Nigerian Universities Research Topics: Structure and Meaning in J.P. Clark’s State of the Union

Chapter 6

Structure and Meaning in J.P. Clark’s State of the Union.

J.P. Clark’s State of the Union is a major poetic work which discusses the predicament of the Nigerian nation. The work compares -- perhaps even surpasses in scope and intensity -- with Chinua Achebe’s The Trouble With Nigeria and Peter Enahoro’s How to Be a Nigerian. Yet not much critical attention, if any, has been paid to the work’s structural parameters and its message. This essay provides the missing link in the poetic corpus of his aesthetic criticism. Furthermore, Clark’s State of the Union, unlike the works of his fellow countrymen mentioned above, is a literary expose which profoundly discusses and documents poetic truths and sensitivity hardly found anywhere in the African literary canon.

The mission which State of the Union articulates and promotes includes “justice,” patriotism, and integrity. The work challenges its reader: to pursue the path of justice and truth in the political arena; to promote patriotism for the good of the commonwealth; and to encourage the spirit of ethical integrity for the health and sanity of Nigeria in the comity of nations. To be sure, Clark has always found it fundamentally correct and important to get (himself) involved in the socio-political concerns of Nigeria, no matter the consequences both to his ethos and his creativity.¹ What Lionel Trilling says about Mathew Arnold may be applicable to J.P. Clark:

He believed that the great intellectual work to be done in his time was with the middle class…he thought that the middle class would take the leadership in the next great events of culture and politics and he wished to reform and enlighten it for the right performance of its historic role.²

We shall now proceed to discuss the various parts of State of the Union, so as to understand and appreciate how they shed significant light on Clark’s poetic art. These parts encompass the work’s aesthetic structure; the themes explored; and the various poetic and rhetorical strategies employed by Clark in order to illuminate and clarify the work’s subject matter.

The structure of State of the Union is as follows. It features a “contents” page which consists of 40 poems divided into three parts: part one contains 25 poems, namely, “Here Nothing Works,” “Progress,” “The Cleaners,” “Return of the Heroes,” “Easter 1976,” “Victoria Island,” “Of Sects and “Fellowships,” “A Parable,” “Phaemon’s Dog,” “Sacrifice,” “Song of the Retired Public Servant,” “Out of the Tower,” “Election Report,” and “The Patriarchs at the Return to Civilian Rule.”

Others are: “Handshake,” “New Currency,” “One Country,” “Song of the New Millionaires,” “Epitaph for Boro,” “An Epidemic Without a Name,” “Victoria Island Re-visited,” “The Plague,” “Concerning ‘My Command’ and Other Accounts of the Nigerian Civil War,” “Where do they all go?,” and “The Sovereign.”

The second part of the volume, which consists of a single poem titled, “The Playwright and the Colonels,” is a dedication to Work Soyinka, Clark’s fellow poet and playwright.

The third part of the volume, titled “Other Songs On Other States,” contains the following 14 poems: “The Wreck,” “Family Meeting for the Disposal of the Wreck,” “Last Rights in Ijebu,” “A Hymn for a Friend in his Losses,” “Prognosis,” “Summary Treatment,” “Translation,” “Autumn in Connecticut,” “Birthday at Wesyleyan Middleton,” “Days Fall about Me,” “The Coming of Age,” “Miracle in a Farm,” “Herons at Funama,” and “Faces”.

Immediately following the “Contents” page is the “Preface,” where Clark explains the motivation for the work’s genesis; the obstacles to its early publication; how the respective sections of the volume came into existence; the dates of their publication; and the furor which the piece, “One Country,” generated in the media and other places.

A close look at the ‘Preface” also reveals that most of the poems listed in the third part under “Other Songs on Other States,” that is, “The Wreck,” “Last Rights in Ijebu,” “A Hymn to a Friend in his Losses,” “Autumn in Connecticut,” and “The Coming of Age” were first published in West Africa magazine; while the piece, “Faces,” first found its outlet in the international Hong Kong magazine Poetry.

