"You Laughed and Laughed and Laughed" is a poem by Nigerian writer Gabriel Okara. One of the most popular in his oeuvre, it is a frequent feature of anthologies. "The piece belongs with the best of Senghor's nostalgic verse," wrote Michael Echeruo in a tribute to Okara on the occasion of his seventieth birthday, "with the militancy of many of David Diop's lyrics, and certainly with J. P. Clark's 'Ivbie', another of my favorite African poems. Okara's poem is more relaxed than these, however, more ironic, less tortured. In some ways, of course, it is less urgent, less strident, less involved. If Clark's 'Ivbie' was complex and for good reason, You laughed, and laughed, and laughed seemed also appropriately straightforward: proud without arrogance, hurting without showing it, and blunt without rudeness." The first of Okara's poems that it was Echeruo's pleasure to read, it was also in his opinion the most enduring.
Read more about You Laughed And Laughed And Laughed: Bibliography
Famous quotes containing the word laughed:
“It hurts me to hear the tone in which the poor are condemned as “shiftless,” or “having a pauper spirit,” just as it would if a crowd mocked at a child for its weakness, or laughed at a lame man because he could not run, or a blind man because he stumbled.”
—Albion Fellows Bacon (1865–1933)