The story of how the poems in this collection survived an inferno at the University of Ibadan will have to be told someday in a full-bodied narrative. Mostly written by 1995, the poems constitute an emotional biography, or a loose personal chronicle of events and contemplations occurring in a particularly fiery period in the author"s life. Often the products of extreme inner excoriations, they remain germane to a reading of his subsequent philosophical transitions and current commitments. The reader of Shadrach and Other Poems will readily detect, and enjoy, the springs from which the themes of the verses flow from candid intimate reflections that underscore their authenticity to specifically public and numinous encounters that suggest the boundlessness of their source. The Shadrach idea - a telling image of trial - is the poet"s choice of a redeeming metaphor that indicates the triumph of the human spirit over temporal setbacks and its indictment of forces falsely proclaiming their...