Chinua Achebe's 'Love Cycle': Exploring Tensions and Harmonies in Post-Colonial Poetry

In this week’s episode of Beyond the Verse, the official podcast of PoemAnalysis.com and Poetry+, hosts Joe and Maiya delve into Chinua Achebe’s 'Love Cycle,' an evocative exploration of Igbo tradition, cosmology, and the dynamics of relationships.

The episode opens with a deep dive into Achebe’s life, tracing his journey from a colonized Nigeria to the publication of his renowned novel, "Things Fall Apart," and its influence on global perceptions of Africa. The hosts then analyze how 'Love Cycle' reflects the interplay of Igbo mythology, colonial history, and universal themes of love and conflict. They highlight the portrayal of the sun and moon as metaphors for a toxic, cyclical relationship, touching on gendered archetypes, elemental forces, and Achebe’s masterful blending of cultural traditions.

Throughout the discussion, Joe and Maiya uncover the symbolic resonance of Achebe’s work—balancing aggression and affection, permanence and change, and the historical tensions between colonizer and colonized. They also draw comparisons to poets like William Butler Yeats and Emily Dickinson, illustrating Achebe’s global literary connections.

Poetry+ users can access exclusive PDFs of Achebe’s 'Love Cycle':

• Full PDF Guide
• PDF Snapshot Guide

For more on Chinua Achebe’s poetry and its broader cultural impact, visit PoemAnalysis.com, where you can also explore extensive resources in our PDF Learning Library, browse hundreds of analyzed poems, and much more – see our Chinua Achebe PDF Guide.

Tune in and discover:

• The rich cosmological imagery in Igbo tradition
• Achebe’s nuanced portrayal of love as cyclical and complex
• The intersection of postcolonial themes with personal relationships
• How Achebe’s intertextuality shapes his unique poetic voice

Transcript

Chinua Achebe's 'Love Cycle': Exploring Tensions and Harmonies in Post-Colonial Poetry (Transcript)
===

[00:00:00] 

Maiya: Welcome to Beyond the Verse, a poetry podcast brought to you by Poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. Today we're discussing Chinua Achebe's love cycle. Now we'll be touching on Igbo tradition and storytelling. The importance of cosmology and cyclical relationships within the poem. So Joe, can you tell us a little bit about Achebe, where he was at this point, and a little bit about the poem's background?

Joe: I'd love to. So I know many of our listeners will be aware that Chinua Achebe is a favorite writer of both yours and mine. So I'm really excited to be discussing his poem today. Achebe was born in Nigeria in 1930 in the country that was then under British rule, did not achieve independence until 1960.

And that really shaped Achebe's early life, his perception of the world. from his vantage point in Nigeria. This poem was published in his collection Beware, Soul, Brother and Other Poems, which came out in [00:01:00] 1971

With Achebe, really, we have to go back 13 years before that to the publication of his novel Things Fall Apart, which is one of our favorite novels, Maiya, but also one of the most important novels of the 20th century, Completely redefined the way in which non African readers perceived the continent of Africa.

So that was 1958. Nigeria achieved independence from Britain in 1960, so two years after the publication of Things Fall Apart, and Achebe was then on this remarkable run of these novels. So he published No Longer at Ease in 1960, Arrow of God in 1964, and A Man of the People in 1966, all of which are works of prose. His reputation by this point was growing around the world, he was hugely respected, both in Nigeria and in Europe and North America as well. The country underwent a civil war between 1967 and 1970, and then, this poem is published in 1971. So this incredibly tumultuous period, both of Nigerian history, but also of Achebe's life, where he sort of transformed over this decade and a half from a complete unknown to this global phenomenon, this [00:02:00] incredible writer, that really the world had never seen anyone like him before, who came from the culture that he came from, and was able to capture the essence of history. life in rural Nigeria in a way that no other writer before, or I would argue since, has been able to quite do. So that's a little bit about Achebe, where he is at this point, but Maiya, the poem itself, can you tell us a little bit more about it, describe it in broad strokes, and then where would you like to begin with in terms of our deeper analysis?

Maiya: Well, thanks, Joe. So, this poem is one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read, I think. It effectively covers the relationship between two people as described through cosmology. When we say cosmology, we mean the motifs of the sun, the moon, so this poem's opening line goes as such, At dawn slowly the sun withdraws his long misty arms of embrace. this first line is absolutely incredible. I think the message that it conveys is so nuanced and I'd just like to [00:03:00] touch on a few things within this.

