The Poet as a Lover: Probing Love Impulse in Niyi Osundare’s Tender Moments

Niyi Osundare is popularly viewed as a political poet with a Marxist and socialist vision. Perhaps very few literary crities know him as a poet-lover. This paper, therefore, beams a novel and unpopular search-light on the Nigerian bard. Employing Freudian psychoanalytic postulations, the research aims at investigating love impulse in Nivi Osundare’s Tender Moments as reflected in the poet’s tripartite psyche and also attempts to delineate love impulse as reflected in metaphors and symbols and finally evaluates Osundare’s style in his love poetry. The paper submits affirmatively that Osundare, the poet, is indeed, human in every sense: a lover of life without regret. The study concludes that more researches be embarked upon the poet’s oeuvre, which will confirm him a passionate humanist and not merely a combative Marxist thereby bridging the existing gap between the well known dimension and the new dimension of Osundare in his poetic creation.

Keywords: Niyi Osundare The Poet as a Lover Probing Love Impulse

Authors

• Imo Okon
  Department of Englsih, University of Uyo, Nigeria
• Ekemini Umoekah
  Department of English, University of Uyo, Nigeria