African poetry as an “informal evening fire-side school”: Multi-utilitarian values in Niyi osundare’s snapsongs: Homegroans and foreignflares

Abstract

Poetry has developed in leaps and bounds right from its earliest, oral phase to the modern, written form and has been effectively utilised  to serve different levels of needs in many societies and cultures for many centuries. However, what constitute the predominant leitmotifs  or thematic thrusts of poetry vary from one society to another. While very many climes emphasise and project its formal/aesthetic  qualities, content and value, African creative artists predominantly deploy poetry to serve multiple, community-oriented, utilitarian  functions. This is the thrust of this paper which examines Niyi Osundare‟s Snapsongs: Homegroans and Foreignflares as a quintessence  of African poetic art deployed chiefly to examine society with a view to attacking its imperfections and projecting or promoting its values.  The research is a qualitative one, and adopts the interpretive design. The paper finds that Osundare‟s Snapsongs: Homegroans and  Foreignflares chiefly derives its afflatus from the quotidian socio-economic and political realities of the African environment and reflects  the complexity of the African experience. Through a lavish appropriation of copious oral artistic categories such as proverbs, aphorisms,  metaphors, satires, and panegyrics, Osundare intensifies the didactic, communal, functional and other utilitarian values of the African   poetic art.