So, Joe, as you know, we're going to go on to talk about the importance of the sun, specifically in Igbo culture there is a huge amount of mythology that concerns the sun when it relates to Achebe's writing. And also, it's very, very important to note that this relationship is not a happy one. This poem opens with a reduction, with a taking away, the withdrawing of the arms of the sun. And what I really think is quite incredible about the way this poem opens, is the fact that you feel this sense of cold. The sun is usually portrayed in very positive terms. It brings light, warmth, excitement, renewal, regrowth, but here it offers you something , that is detached and removed. So, Joe, let's talk about this first stanza.

Joe: I'd love to. And like you said, there is so much nuance in this opening of this poem and I can't wait to get into it. So just to zoom out slightly and to think a little bit about what this opening of the poem is [00:04:00] doing in broad terms. Now, as you mentioned, , the, Igbo mythology is really, really important here.

So, the Igbo are an ethnic group which largely reside in parts of modern day Nigeria, to which Achebe belonged. Now, anyone who's read or heard about Achebe's novels will know that oftentimes his work explores the way in which traditional Igbo culture was, in many ways, oppressed or kind of absorbed within the colonial framework, especially the arrival of Christianity. onto mainland Africa. Like many religions. It's pantheistic, meaning it has more than one god. There is a central god by the name of Chukwu, and then there are several different gods that represent different elemental aspects.

So things like fertility and the earth, thunder and lightning. And then I guess most pivotally for this poem, we have the figure of Anyanwu. who is the female embodiment of the solar disk, the sun. And she represents not only the warmth of the sun, but also things like good fortune, wisdom, things that are commonly associated with the sun. Now, [00:05:00] straight away, many of our listeners will pick up on the fact that the sun in Achebe’s poem is portrayed as masculine when Anyanwu is a feminine presence. So again, we have that blurring of the distinctions between an Igbo tradition and other Religious traditions because ordinarily solar deities things like Ra in the Egyptian pantheon or Helios in the Greek tradition Are portrayed as male figures not exclusively There are other female solar deities, but broadly speaking the sun is portrayed as masculine and the moon tends to be a feminine symbol So already we've got that sense of the sun's importance to Igbo culture is there right from the outset but the actual specifics of the gender of the sun disc is blurred here so then we come to where is this male influence coming from? It could be from one of those other traditions that I've mentioned, things like the Greek or the Egyptian pantheon. And of course the way in which the Sun is portrayed in the Christian Bible is very much as a sort of conduit for God's presence on earth. So God creates the sun and it becomes a symbol of his love for humanity that it warms and it protects. And again, that is therefore [00:06:00] conveyed through the masculine presence of God in the Bible. But also, the thing that I think is really subtly done in these lines is the allusion to a non Christian Igbo tradition.

It's calling back to classical mythology. Because as Maiya mentioned, what we have really focused on in these lines is the arms of the sun. And to my mind, this is a callback to Homer and the classical tradition, because in Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, one of the most common epithets that we find is the phrase, rosy fingered dawn. So again, we have that sense of the sun as something tactile, as something really physical, something that has some kind of ability to embrace the earth or people on it. So again, the thing I love about these lines is it's typical of Achebe in so far as he is drawing on several different traditions simultaneously without aligning himself with any of them.

And I just think the way in which he's able to do that so quickly and so subtly is just a reminder of how wonderful a poet he was.

Maiya: And it's really important to note as well that, that tactility is what makes [00:07:00] this poem so incredible at conveying the message it does because to keep it simple, if you have arms to reach out to something, you also have the ability to take them away. Now when this poem details what is effectively a toxic and repetitive cycle between the sun and the moon, Between two lovers. But, importantly, it is a cycle. Now, I do have a few thoughts on why the sun here is portrayed as masculine.

And I think your point, Joe, stands very much that this is Achebe calling back to classical tradition, more so than it is to any other tradition. you take Homer's Iliad, for example, when you take the Bible, Masculine figures are built in such a way that there are values that are shared across all of these texts.

They value strength, assertion, aggression, power. Now these are tenets of the sun that we see through this poem. We see he [00:08:00] wears out his temper on the ground. We see that there are darts of anger anger anger Now, by translating the sun into this masculine figure, I believe what Achebe does is actually offer this figure much more power from the outset because of how traditional readers would interpret a masculine figure to be.