A second observation is the fact that, for the first time in his literary career, Clark adds Bekederemo to his name, in what he explains in the Preface as an attempt “to identify the man behind the mask so often misunderstood and speculated about.”

Clark further explains in the Preface that this period of his creativity may be regarded as his “middle period, assuming that there is a later one to come.” Here, too, he seizes the opportunity to state -- more than ever before in his poetic career -- his obligation and role to society both as man and poet:

… there are some who will find the title of the sequence and the collection somewhat presumptuous, the poet being no elected president or acknowledged legislator of any state that they know of. I would be the first to sustain their objections. But let them remember well that while the poet is still allowed a place in the state, he will also have his say, if not as seer, clown, plain corrupter of youth or whatever, then simply like every ordinary member of the state, or even though the individual voice and vote of the citizen may not always be availing in these times³

Finally, Clark’s reference in the “Preface” to “the process of corruption,” wherein “the rotten fruit has burst all over in the grim harvest of military intervention,” is interesting: It suggests the various forms of corruption which, as discussed in State of the Union, can be grouped or divided into four major categories, namely: political corruption, economic corruption, religious corruption and moral corruption. We shall discuss them in turns.

With the lifting of the ban on party politics by the Olusegun Obasanjo administration and the subsequent formation of political parties in 1978, which culminated in the election and the emergence of Alhaji Shehu Shagari as president on October 1, 1979, Nigeria was full of hope for a renewed economic and political regeneration.

Unfortunately, however, the Shagari administration was dogged by numerous problems, including tribalism, greed, and monumental corruption. Robert Wren, writing about the nature of corruption which has always paralyzed the political system of Nigeria as a nation, explains: “Society (corrupt before … is corrupted anew …. The living are corrupted in their relations with each other.”⁴

It is under the above state of political affairs that Clark’s State of the Union appeared as a work of art. The poems which discuss the nature of the political corruption which engulfed Nigeria during this period include “Here Nothing Works,” “Election Report,” “Victoria Island Re-visited,” and “Where Do they All Go?.”

In the poem, “Here Nothing Works”, Clark names the two categories of people who have contributed to Nigeria’s ruin politically: the politicians who have refused or failed to improve the fortunes of the masses to the extent that there is lack of water supply, electricity, telephone, transportation, good roads, medical supplies, and good and responsible doctors (“the doctor/playing God in the ward of death” (S.U, p.3).

The ordinary citizens have also contributed to the political ruin of Nigeria, either because they are lazy or indolent (“something there must/Be in ourselves or in our times that all/Things working for good elsewhere do not work/in our expert hands” (S.U, p. 3); or because of their lack of ethos or innate will to succeed as human beings (“we all/Begin to doubt our intelligence?”).

The despair and cynicism which permeate the corrupt political landscape is suggested by the poet’s employment of negative images, including “break down,” “do not get started at all,” “darkness increases,” “Dislocate our lives,” “our hands fail us,” and “death” and “dying.” In almost everywhere that we go -- from “classroom to courthouse” -- we are found wanting.

Furthermore, Clark’s reference to the four elements in the poem, that is, “water,” “air,” “soil” and “Desert” (which connotes fire) suggests the fact that all of our political universe, comprising the North, South, East, and the West has been corrupted irretrievably. The poet’s employment of the free verse form, with some lines very long and others very short, suggests the total sense of disconnection and disorder that permeates the entire political system.

In “Election Report,” one of the longest poems in State of the Union (it covers 64 lines), Clark clinically delineates the mode and manner of “election rigging” in Nigeria through government officers and other people, including the “enumerators,” “heads of compounds,” “political party agents,” and “polling officers.”

Because it is “the numbers game for power,” Clark explains, both overt and covert tricks and technicalities are employed in order to manipulate and subvert the electoral process, often with the losers becoming winners, and the winners becoming losers. Ironically, even the “soldier and the police who stake/All they had left to run a free and fair/Election” also find themselves participating in the electoral fraud. Everyone behaves as “pleased his purse and people.” The poet concludes:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

From one election to another

For assembly and executive seats,

At state and national tiers, were delivered

To a commission with no mind and means

To untie the bag of incongruities

It has from the start adopted. In the end,

Though the sum seemed straitforward to soldier,

And schoolboy, numbers, based on

A mathematical formula, argued

By lawyers to the last decimal point

Before the full supreme court of the land

Confirmed the winner, announced by officials

And generals, discreetly out of sight

It was, by all accounts, a numbers game.

