No Capital Just Life

    Ifi Amadiume’s No Capital Just Life is a very symbolic poem. Literally, it depicts the richness of the African region in gems (diamonds and gold), the people’s ways of living, and their dreams. In deeper sense, it is a meaningful poem as it consists of nationalistic perspectives. To sum up, it is like ‘what belongs to Africa belongs to Africa, what belongs to me I own it’ viewpoint. Also, the poem is about the paradox of free and exclusive things. In structure, the poem used the free verse. According to Cooper, free verse or sometimes called vers libre is a term describing various styles of poetry that are not written using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are considered as ‘poetry’ because of the virtue of complex patterns of one sort or another that readers can perceive to be part of a coherent whole. Specifically, the poem can fall under prose poetry because it contains heightened imagery or emotional effect and associated with some prose techniques. The thematic universality is apparent as it depicts the idea of property. The things that belong to a particular place are considered to be their properties and that others can not take nor control them. Like the diamonds and gold, they belong to Azania and not to the speaker in the poem. The poetic techniques are used unmistakably. Since it is free verse and prose poetry, poetic techniques are unreservedly used. For instance, alliteration is very palpable in the phrases like ‘man of mine, diamond is diamond, and gold is gold or longer example like ‘imagine his promises of love placed in diamonds paid in cars!’