By contrast, the moon figure that we are introduced to or the evening as described in this poem is patient, soft, and mellows out. the sun. So again, we have this real dichotomy of the masculine feminine, a dichotomy between peace and anger, between lust and comfort.

So you're really interpreting these figures in completely polarized ways.

Joe: 100%, and I think one of the things, of course, that kind of, if we think about the Igbo tradition, but also the classical Greek pantheon, one of the things those pantheistic religions offer, which maybe the sort of Judeo Christian tradition [00:09:00] struggles to do so, is that sense of the arbitrary nature of gods, the way in which they are prone to anger and neglect, the way in which they can give on the one hand and take with the other. And by framing the sun in this poem through the lens of those pantheistic religions, that. sense of jealousy, that sense of cruelty that the sun actually is demonstrated to have in this poem, that sense of withdrawing its warmth, withdrawing its affections, something that's temperamental, something that's angry, is something that makes a lot more sense. Because obviously when you have these traditions evolving, these religions growing with decades and centuries, of course people would regard a god or goddess that represents the sun as something fickle.

Because the sun is not consistent, nor is the rain. Those religions that are rooted in elemental forces, oftentimes capture something more real about the way in which nature works, something that is on the one hand a provider, on the other hand, something that causes suffering and drought and pain, than perhaps those, , [00:10:00] religions like Judaism, Christianity, have to kind of reconcile those cruel aspects of the world with a God that is fundamentally good and loving.

Maiya: And don't you think it's fascinating that when you explore more Western religions that consider what balance means, a lot of the time it's construed as fairness, justness, consistency, but here what we actually see is a power balance that is constantly reasserting itself. It's a battle over finding that middle ground and it's never found, but it's constantly in flux.

Joe: absolutely, and I think it's not a coincidence that even within the Bible when we look at most of the most memorable references to the Son, they are Old Testament references, and the Old Testament God is perhaps more similar to the gods we've mentioned here because the God in the Old Testament is more arbitrary. He is less consistent. He is more prone to vengeance and anger, and I think in many ways that is a sort of divine presence that Achebe It seems like understands a little bit more than the more consistent [00:11:00] or loving god that we get in the new testament

Maiya: And there's one line that I really, really love in this poem, and I know I've said it, I love this poem so much, but the line describes a relationship as a slush of love's combustion. Now that, I think, is so excellently worded, but you also explore, the fact that in Igbo cosmology, a lot of these things come with a pairing. So you're looking at the sun and the moon. You're looking at thunder and lightning. Balance is found within the space between these figures, not found individually within one or the other. So every single aspect that you explore within this poem has a counterbalance, has an opposite.

And I think when you're approaching this poem as kind of assuming that it might be a simplistic love poem, when you're introduced to a line like the slush of love's combustion, you're actually exploring something that is messy and uncertain and out [00:12:00] of balance, but you know, it becomes increasingly clear as you go through the poem that the repetition allows you to constantly find that balance 

Joe: 100 percent and also a sense of danger in that line. That sense of combustion is on the one hand this kind of, I mean, if you'll sort of pardon the metaphor, kind of spark, flying as a very traditional romantic cliché. But of course combustion can also lead to dire consequences, death, explosions. You know, in a modern context we would regard that to be sort of synonymous with nuclear disaster, all kinds of things that are very negative.

And I think once again Achebe is painting an image of this relationship. Whereby the female presence has to be continually conciliatory, continually adapting to whatever wild mood swings the male presence, in this case the sun, brings at the end of each day. There is this sense that the female presence in this poem has to constantly be ready to sort of put out fires, to be constantly ready to flex [00:13:00] and to adapt to whatever the male presence demands of her. On the one hand, the male presence can be very loving and very affectionate, but then, as we've said, that love, that affection can be withdrawn, and it can be replaced with anger, seemingly at a moment's notice. And I can't help but wonder how many relationships that Achebe had witnessed that kind of followed those patterns.

The idea of the masculine presence in a relationship sort of playing God. And again, anyone who's read Achebe's novels will know that image of the patriarch, whose word is law, who's incredibly aggressive in the way they deal out what they believe to be right, is one of the most enduring things about his poems. I mean, the main figure, Okonkwo, in Things Fall Apart, is this kind of very emotional male figure who at times is admired, but also is this kind of very aggressive, arbitrary dictator of what he believes to be right. And the relationship between Okonkwo and his children, but also Okonkwo and his wives in Things Fall Apart is [00:14:00] definitely something that resonates with me in this poem. I think we can see that same relationship play out here, and the fact that he's extrapolated some of those learnings from real life and found natural symbols on which to project them is just so impressive to me.

