Abstract:
The argument begins by claiming that the phrase, ‘a clear lucid stream of
everywhereness,’ taken from Ben Okri’s The landscapes within, at once encapsulates
the postmodern theories of complexity and relativity and evokes a cosmic dimension
and a striving for Dasein [authentic human existence] that inform his poetic vision in
his latest collection of poetry, Wild (2012). It proceeds to argue for the complexity
inherent in the notion ‘postmodernism’; then discusses selected poems in terms of
modernity’s curious dilemma of ‘just now’ negating the preceding ‘just now’, that
the French philosopher Jean-François Leotard talks of, treating recurring motifs of
change, transformation and continuing presence. This includes a discussion of the
two poems, dedicated to the memory of Okri’s late mother and father respectively,
that bookend the anthology, contextualising them within postmodernity. The article
concludes by re-invoking its own abstract title in ‘Towards the Sublime’ in terms of
Leotard’s definition, before briefly assessing the import of Okri’s latest collection of
poems.