Steve Obidi’s Poetic Quest for Eternal Truth

Banji Ojewale

The Russian-American poet and essayist Joseph Brodsky (1940–1996), who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1987, was appointed United States Poet Laureate in 1991. Concerned about what he perceived as a decline in the quality of spoken and written English in American society, Brodsky proposed that books of American poetry be placed alongside Gideon Bibles in motel rooms. His reasoning was compelling: “Poetry is perhaps the only insurance we’ve got against the vulgarity of the human heart.” His proposal reflected a conviction that poetry could restore a measure of moral and linguistic refinement to everyday life.

More than three decades later, Steve Obidi, a Nigerian intellectual, communicator and pastor, assigns poetry an even more ambitious task. In Eternal Truth, he sends the genre in pursuit of what he calls the “Most Excellent Eternal Truth”, with the intention of bringing its liberating power to Nigerians and readers everywhere. A member of the Editorial Board of the Deeper Christian Life Ministry (DCLM) and a PhD holder, Obidi approaches this undertaking with the earnestness of a man who has immersed himself in a formidable body of knowledge. One is reminded of the familiar literary conceit of ransacking half a library to produce a single book.

His collection draws, sometimes obliquely, on biblical personalities and their deeds, Greek mythology, Nigerian and international politics, environmental crises, human suffering, bereavement and the ordinary predicaments of existence. Beneath these varied subjects lies a conviction that certain fundamental truths elude superficial treatment. Poetry, in Obidi’s estimation, offers a means of bringing them into sharper focus and inviting the reader to contemplate their implications.

For the poet, truth is neither relative nor negotiable. It is a singular, enduring principle to which he has pledged his allegiance. In the opening poem, which bears the collection’s title, he recalls the encounter that changed his life:

You beckoned and graciously hugged me.

Disarmed, convicted, I submitted

Thenceforth to be your devotee…

I signed up to defend the Truth…

The encounter is presented as a conversion, an acceptance of truth as both a personal discipline and a public obligation. The poems that follow are, accordingly, written with what the poet describes as a bleeding pen and a heart wracked with pain. In “The Tipping Point”, he insists:

We must tell the truth, even at gunpoint

For intrinsic in truth is something that sets free

If only we could swallow our pride and with truth agree.

The lines establish the moral urgency that drives the collection. Truth demands courage, particularly when its pursuit threatens personal comfort or exposes collective failings. Yet the strength of this conviction also presents a challenge for the poet: how does one transform a moral position, however sincerely held, into poetry that persuades through its imaginative force rather than merely through the weight of its pronouncements?

Obidi is at his most interesting when he allows a human predicament to complicate his moral certainty. In “The Mad Lady”, for instance, two worlds appear to occupy the same space without understanding each other. The woman is dismissed by sympathetic bystanders who assume they understand her condition. The poet asks:

She scorns at the ignorance of

Sympathetic bystanders…she’s misjudged

Who can convince her that

Something has gone wrong?

The poem exposes the distance between appearances and reality, suggesting that even well-meaning observers can mistake their assumptions for knowledge. Its questions are particularly pertinent to a collection concerned with the difficulty of recognising truth amid the clamour of competing perceptions.

“A Bouquet of Queries” takes a wider view of human bewilderment, examining the persistence of want in a world seemingly rich in resources and intellectual capacity. The poet sees wise men and women everywhere, yet their wisdom appears powerless to rescue society from deprivation or restore its dignity. The paradox recalls Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s celebrated lines in The Rime of the Ancient Mariner:

Water, water, everywhere,

And all the boards did shrink;

Water, water, everywhere,

Nor any drop to drink.

Obidi’s version of the predicament finds expression in a pointed question:

Why do we ask, “Where do we go from here?”

When nobody said he’s going anywhere?

The question turns on the absurdity of a society that speaks incessantly of progress while appearing uncertain about its direction. It is a promising moment in the collection, although the poem’s force depends on the reader recognising the irony beneath its apparently conversational phrasing.

Elsewhere, the poet’s urgency sometimes spills into the form itself. In “We’re the King’s Brothers”, the lines run on without punctuation until the eleventh juncture, creating a breathless movement that seems reluctant to pause. The effect may be read as an attempt to embody the urgency of the poet’s mission, though such formal choices must ultimately justify themselves through their contribution to the poem’s meaning.