Maiya: I couldn't agree more And I think it's important to note that as easy as it is to approach this poem in isolation, we do need to remember that Beware Soul Brother is actually a collection of poems that detail Achebe's experience during and after Nigerian independence.

So this poem is accompanied by poems about war and suffering and colonialism. So when we talk about relationships, we're not just approaching this poem in terms of love relationships. We're also looking at colonial relationships and, for anyone who takes, you know, the study of English literature or poetry to a, to a higher level, like university level. We'll learn that when you talk about colonization, it's very often construed as a male [00:15:00] figure. So I really think that there's a lot to be said when you explore this poem as a relationship to think about the wider context because not only could you take this as Achebe writing about, you know, a slightly toxic relationship that he perhaps endured, but we're also looking at a relationship between colonizer and colonized That was the absolute center of Achebe's world for a very long time, and still is an incredibly relevant part of the conversation.

Joe: point. It's not something I'd really thought about, but you're right. The fact that this poem begins with this dominant presence withdrawing, I mean, we can't help but read that in parallel with the fact that after, you know, more than 100 years, the British presence in Nigeria was withdrawing.

And again, I say withdrawing because, of course, just because independence is declared one year doesn't mean the influence vanishes overnight. I mean, A lot of the institutions in Nigeria, whether education institutions, the civil service, the broadcasting agencies, which actually Achebe worked for, a lot of those were modelled [00:16:00] on British institutions.

So this process of uncoupling between the colonised nation Nigeria and the coloniser Britain is actually not dissimilar to the idea of a marriage where there is a major power imbalance like this one. I mean, It's a really interesting way of looking at the poem, I think, to view the female presence as sort of indicative of perhaps Nigeria or perhaps just a sort of colonised presence more broadly, and working out how it relates to this incredibly arbitrary, aggressive, you know, occasionally generous but broadly fearful presence of the coloniser.

Maiya: And it's so worth exploring that, because again, we finish this poem with the colonized, with the female presence in this poem having power. It's how we close this poem. We are left with the impression of the evening, the night, the female having power. 

[00:17:00] So as we approach the end of the first season of Beyond the Verse, we just want to remind our listeners of the benefits of a Poetry+ membership. Now whether you're about to do your mock exams, whether you're looking to set a New Year's resolution to learn more about poetry,

we have so many benefits to offer you, whether that's from our PDF learning library, or our printable poem PDFs which will tell you about rhyme and meter, our brand new AI chatbot that will answer all questions you have about poetry, or our weekly newsletter, 

You can explore the site to your heart's desire and learn everything there is to know about your favorite poet, someone new, or someone we've talked about on the podcast before if you want to supplement your learning. Now don't forget, among all of this, you can also send your questions to joe and i at beyondtheverseatpoemanalysis.com and we will answer your questions in upcoming Q& A episodes.

Joe: [00:18:00] Welcome back to this episode of Beyond the Verse where Maiya and I are discussing Chinua Achebe's love cycle. And I would just like to focus on one of the images in this poem that I find most enduringly powerful, which is that the sky is plowing the vast acres of heaven and the thing I love about that Is that it kind of goes against the traditional images of the Sun because obviously you have lots of images and different religious Traditions about the Sun chariot being drawn by horses and you know, it's the popular image of Apollo and other religions as well It's a boat in the Egyptian tradition that Ra sails across the sky And the thing I think that's really interesting about both of those is there isn't a sense of toil in the same way. The chariot is something we generally associate with being a very ornate way of moving through a space. Again, with the sea, of course, not to suggest that sailing is easy, but there is that sense of elegance with moving across the ocean of the sky. The image that Achebe uses is one that has [00:19:00] connotations of effort, of sweat, of suffering almost, especially under the heat of the sun itself, and I think that that gives the poem much greater depth because you have this kind of reason that this sun is so aggressive and angry because he is meant to be an embodiment of somebody who themselves has had to suffer and toil all day long.

Now this far from excuses the kind of aggressive behavior of the male figure, but I think It really humanizes what is ordinarily a divine presence, but what do you think about that man? I 

Maiya: Think, to be honest, it goes back to that question of balance, right? Because again, we're exploring a very complex relationship.