(S.U, p. 18).

From the lines above, it is clear that virtually everyone charged with the responsibility of conducting a free and fair election, gets involved in some electoral malfeasance: from the electoral “commission” which has no “mind and means” to conduct a transparent election, to “lawyers” and “generals” whose influence extends up to the “supreme court.”

The corruption which Clark castigates in “Victoria Island Re-visited” centers on how the politically rich, who have made millions through greed and aggrandizement, steadily displace innocent people of their lands and estates. Clark wonders -- much like Blake in “Holy Thursday” -- if this kind of political situation can be regarded as healthy for the state!

In the interest of the public

They took over land and family

Owned before the country began

With public seal and money

They reclaimed it from swamp and sea.

Then while the people looked on

In wonder, they parceled out the land

Among themselves, their mistresses, liars,

And sycophants from Tyre and Sidon.

Now the people may not step on the land

Overnight flooded with millionaires.

Why should the country not be sick?

(S.U, p. 10).

Clark’s tone in the above poem is satirical, but it is not the scurrilous and pungent Juvenalian literary mode but the mild and sparing invective associated with Horace. The particular satirical images employed in the poem include “liars/And sycophants from Tyre and Sidon” and “the land/Overnight flooded with millionaires”

For Clark, there is a kind of “tawdry cheapness” (to borrow Pound’s words) in the Nigerian polity that is nauseating and needs cleansing and purification. To be sure, the ordinary people, that is, the masses, are fed up with the lies, deceit, and the hypocrisy perpetrated on them by their political leadership. Hence Clark, as their champion, comes to the open -- the theater of combat -- in order to fight for them. This is what the satirist must do in order to remain relevant. As Wyndham Lewis makes clear:

. . . no one would pursue it for its own sake, or take up the occupation of satirist unless compelled to do so, out of indignation at the spectacle of the neglect of beauty and virtue⁵.

III

As a secular state,

Nigeria

has always accommodated all forms of religious practice, including Christianity, Islam, and paganism. Because there is no restriction as to how, when and where to practice one’s faith, all kinds of people now practice one form of religion or another recklessly and indiscriminately. This is the situation which baffles the poet in “Of Sects and Fellowships.”

In this poem several facts emerge: The first is the fact that traditional churches are losing out as their members now desert them for the new religious sects and fellowship; secondly, most of the organizers or the so-called “priests” are illiterates who “cannot/Even read from cover to cover.” Thirdly, the degree of disorder and confusion which these sects and fellowships promote is unfathomable: “Streets, beaches and sitting-rooms/Now are full of men and women/In direct contact with God.” (S.U, p.11).

Of interest also is the pun which Clark highlights about the traditional churches and their adherents, namely: the fact that people still worship with them only during “marriage and death” ceremonies. That people go to the religious sects and fellowships on any matter that engages their consciousness, including “queries/At work to sale of rice.”

The metaphor employed to highlight the behavior of the adherents of these religious sects and fellowship -- “flaming candle/upheld by figures in flowing gowns” -- is interesting: It suggests the fact that these religious adherents and fanatics are more for show and flamboyancy than for faith and devotion. Herein lies the irony in which the entire poem is cast.

Finally, as a result of the proliferation of sects and fellowships, people are now confused as to which of them to join or follow -- the new sects and fellowships or the traditional churches (“There is a tide across the land/Unstable”). Clark in this lyric may be suggesting the need for caution in matters related to church proliferation and religious fanaticism.

