DON'T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT
By Eugenia Abu
Many poems in this Eugenia collection are distinctly shaped by her ease with and perhaps mastery of the prose genres-that is; fiction. Her poems mostly engage intimately with our daily lives, blending her poetic imagination and awareness of her environment with real places she had been, that is, in addition to real occurrences and events she’s participated in. As primarily the only speaker in her collection, she has carefully and exquisitely lace together and in tones of beautiful and romantic words and phrases, poems that can only come characteristically from a woman who has tasted, touched, loved and been loved.
The last stanza from ‘I miss you when it rains’ continued to resonate in my memory long after I was done with the book and went to bed. It did because the poem marvellously captures the way someone away from a love one tells it ... deep from the heart; ‘I miss you’ is a precise start off in a declaration of absentia, ‘I nibble, I wobble, I nestle,’ are obvious little stuttering and breathless interjection in conversational brevity that accompanies a cry, a laugh or reminiscence, ‘In the absence of you,’ pronounces the ineffectuality of being whole without this special ... YOU, whoever he, she or it is, ‘All those horrible sounds at night,’ is a remembrance perhaps of your grunts, your snore or something and then, aptly, the poem is signed off with the longing of the heart ... I – MISS - YOU. How wonderful.
I’m captivated by Eugena’s beautiful, everyday activities’ epistolatory poems, particularly the ones on the suffering of her fellow African women. Such as; "Africa / Because I am a woman / Falling to rise", These poems all depict the beauty, stoicism, patience, knowledge and suffering of the African women: "The working mother / children of my heart." Are equally magical and it is a thing of beauty and a good learning point to budding writers to learn that writing on everyday activities and mundane things can be the source of real poem, that they can equally be appreciated like the simple, readable Eugenia - and do need not go searching for jaw cracking unpronounceable words unearthed from the pit of 18th century dictionaries to be taken as fledging Wole Soyinka.
The poems ‘My sister departs on new year’s day and At dawn’ are elegies for Eugenia’s lost love ones. They well written poems with a theme foreshadowing good novelistic instinct. For instance, you can see - the recall to the good old days when they were kids, the mention of their intimacy and then the bafflement and loss following the deaths - in all these encounters, there were clear and direct narration and point of view and we see, picturesquely, the dying and dead women irrecoverably transcending the earth, going out of reach when Eugenia writes: "Light beckoned...and Josephine answered. Our love cannot keep her away from His call, peace Josephine, peace, peace. Then again, the other, But somewhere in the female ward, at dawn, the lights went off...and in the follow-up stanza, at dusk ... the rest were ...six feet below...Comfort Aishatu peace, peace.’
All her poem are beautifully crafted with serious social and health thematic echoes – a collection of poems generally fluctuating between moods;- at one time uplifting, giving pleasure, artistically fascinating and humorous and at another, capable of making the reader sober, solemn, reflective and serious: DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT, WHY DID YOU DO IT, HIS WONDERS TO PERFORM, THE SORROW OF NOT KNOWING, THE ROADS WERE THIRSTY TODAY, are all headings showing vivid imagination and an enigmatic painting of the social and environmental issues of our time. Then there are the playful and humorous headings; THE JOY OF LIVING, THE YEAR 1994, THANK YOU LORD FOR AWAKENING, LOVE SPOKE MY NAME , KUNU MELODIES. I think her publishers have equally done a good job, deliberately, packaging the collection to suit all readers.
With any piece of writing whether it be play, poem or prose; fact or fiction, there must be a certain element of interest, enthusiasm and enjoyment involved. My take on reading the poems in the collection - DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT shows that Eugenia is writing with the passion, eloquence and energy of someone who knows something or two about the madness, detestation, exhilarations, excitement, and exaltations of love, lost, loneliness, injustice, being patronize, deprecated...and, deprived. So, the ultimate, endearing kudos goes to her.
Many poems in this Eugenia collection are distinctly shaped by her ease with and perhaps mastery of the prose genres-that is; fiction. Her poems mostly engage intimately with our daily lives, blending her poetic imagination and awareness of her environment with real places she had been, that is, in addition to real occurrences and events she’s participated in. As primarily the only speaker in her collection, she has carefully and exquisitely lace together and in tones of beautiful and romantic words and phrases, poems that can only come characteristically from a woman who has tasted, touched, loved and been loved.
The last stanza from ‘I miss you when it rains’ continued to resonate in my memory long after I was done with the book and went to bed. It did because the poem marvellously captures the way someone away from a love one tells it ... deep from the heart; ‘I miss you’ is a precise start off in a declaration of absentia, ‘I nibble, I wobble, I nestle,’ are obvious little stuttering and breathless interjection in conversational brevity that accompanies a cry, a laugh or reminiscence, ‘In the absence of you,’ pronounces the ineffectuality of being whole without this special ... YOU, whoever he, she or it is, ‘All those horrible sounds at night,’ is a remembrance perhaps of your grunts, your snore or something and then, aptly, the poem is signed off with the longing of the heart ... I – MISS - YOU. How wonderful.
I’m captivated by Eugena’s beautiful, everyday activities’ epistolatory poems, particularly the ones on the suffering of her fellow African women. Such as; "Africa / Because I am a woman / Falling to rise", These poems all depict the beauty, stoicism, patience, knowledge and suffering of the African women: "The working mother / children of my heart." Are equally magical and it is a thing of beauty and a good learning point to budding writers to learn that writing on everyday activities and mundane things can be the source of real poem, that they can equally be appreciated like the simple, readable Eugenia - and do need not go searching for jaw cracking unpronounceable words unearthed from the pit of 18th century dictionaries to be taken as fledging Wole Soyinka.
The poems ‘My sister departs on new year’s day and At dawn’ are elegies for Eugenia’s lost love ones. They well written poems with a theme foreshadowing good novelistic instinct. For instance, you can see - the recall to the good old days when they were kids, the mention of their intimacy and then the bafflement and loss following the deaths - in all these encounters, there were clear and direct narration and point of view and we see, picturesquely, the dying and dead women irrecoverably transcending the earth, going out of reach when Eugenia writes: "Light beckoned...and Josephine answered. Our love cannot keep her away from His call, peace Josephine, peace, peace. Then again, the other, But somewhere in the female ward, at dawn, the lights went off...and in the follow-up stanza, at dusk ... the rest were ...six feet below...Comfort Aishatu peace, peace.’
All her poem are beautifully crafted with serious social and health thematic echoes – a collection of poems generally fluctuating between moods;- at one time uplifting, giving pleasure, artistically fascinating and humorous and at another, capable of making the reader sober, solemn, reflective and serious: DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT, WHY DID YOU DO IT, HIS WONDERS TO PERFORM, THE SORROW OF NOT KNOWING, THE ROADS WERE THIRSTY TODAY, are all headings showing vivid imagination and an enigmatic painting of the social and environmental issues of our time. Then there are the playful and humorous headings; THE JOY OF LIVING, THE YEAR 1994, THANK YOU LORD FOR AWAKENING, LOVE SPOKE MY NAME , KUNU MELODIES. I think her publishers have equally done a good job, deliberately, packaging the collection to suit all readers.
With any piece of writing whether it be play, poem or prose; fact or fiction, there must be a certain element of interest, enthusiasm and enjoyment involved. My take on reading the poems in the collection - DON’T LOOK AT ME LIKE THAT shows that Eugenia is writing with the passion, eloquence and energy of someone who knows something or two about the madness, detestation, exhilarations, excitement, and exaltations of love, lost, loneliness, injustice, being patronize, deprecated...and, deprived. So, the ultimate, endearing kudos goes to her.
Comments