It is not something that we can just sit and say is effectively a bad relationship. We are looking at something that has a huge level of scale. I think humanizing the son or humanizing the masculine figure in the way that he does in this poem offers us that sense of balance. It gives us something to write against, you know?

And there is a level of sympathy. [00:20:00] There is a sort of understanding that you come to meet with this figure, because despite the aggression and despite the anger, the patience that is offered to this figure by its contrast, the feminized evening that waits patiently, you begin to feel more like a spectator.

of this relationship than you do intimately involved within it. As opposed to the way that you open this poem and you, as a reader, feel quite close to that sense of warmth. I think the poem actually, you know, in contrast to many poems that we read on this, actually begins to push you out of it.

And I think what that serves to do is not only affords us that sense of sympathy, but by relegating you almost to this observer figure, it makes it a much more natural cycle. And you know, the poem is called Love Cycle. It's about something that is unstoppable. It's something that happens with or without action from the listener, from the reader, from whoever is involved as a third party. I [00:21:00] think it's a really nuanced way of writing this relationship because it would be so, so easy for Achebe to write a bad love poem. And this is not that.

Joe: I think just to pick up on that idea about the nuance of the way love is portrayed and the way in which its counterweight is often shown to be aggression It's almost as though the Sun's expressions of love and its expressions of fury come from the same place and I think one of the other symbols that Achebe uses that I just want to touch on because again like The opening lines of the poem I just find this to be so loaded is when a He describes the darts of anger that are thrown by the male figure. And the reason I think that's so interesting is because it's, again, drawing on several different traditions. Now, when I see that phrase, the darts of anger, in a love poem, or what is purportedly a love poem, the place that my mind goes to is Cupid, Cupid's arrows, that notion of a weapon, something that is intended to cause pain and yet becomes a symbol [00:22:00] of love, that idea about how love can be painful.

I think that's a very, sort of Well understood image, but also the place it calls back to me is William Blake's Jerusalem. Bring me my arrows of desire. And once again, you have Achebe drawing on these different traditions. The classical on the one hand, When the figure of Cupid or the figure of Apollo, who of course is an archer and also associated with the sun. And then he draws upon William Blake's poem, Jerusalem, which is of course very much rooted in a Christian tradition. And finally, whenever you have that symbol of arrows, that symbol of darts or missiles being thrown at somebody, you have the symbol of violence which could represent the ways in which the colonial force of Britain oppressed and killed many people in Nigeria over more than a century that Britain was a colonial power there. And again, his ability to hold these different influences in parallel without. Aligning himself with any of them more than the other is one of the things I find so interesting the arrow the dart as a symbol of desire [00:23:00] a symbol of aggression a symbol of a christian tradition a symbol of a Classical tradition he is able to hold those things together and it's remarkable

Maiya: And coexistence, I think, is one of the key messages for this poem. We've talked a lot about the harmony between aggression and love, between the sun and the moon, between these relationships that, that continually coexist within this poem. I think it's really fascinating, and maybe to just pull us out of the poem for a second, Joe and I have discussed how this poem, when you view it through a post colonial lens,

could explore The relationship between the colonizer and the colonized. Now I think it's really interesting when you explore, particularly post colonial poetry, because there is a common thread that love and aggression or love and war are often written about in tandem. They become synonymous with being able to show a level of passion or feeling towards something.

And one of the poems that comes to mind is Ocean Vuong's My Father [00:24:00] Writes From Prison. Now, I know we talk about Ocean Vuong a lot in this podcast because Joe and I both love him. But, there is a line from that poem that goes, I don't know desire other than the need to be shattered and rebuilt.

Now, the language of destruction that encompasses The post colonial thought, the one that explores the effect of war and how to live through and past that, is one that I always find recurs in poems like Love Cycle, in Ocean Vuong's work. Now we're looking at countries that, experienced extreme suffering at the hands of a colonizer. So when they talk about love and relationships, more often than not, they carry the burden of the impact of that war. So Love Cycle for me is a poem that not only touches on how a relationship can be fed by passion, but also how it can be fed by adversity.

Joe: think that's a fascinating point. And any way in which we can [00:25:00] talk about Ocean Vuong is fine by me. But I think it's a really interesting comparison because, In many ways, both those poets are writing across culture. You know, when you think about the moment in which Achebe is writing, and I alluded to this earlier on, but it's really important for listeners to get a sense of just how in flux his life must have felt at this point.