Clark also discusses the religious poem, “Easter 1976,” in ironic mode. Indeed, the lyric -- which recalls W.B. Yeats’ “Easter 1916”⁶ -- is suffused with irony. Apparently much like Yeats in his “Easter 1916” (both in title and theme), Clark, obviously concerned about a group of 30 soldiers who were ironically executed without trial during the Easter period of 1976 (apparently implicated in a phony coup plot), documents with grim sensitivity the manner of their execution (with “a whole city/Upon the shore to watch them”).

There is also irony built around the concept that the execution of these 30 individuals should occur during a period of solemn holiness. Easter recalls the period of Christ’s crucification and resurrection. That these 30 individuals should be killed during the Easter -- a holy period -- makes no sense at all to Clark. The macabre incident and the consequent befuddlement is plaintively documented:

Gentlemen all, or so they swore

To act, had a woman, mother

Of one among them, known,

When at the great cross-roads of careers

To service at the top, that her child,

After leading battalions into the field,

Would walk like this one day

To be shot at a stake by the shore,

His own comrades his executioners,

She might well have chosen to pass

Blood all her yielding years.

Officers more than men

Were hunted down in the field,

In offices, in hospitals, at home

Before wives, before children

In a fever that seized a nation.

(S.U, pp. 7-8)

There is, further, no answer to the question that might be asked, not only as to why people should be executed publicly -- with no sign of decorum or civility -- but why the Biblical injunction, “Thou shall not Kill,” is being wantonly violated. Clark reinforces this credo with the employment of the constant refrain suggested by “Thirty-odd men walking thirty-odd/Yards to their death on an afternoon,” both to highlight the poem’s dramatic immediacy as well as to emphasize the irony implicit and explicit in man’s inhumanity to man. The situation depicted is disgusting.

So questions were asked at the time

Under breath, and questions more are

Being asked now the matter is

Of no account to the dead; and

The living are learning again to live,

Questions that the great pushers

Of causes convenient still

Have not asked, whether a trial,

Conducted with the first rule

In the book reserved,

Could have found out with finger

In the act touched another

With the blood it did not spill.

(S.U, pp. 8-9)

Economic corruption is perhaps

Nigeria

’s most endemic and biggest problem, obviously because most people want to get rich at all costs. In Nigeria, the watch-word is: riches, riches, riches, obviously because getting rich could mean a number of things, including a mansion, a fanciful car, a yatch, an air-craft, and more! Nigerians like to have all of these things. In light of these facts, it is perhaps not wrong to say that Nigerians “worship” money, if they can get it. Getting rich through legitimate means does not bother the poet. However, getting rich through corruption and other evil practices does. This is the poetic scenario which Clark paints in his lyricism.

In “Song of the New Millionaires,” “Where do they all go?,” “New Currency,” and “The Plague,” the poet discusses the nature and the forms of economic corruption in

Nigeria

. In some of these poems, wealth is acquired through massive stealing of state funds, through manipulation, deception, and other corrupt practices on a monumental scale.

The lyric, “Song of the New Millionaires,” describes the perennial struggle for wealth between two sets of Nigerians: the Northerners, symbolized by “the desert,” and the Southerners, characterized by “the forest.” The unholy rivalry between the two parties in their inordinate greed and ambition to ruin the economic fortunes of the state, all in the name of “gold,” is highlighted in the poem’s last two stanzas:

This is why we stake

As far as eye can see.

This is why we rake

The land of all we see.

(S.U, p. 23)

The operating four metaphors in the quoted passage above are “stake” and “rake,” as are “As far as eye can see” and “The land of all we see.” The word “stake,” as employed in the poem, suggests our stand and our hopes. The word “rakes” suggests taking along everything. Collectively, the last two metaphors connote a desire to acquire everything and anything possible. In other words, there is an insatiable desire to “suck” the nation dry of its blood, body and soul. Herein lies the poem’s satiric invective.

The mocking tone contained in the rivalry between the North and the South, each of which wants to outdo the other before escaping with its loot from Abuja -- the nation’s capital -- to its respective territory is interesting (“We fear forest or desert will overtake/Us in our new city stronghold”). Also illuminating is the philosophical statement, “How shall we find rest/In our new beds of gold?,” which suggests the fact that anyone whose mind is fixated on a piece of treasure can hardly take away his eyes from it until he has acquired and consummated it.

