A REVIEW ON THE BOOK 'WHAT CAN WORDS DO?'

TITLE: What Can Words Do?
AUTHOR: Kukogho Iruesiri Samson
PUBLISHER: Origami Books, Lagos 
PAGES: 84 
REVIEWER: Prof. Gbenga Ibileye, Federal University Lokoja (ibigbs@yahoo.com)

Long before the descent to anarchy which the war of the West against terrorism in the Middle East, and especially the Iraqi War of the 1990s signalled, poetry and poets had always been actively engaged in the war of conscience which talked courageously to power where even mighty men feared to raise their sword.

In this tradition of poetic and literary activism was Yeast who had as a Senator in the legislature of the Republic of Ireland rejected the aestheticism of "art for art’s sake," declaring, "Literature must be the expression of conviction, and be the garment of noble emotion, and not an end in itself.

"Similarly, Auden’s poem—an elegy for Yeats—concludes by exhorting the poet to "follow right":

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress; 

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