Not only on a personal level, going from somebody that was, you know, unknown to somebody that was a global literary figure in the space of, you know, a few years, a little over a decade, but also the fact that the country he was living in over the course of 10 years had gone from being a colonised nation to an independent nation, had gone through a civil war, there was a sense that the country was being continually destroyed and rebuilt, the country of course that Achebe loves. Again, a lot of Vuong's work is about writing back, writing across oceans and that sense of being pulled in more than one direction and having to reconcile things that are ultimately probably irreconcilable.

The past and the present, a foreign culture, a immediate [00:26:00] culture. I think That sense of being destroyed and remade is something that both these poems share I could just touch on one of the things as the poem draws towards its conclusion that I find really powerful and memorable about it And it's actually an interesting call back to our last episode which was on Emily Dickinson’s because I could not stop for death It's about the way in which the sun Becomes a symbol of a very finite amount of time on the one hand and an infinite amount on the other because obviously if we think about the way this relationship and love cycle plays out over the course of a day you have this Massive sort of spectrum of emotions that we get we get desire.

We get absence. We get rage we get fatigue And eventually we get a kind of a calmness that is, of course, meant to reflect the setting of the sun, the point at which the sun's heat reduces and its colours soften, and it becomes this symbol of something much more conciliatory. Now, on the one hand, we have there this enormous span of emotion, and it almost speaks to a [00:27:00] length of time, because normally, we would imagine that that level of emotion, that range of emotion, needs to occur over a long stretch of time because they are, those emotions are so varied. And yet, we also have the sun as an image of eternity. Because, of course, the sun will rise again tomorrow and the day after that, and we often associate it with something enduring and never ending. So, the way in which this poem is, on the one hand, using the sun as a metaphor for continual change, for unpredictability, for myriad patterns. Contradictory emotions and yet also being a symbol of permanence and resoluteness is fascinating. And I think when we view this in the context of an unhappy relationship, which is occasionally has sort of moments of joy within it. It becomes this fascinating symbol, because when you have the image of the sun that we associate with permanence, we associate with longevity. That's kind of innately assumed to be a good thing. But what if the thing that is enduring and the thing that has longevity is itself painful? Is itself detrimental? And again, you know, I can't help but think of a passage in [00:28:00] the Bible, Psalm 113, which reads from the rising of the Sun to its setting. The name of the lord is to be praised and again on the one hand That is a very kind of hopeful image that you know, god is going to be there forever but on the other hand It's this incredibly dictatorial kind of harping voice about you must do this and you must do that And there is no reprieve from those things And again, I know i've repeated myself here But the way that achebe is able to hold those symbols in tandem The positive and the negative is one of the things about the poem You And about Achebe's writing more broadly, that I just find truly unique.

Well, I mean, what do you think about that, Maiya? 

Maiya: Think you're absolutely right. And I think compression is one of the ways in which Achebe is able to play with this sense of scale and this sense of time because of course, the length of time that Achebe is talking about here, the sun's eternal existence gives you.

an extortionate amount of time to think about [00:29:00] this relationship, to think about its continuations. But I really love the fact that you can read this poem from first line to last line and then read it again and then read it again. It is built to be read cyclically. Now of course we finish this poem in the evening as the sun and the evening begin their embrace.

But let's not forget that the poem opens with the withdrawal of that, with the refusal of that. So the central question really becomes, how do you talk about a relationship that doesn't have a way out, and yet has so many negative associations within it, that you have to fight your way out of. This is a poem that is, is deeply embattled, really.

Joe: Yeah, and how do you reconcile something that is, on the one hand, unchanging, with the fact that the unchangingness of it is defined by inconsistency? I mean, it's, it's this really interesting paradox, because the son's behavior, the behavior of this male figure, is incredibly erratic, [00:30:00] incredibly inconsistent, incredibly varied.

And the only constant is that it will happen again.

Maiya: For sure, and I often find, and I'd be so interested to know your thoughts on this, Joe, but I find that you leave this poem more confused than you are when you enter it.

Every time I reread this poem, I think that it's going to be a little bit more simplistic than it is. And I leave with a real feeling of kind of depth and a sadness about the state of this relationship. And I never quite know how to reconcile that feeling with the images that it's trying to portray.