In “Where do they all go?,” Clark, apparently in a state of internal quandary, reminisces as a patriot about the country and its people, particularly those “Who in their time manipulated/Millions in the name of millions.” What are they doing now with their loot after leaving their exotic office and positions? He answers his own question: they are engaged in farming of which they have been unsuccessful (they “utterly/Are unable to make the land yield,” S.U, p.29).

The lesson to be learnt from the poem is this: these millionaires are never at rest as they are exploring new ventures and opportunities in order to make more millions, a situation which recalls human ambition and its emptiness in Dr. Johnson’s The Vanity of Human Wishes. Further, because these people are so rich, they hardly devote enough time, energy and passion to any new project or enterprise and consequently they end up in failure.

In “New Currency,” the zeal and zest with which Nigerians hurry to make quick gains, that is, tainted profits, especially during any period of currency change, is carefully and clinically documented:

Gold has rolled into a pit

Where so much counterfeit

Adorns the market

It was not always one grade

When we began our trade.

Will the young ever find it?

(S.U, p. 21).

Yes, from this little poem there emerges some basic truths about human life which Clark’s verse teaches us, that is, just as counterfeit currency must ultimately be destroyed, so also will anyone involved in fraud end up in a “gold pit.” Will the upcoming generation, Clark ponders, ever learn from this lesson?

The poem, “The Plague,” brings to a climax the level of economic corruption in Nigeria, where there is so much insecurity that miscreants, armed robbers, soldiers, and other elements roam the streets freely in order to kill or maim innocent citizens for quick money. It is, indeed, the plague:

More than ten years after, the war,

Declared over in the enclave,

Has taken a different turn all

Across the land. Nobody now

May go out any time of day

For fear of gunmen as ready

To kill as be killed for a car

Or any purse, and there is

No homestead in all the country

Not under siege. When will soldier

And state wash for us to live again?

(S.U, p. 27)

If we come to the subject of moral corruption in

Nigeria

, we soon discover that it is very similar to economic corruption. Both of them are closely intertwined like the twins in the womb. Further, both of them emanate from our inner psychological consciousness. And both constitute a bait that can gnaw, ensnare, or destroy their victims irreparably. Moral corruption occurs, I think, when one decides to go against one’s inner conscience by engaging in nefarious activities, either because of failure of ethos or the glamor and lure of financial gain or reward.

Clark’s poems which discuss moral corruption or have moral overtone and implication for his audience include: “The Cleaners,” “Song of the Retired Public Servant,” and “Handshake.” As a responsible satirist, Clark in these poems is not simply writing in order to censure and castigate his victims or subject them to ridicule, but to reform or sanitize society for public good. Besides, as a poet who is concerned with the plight of the common man, he advocates a level-playing field for all humanity.

In “The Cleaners,” Clark employs irony to drive home his argument, as the public cleaners, who are expected to clean dirty places are not only dirty themselves, but they spread dirt around everywhere they go, thus rendering ridiculous the symbolism inherent in their name and profession. The negative images employed in the lyric are telling: “disastrous race,” “so full of muck,” and the “mud they carry/And cast so freely about.”

Look at the crew

Who after each disastrous race

Take over a public place

To wash it anew.

They are themselves so full

Of muck nobody can see

The bottom of the pool

For the mud they carry

And cast so freely at a few

(S.U, p. 5)

https://machineryvegetable.com/mayupcnsw?key=5ce075a7ff6d1691e5ccad7ef09ce1f3

However, the above analysis might be considered as the surface interpretation of the poem, as Clark would not be writing about poor lowly cleaners as objects on which to poke fun. Here Clark is addressing all responsible people who are put in positions of authority -- e.g., the police, the soldier, the judge, the priest and others -- to perform their duties efficiently. For example, how often do we hear that soldiers, who overthrew the civilian authorities for corruption soon become corrupt themselves once they assume power. And how often do we hear that priests, judges, teachers -- who are expected to serve as role models -- are themselves morally involved in corruption practices!