Obidi also turns his attention to the consequences of humanity’s disregard for truth. “Lost Opportunities”, “Denial”, “It’s All Over”, “The Zeitgeist”, “The Famished Earth”, “Man and Time” and “Tears” contemplate the damage wrought by human folly, missed chances and the refusal to confront uncomfortable realities. “Tears”, despite its brevity of just 14 lines, evokes a span of human experience that seems to reach across centuries. Here, compression becomes an asset, allowing the poem to suggest more than it explicitly states.

The collection does not ignore the COVID-19 pandemic. In “A World on Pause”, Obidi revisits the global suspension of ordinary life brought about by the outbreak. Yet the poem’s closing movement points beyond the immediate crisis towards a more permanent reckoning. The pause it anticipates is not merely the temporary interruption imposed by a pandemic, but a finality that lies beyond humanity’s power to control. In this reading, the poem’s spiritual message is that the world’s apparent permanence is an illusion, and that human beings would do well to prepare for what lies beyond the familiar order of existence.

Some of the poems grouped under “Aspirations and Assuagements” offer more promising instances of creative expression. “My Beloved”, “Moonlight Concourse” and “Dream Fulfilled” reveal a poet willing to stretch his lines and explore the possibilities of lyrical movement. There are echoes here of Christopher Okigbo, whose sophisticated imagery, musical cadences and experimental handling of poetic form helped shape modern Nigerian poetry. Obidi’s longer lines contrast with shorter ones, sometimes creating a sense of imbalance that mirrors the fractured world he seeks to portray.

The collection also makes room for dirges in which the poet mourns departed loved ones. These elegiac passages lend a more intimate dimension to a work otherwise preoccupied with moral and spiritual propositions. They culminate in “The Sacred and Symphonic”, a poem that returns to questions whose answers, in the poet’s conception, are to be found in Eternal Truth.

But what, precisely, does this truth entail? In Obidi’s moral universe, it involves an unyielding strength of character in a society increasingly tolerant of moral compromise, together with the willingness to defend one’s convictions at personal cost. Such steadfastness rests on faith in a God who embodies truth. The collection’s underlying proposition is that humanity’s predicament cannot be resolved by material progress or intellectual ingenuity alone; it requires a transformation of character.

This is an ambitious burden for poetry to carry. Obidi clearly believes that ordinary prose cannot adequately convey the gravity of his message, and that poetry, with its capacity for compression, metaphor and heightened expression, is better suited to the task. Yet the distinction is not always so clear-cut. A poem’s moral seriousness does not automatically translate into poetic achievement. At times, the collection’s insistence on its message threatens to overshadow the imaginative work through which poetry makes that message compelling.

It may be premature to pronounce on the full measure of Obidi’s poetic gifts from a single collection. But literary history offers sufficient examples of writers whose early work proved only the beginning of a longer journey. Oscar Wilde, Edgar Allan Poe and Okigbo, among others, demonstrate the dangers of treating a writer’s present output as the final measure of his possibilities.

Where, then, does Obidi stand? His work displays a curious blend of arresting verse and prose-like passages charged with rhetorical energy. He seems equally at ease with the two modes, though their coexistence occasionally creates formal difficulties. “I’m Just Me”, for example, might have benefited from the more sustained discipline of the traditional heroic couplet rather than its arrangement in four-line stanzas. The question is not whether a poet should observe conventional forms, but whether the form chosen serves the poem’s expressive purpose.

Ultimately, Eternal Truth is a collection driven by a conviction that moral renewal begins with an uncompromising encounter with truth. Obidi wants his readers to look beyond the immediate attractions of worldly existence and examine the principles by which they live. Whether every poem succeeds in converting that conviction into memorable verse is another matter. Yet the collection’s earnestness is unmistakable, as is its desire to make poetry an instrument of personal and social transformation.

If Obidi’s poetic journey is still unfolding, its destination appears clear enough: a society in which integrity is not an inconvenient virtue but a condition of human dignity. His challenge, as a poet, is to ensure that the language carrying this message possesses the imaginative power to endure beyond the moment of reading.

• Ojewale, a writer, is based in Ota, Ogun State