By Henry Akubuiro
Before her latest collection of poems, Cadence, Modupe Adegboyega had published three other poetry collections —Onions, Too Cool for You, and Lines of a Palm. In Cadence, she creates a body of work that verges on a rhythmic way of thinking. Her tropes bloom on verses and her symbols encompass variegated layers of meanings, sometimes obscure.
As a bard, Modupe operates on a wavelength that is removed from pedantic borderline in her vigorous stanzas. Though the poems in this collection are few, they convey elaborate themes that border on love, faith, hope for the future. Some of her poems are personal reflections laden with heuristic tones, and there are even some aphoristic signatures. Here is a poet having a conversation with the world via sublime ideation.
What is noteworthy, again, is how far the poet has come since her undergraduate days when she started writing poems in the Department of Mass Comm, Kwara State University. Though she has functioned, afterwards, as a customer care rep, beauty advisor, and manager, she hasn’t shut the doors to the dictates of the muse. Whether this has come in the form of emotives or as trenchant tenors, the symphonies of her delicate verses often tug at your heart, lending it to cogitation.
In the first poem, “If Tears were Gold”, the bard etches lines that challenge supposition. She poetices on the futility of wishful thinking rather obliquely. For instance, the poet speaker says, “If tears were gold
My bedspread would be my most prized possession/Worth a lot from the hot flamy droplets each night/Shining as it is being soaked tonight”. If by shedding tears one would become rich, the voice here would make the Forbes list, “Gathering billions of what my sadness made.”
In Cadence, the poem equates the pursuit of intellect to a tortious journey, like chopping onions and discovering a beautiful bulb within. It is hidden, but the quest is worthwhile in the end.
The love poems in the collection are announced by “Too Cool for You”. Here, a lover who has overcome a heartbreak from an undesirable partner and is stronger now. The poet uses bleak images to portray how resolute the jilted lover is now She is “No longer the old jar”, even when she “left behind in the rain” before. Then there is a triumphant call: “That era is gone”.
In “Lines of a Palm”, the poet opens a window into what the future holds for you. Like the line of the palm, it’s mired in secrecy yet it contains deep messages. The “Broken Mirror” leads us to the possibilities inherent in the human soul to overcome tribulations, no matter how difficult they come.
A poem like “The Life of the Depressed” is self-explanatory. Yes, it is a tough life to live. For the depressed person is always thinking about adversities, he runs the risk of being declared insane, alive yet declared dead and, above all, “an idol of dadness.”
The poet celebrates, in other poems, the grandeur of science, the substance of a beautiful mind, fortitude, hubris, ray of hope, appreciation and sundry affairs.
You are invited to take a look at this offering.