Another poem which similarly sheds light on the moral tone of Clark’s society is “Song of the Retired Public Servant,” where the civil servant who has worked very hard for his country is left, upon retirement, to wallow in abject poverty with little or nothing to sustain himself. To be sure, the poem is a song of lamentation and sorrow. How can a society be so callous and morally corrupt as to neglect those who have faithfully served her!

My own estate let me now give

Some time. In our old way we tried

To give to her something

More than she gave us. Now

It pleases her best if servant

Becomes her master and builds

Himself many a mansion,

My own estate let me give

The time I have left, before

My children turn tenant to their peers.

(S.U, p. 15)

In “Handshake” Clark demonstrates his consummate skill at employing irony and metaphor to symbolize a society gone awry. Here, in Nigeria, the word “handshake” is a metaphor which connotes bribery, or money given or received illegally. Apparently, when the word is employed, it means money to be spent or received. Usually this is what the citizenry is expected to do -- to offer bribe, usually here in the country or to pay it abroad into a foreign account -- which is the safest way to offer bribe or pay for “illegal services.” In this poem, Clark is punning on the implied meaning of the word “Handshake,” a metaphor for moral corruption.

Bouquets are not enough

If brought in flowers;

Here handshake strictly

Is for gold, better still

If delivered abroad.

(S.U, p. 20)

The irony implicit in this poem is the fact that, while in the civilized world flowers are offered as gifts or tokens of appreciation, in Nigeria the only thing worth appreciating is money.

How do we characterize the structure and meaning of Clark’s State of the Union? We can say that the work’s structure provides the nexus through which Clark communicates his message, that is, the political, religious, economic, and moral corruption in Nigeria.

Clark may not be a moralist or philosopher to the core, yet his verse enacts philosophical and didactic truths. While he punches, pokes fun, and satirizes his society -- in order to sanitize or heal it -- there is, further, enough ethical principles and precepts in his verse that will not only enhance his ethos as poet and patriot, but will endear him increasingly to his immediate audience and future readers. These include his effective employment of satire, metaphor, repetition, Biblical allusions, and irony against a backdrop of the diverse themes which he treats.

Notes

1. For example, the negative reactions to Casualties attest to Clark’s immense courage and integrity in the face of scurrilous criticism and antagonism perhaps unsurpassed in African poetic criticism.

2. Lionel Trilling, The Portable Mathew Arnold (New York: The Viking Press, 1956), p.8.

3. J.P. Clark-Bekederemo, State of the Union (London: Longman Group Ltd., 1985), p. VIII. All quotations from State of the Union will come from this volume. Subsequent quotations from the volume will be abbreviated in the text as S.U, followed by the page number(s).

4. Robert M. Wren, J.P. Clark (Lagos: Lagos University Press, 1984), p. 152.

5. Wyndham Lewis, “The Greatest Satire is Nonmoral,” Modern Essays in Criticism: Satire, ed. Ronald Paulson (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Viking Press, 1971), p.71.

6. W.B. Yeats is profoundly admired by Clark who may have adapted “Easter 1976” from Yeats’ “Easter 1916,” partly on account of his abiding admiration of the elder poet, and partly because the events discussed by both poets occurred during the solemn Easter period.

Works Cited

Clark-Bekederemo, J.P. State of the Union. London: Longman, 1985. All citations from the volume will be abbreviated parenthetically in the text as S.U, followed by the page number(s).

Lewis, Wyndham. “The Greatest Satire is Nonmoral,” Modern Essays in Criticism: Satire, ed. Ronald Paulson, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Viking Press, 1971.

Trilling, Lionel. The Portable Matthew Arnold. New York: The Viking Press, 1956.

Wren, Robert M. J.P. Clark. Lagos: Lagos University Press, 1984.

Yeats, W.B. “Easter 1916,” The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, ed. Richard Ellmann and Robert O’Clair. New York: W.W. Norton, 1973.

Structure and Meaning in J.P. Clark’s State of the Union

1 comment: