Language and reality in Ladé Worsonu’s poetry

Abstract

This paper attempts to characterize the human experience that the Ghanaian poet Ladé Wosornu presents in his poetry: man's search for purity of heart and mind; a state of sublimity which, the poet argues, a man can attain if he is able to rise above the trappings of the physical world and journey into himself. The analysis focuses on five of Ladé Wosornu's poems selected from the collection Journey Without End and Other Poems (1997). The paper argues that Wosornu conceptualizes the non-physical in terms of and on the basis of the physical; and through his use of centripetalizing language presents the mind as a theatre of war between human perception of events outside the "body" and "human" experience within the body. Attaining sublimity then is transcending the inner conflicts through moments of transcendental meditation.