Book review
Caustic poetic commentaries
By Luke Eyoh
Sunday,
March 16, 2008
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Photo:
Sun News Publishing
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Kraftgriots, Ibadan, Nigeria, 2007, pp. 72
My comments on and interpretations of the poems in this volume
are merely tentative and personal. They do not and need not
preclude myriads of different comments and interpretations
by other readers. This position is pertinent because as the
great Romantic English poet, Bysshe Percy Shelley, has enunciated
in his “A Defence of Poetry”, a poem does not
have one meaning but as many meanings as its intelligent readers
assign it, the implication here being that even the poet does
not give his poems all-time immutable meanings.
No! His poems are the property of the reading public who turn
them inside out and assign them the meanings they assign.
It is also important to note from the beginning that Ebi Yeibo
hails from, and necessarily takes for his primary setting,
the Niger Delta region where in recent times the struggle
of the people against State neglect and injustice regarding
the distribution of state wealth produced principally by the
region, has been near a crescendo.
Little wonder, therefore, that his poems should concern themselves
with the struggle, the poet being a prophet of the people.
Little wonder still that his message and language should roll
into a ballistic missile directed to the enemy’s camp.
It is certainly not surprising, given the stated background,
that the poet’s tenor and tone are characterized by
pain, protest and pessimistic optimism as a short sharp view
of each poem in the volume readily discloses.
The volume comprises 30 poems. The opening poem in the volume
“Song” enunciates the nature, character and functions
of a true poet through a paradoxical, paratactic compound
interrogative sentence – obviously rhetorical: “What
Separates a drunkard/ From a mad man (and)/ A poet from a
puritan?”
Just as a drunkard behaves like a lunatic, a poet is, metaphorically
speaking, a puritan – a strict and extreme moralist
who tells the truth even to his hurt.
Poetry is the “deep croaks of drunk(en) frogs”
from which euphony and melody can be garnered; poetry is “scathing
manure” which moistens “calcified” (bony)
farmlands; poetry, “our (resilient) tongue”, brings
life into a hopeless state of affairs – “stokes
the sagging sun”. This dry and tasking imagery that
constitutes the poet’s vision and mission amply adumbrates
the angry and protesting character of the other poems.
“Sacrifice”, the second poem in the collection,
accordingly employs such poetic devices as end–stopped,
run-on lines, enjambment and repetition to state its tragic
message which substantiates its protest: the enemy has “raped”
the people’s “rainbow” and “murdered”
their “new moon” right on the people’s laps
– God’s promise to the people and the manifestation
of this promise in the people’s land have been hindered,
a reward for the people’s sacrifice.
But can anyone hinder God? This same deprivation theme informs
“Dawn Song” in which the people are made “consummate
serfs” in their “own coasts” and where mischievous
darkness hinders the dawn of freedom. The fourth poem “Drowsy
Dreams” still projects this pessimistic and bleak vision
as “nimble clouds” banish “the soothing
sun” from the (already) “sombre skies.”
This is a protest poem drawing on telling imagery of relief,
fauna and flora, as well as that of the oldest industry. Same
vision of pain goes for “The Light Goes Out Again”,
and “Moonlight Murmurs”, the fifth and sixth entries
in the volume.
The seventh poem, “Rage of a River”, is rich in
alliteration; indeed, copious alliterative devices and conscious
development of repetition are characters of Yeibo’s
poetic ideolect. As the title metaphorically suggests, this
poem reminisces and justifies the struggle in the Delta region,
premising the justification on the despoliation of the land
by predators.
