Analysis Of Agbor Dancer By John Pepper Clark

Let's together look at this great poem of John Pepper Clark titled: AGBOR DANCER.

Summary

The poem holds a description of Agbor girl doing a traditional dance, moving in response to rhythm of the drums in a very dazzling and magestic way.

The poem speaker made known his own interest in the values represented by this dance by expressing his desire to join the dance that involves earth, sky and flesh or entire life of the people.

Structure

Agbor Dancer is a poem written in 4 stanzas with 5 lines each. 

The first stanza described the dancing girl and the drum that produced the music she dances to, stressing the way her whole person was absorbed in the dance while the second and third stanza looked at the body movement of the dancer while dancing and then move on to the unity between the two (dancer, drummer and song).

The last stanza of thr poem showed how the poem speaker viewed his distance from his early life.

Theme

The theme of the poem could be considered to be the values for culture and the regret for cultural separation. 

The poem speaker took the Agbor dancer as an element to prove how beautiful and valuable culture is; the exception found in such dance could not be compared with any other cultural dance. 

The fact culture places a great role in the life and living of human was felt in the poem and whenever any part of culture is found missing in a human, it brings regret.

Samuel C. Enunwa aka samueldpoetry
(the winged Leo of the west wind)