Joe: I think of one of the other episodes we did, which was on William Butler Yeats’s 'The Second Coming', because again, what you have there is you have the expectation of resolution as evoked by the title of Yeats poem. When the second coming comes, that is when there will be certainty, Christ will arrive and the story will resolve itself. And the fact that poem ends with doubt rather than resolution really throws the reader off. And I have a similar thing here. You know, the setting of the sun, the end of the day, we, we've come to expect [00:31:00] those moments to evoke a sense of spiritual or emotional resolution as well.

And the absence of that, the absence of a lesson here, there is no sense of progress. There is merely a sense of repetition. And it is quite unsettling, and of course, you know, many of our listeners, I'm sure, will be aware that Achebe was extraordinarily familiar, not only with Yeats’s work, but with that exact poem.

Because the title of his most famous work, Things Fall Apart, is a line from that poem. So there's every possibility that that poem would have influenced the writing of this one as well. Maybe that's an interesting discussion to sort of close this episode on is the way in which Achebe's poem is sort of Engaging with other writers that we've talked about over the course of this series of beyond the verse I mean, I think Yeats is very strongly evoked here I mentioned earlier that the way he uses the Sun reminds me of the way Emily Dickinson uses the Sun and Because I could not stop for death. I mentioned William Blake earlier on I mean we talked about his poem The Tyger in a previous episode, but I think Achebe's Almost gravitational pull to hold things in his orbit. [00:32:00] These myriad influences, and pick and choose them as he sees fit, is one of the things that makes him such a remarkable writer, and writing in such a unique moment of history.

Maiya: Absolutely. And, you know, one thing I'd like to touch on really before we end this episode is that I would hate for listeners to walk away from this and think, you know, why would Joe and Maiya talking about this poem? Like it was a love poem. We didn't talk about the title. It is called Love Cycle. This poem is not one that is setting the intention of you walking away thinking this is a toxic relationship, full stop. It is very literally creating that cycle of love. That is the most important thing at the centre of this. And yes, there's passion, and aggression, and anger, and peace and interplays of power. But. Love is the core of this. And I think it's so multifaceted the way that Achebe deals with this. I think it's a pretty fair time to mention that, you know, Achebe wasn't writing out of nothing. He was incredibly well educated. [00:33:00] His father was a teacher, he attended elite schools, he won prize upon prize upon prize, he would have been a hugely wide reader, he would have taken on so much from other poets around him, other writers, people in his orbit, as you say Joe, so he was interpolating and holding all of these different poets and different works within his space. And I think it's so evident when you read a poet who reads other poems. Because it's so impossible to not have those interpolations or those callbacks, you know.

Joe: Absolutely, and anyone who listened to our episode on Wole Soyinka's telephone conversation will know that I have, you know, a bit of a fascination with the African Writers Conference of 1962, which Achebe attended, probably as the premier writer on the continent at the time, and that sense of interplay, that sense of this moment being the moment that African literature really arrived on the global scene.

And of course, it's worth noting that the reason that was in the [00:34:00] 1960s, not before, was a point of access, a point of the willingness of western publishers to put out this work. It's not that there wasn't work being produced beforehand, but this moment in which this series of great writers, Achebe being one of them, Soyinka being another, were in the same place at the same time in Uganda at this I mean, I'd be fascinated. To hear Achebe if he was still with us talk about how those moments those interactions with fellow african writers and writers from the african diaspora like Langston Hughes how they influenced his poetry because When I think of Achebe, I think of him as being an absolute sponge, you know of culture of folklore of history of other literature his ability to Absorb those traditions whether it's individual lines or whether it's a thematic preoccupation and then reproduce them in a unique way you Is one of the things that makes him so remarkable and makes those interactions all the more important for a poet like him again We spoke about Emily Dickinson last time as somebody Who largely lived her [00:35:00] life devoid of those immediate interactions.

Achebe, you know couldn't be further from the truth he was a voracious reader a voracious consumer of the work of others and It just goes to show how varied the poetic world can be you can have poets on the one hand Who really thrive on those interactions and you can have others who don't really need them to produce their work 

Maiya: well, so much, Joe, for such an excellent way to end our first season. I absolutely loved that conversation and I cannot wait to explore . a bunch of new poets next time. For now I just want to say a huge thank you for the last 20 episodes and just to remind listeners while you're waiting for us to come back in the new year 2025 you can go back and listen to our entire catalog of podcast episodes in the meantime

But for now, it's goodbye from me.

Joe: And goodbye from me and the whole team at poemanalysis.com and Poetry+. [00:36:00]