Ogbowei's Marsh Boy Poem Analysis

The above assertion is true as it echoes in G’ebinyÕ Ogbowei’s Marsh Boy and Other Poems. In the poem ‘Welcome to Our Smouldering Swamps’ Ogbowei decries the desecration of the Niger-Delta, and explores the turmoil and the further devastation caused as a result of it. Similarly, in Labyrinths of the Delta “in a nostalgic reminiscent account, Ojaide records the beauty and bounty of the Delta before this ill-willed development took place” (Nesther & Yusuf 135). They further state that Ojaide, in his poetry:
Laments the deplorable condition of the Niger-Delta, using local rudimentary psyched sights of anguish, discomposure, and trepidation that streak his time and land. He paints the stench of human waste into words for the purpose of recuing

Obviously, the reason why critical scholars could not response to these environments challenges is because the critical tool called ecocriticism had not been coined. But they however, condemned the damage being done to the earth. Wole Soyinka’s Swamp Dwellers, Ayi Kwei Armah’s The Beautiful Once are not Born, Alex La Guma’s A Walk in the Night, Ngugi’s A Grain of Wheat, in addition to the ones mentioned earlier on, also explore the theme of nature, environmental pollution and degradation. And these literary works are a product of the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s. Truly, there might not have been the preponderance of creative works exploring the degradation of the earth in earlier decades, but there were still works that responded energetically to the issue. The only variable that delayed the expansive exploration of environmental or ecological criticism is the absence of a generic theory that categorically underpins ecological issues, (and like Marxism would reveal class struggle and the mode of production, and how it affects concrete history), uncovers the hidden elements of ecologism in any given literary text. Thus, if ecocriticism as a modern literary theory had been coined three or more decades earlier than it was, it would have received adequate literary and critical responses just like every other sociological theory that has found expression in African literary