The image of the mother hen going wild as “hawks swoop
on chicks” aptly conjures up the argument for the, oft
near violence, struggle. “The Poet”, the eighth
poem in the volume illuminates the courage that is in the
character of poets; only the true poet can “look the
sun in the face,” the phrase reminding one of Clark-Bekederemo’s
title “Friends” in The Casualties where the poet
finds it easier to look the sun in the face than look in the
faces of lost friends in the fratricidal Nigerian civil war
of 1967-1970. The next poem “Silent Sorrow” protests
the deceitful and exploitative tendencies of successive leaders
in his country and the perennial burning of gas to devastate
the people’s livelihood – “burning up blossoming
barns” – to enrich the exploiters and impoverish
the aborigines. The poem is richly alliterative and embellished
with a preponderance of diction of pain – awake (all
night), stinging (song), blunt spirits, crashing, fiery flame
of fraud, sagging stomachs, etc.
The title poem, “The Forbidden Tongue”, is the
twenty-seventh. It uses alliteration – a principal character
in the poet’s idiolect – to further protest the
ravaging of the land – “ravishing of virgins and
sassing and sapping of a race”. Nevertheless, the poet
whose tongue is spurned and forbidden by the conspirators,
will not shut his mouth for, it is the “coarse crawl
of the tortoise / That drives away sleep / From its captor’s
home”.
The title poem is followed by “Nothing Surprises Us
Anymore”, which enunciates the poet’s resistance
to strange events in his land which contrast with events in
other “pampered lands”. In other lands, cockcrows
proclaim break of day but in his land, they “signal
yet another night”. In other lands, constellations send
serene beauty and joy but in his land, heat – “scorching
fledgling flowers”. The device of contrast goes on to
show “suns sprouting from granite / spilling over dry
rocks” to “inseminate fig trees” in other
(dry) lands.
In the poet’s tropical land, “suns only squeeze”
life out of apples and “fecund forests”, bringing
forth “bitter piassava”. Dawn, a signal of joy
in other lands, sags the people in the poet’s land or
“drags them to another death …” The sun
still lights up even temperate skies in other lands but it
is “effeminate” and it hides under “misted
mornings”, afraid of public glare, in the poet’s
land. Dreamers of freedom are killed at daybreak and “laments
of loved ones / Buried in silent schemes / of stealthy”
cats who “bestride the land, river and air”. The
imagery drawn and pictures painted here are harrowing and
painful. The 30th and last entry in the volume, “Hope”
conjures up optimism as aptly announced by the title. The
first stanza of the poem sets the tone of its message: “For
when the moon/ Mounts sky-stage/ In her resplendent regalia/
Stars save their oil/ For another day.”
Certainly, the image of the moon which teaches the stars to
shine suggests hope of great things to come. Other stanzas
keep the tenor and tone of hope. Using the Ode mode, the poet
prophesies the redemption and prosperity of his land: “Fresh
foliage springs on mountaintops… / softening the surrounding
air / with perfumed breath;” the land’s “breath
drips with … dews / irrigating fallow fields…;”
“fate mixes rainbow colours” on the land’s
“expansive palette / purifying palsied paths.”
Surely, a “sinking canoe is rowed ashore” and
“one yam fills a basket” by the words of elders.
Of course, the rainbow symbolizes God’s covenant with
man for man’s own well-being. The sinking canoe rowed
ashore and the miraculous one yam that fills a basket, reminiscent
of one of the lord’s miracles in the scriptures, all
proclaim the new life of liberty and growth which God in his
Holy Temple (“hallowed altars”) has declared and
granted.
The volume could not have ended on a more optimistic note!
Structurally, poems in the volume enjoy ample aspects of free
verse. There is no employment of traditional structural forms
like the sonnet, epic, quatrain and tercet configurations.
This is understandable; the poet has an urgent matter in his
hands – the emancipation of his land via the instrumentality
of poetry. There is no room therefore for long verse and superfluous
structural embellishment. Nevertheless, there is adequate
deployment of such poetic devices as alliteration, consonance,
assonance, repetition, apt and powerful diction, imagery,
rhythm and music to intensify the poetry of his verse.
Ebi Yeibo must be congratulated on this third outing. I recommend
this collection to all students and lovers of literature,
just as I strongly recommend it to lovers and haters of freedom
alike.
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