyinka shows humans dependent on, yet in harmony

with, nature. Soyinka too redefines some words through context but

his spin on the relationship between humans and nature is a more

hopeful one.

The word “loved” is in the past tense thus indicating a time gone by.

This suggests that the firs...

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