Megan Hall, Fourth Child

Megan Hall's Fourth Child is a deeply intimate collection without being showily confessional or maudlin. And this is its great strength.

There is a quiet power to many of the poems, though few measure up to the punch carried in the second poem in the collection, "Gunshot", which actually led me to set the book down and say, out loud, "Wow... wow." The reader is led by Hall through a recapitulation of shootings from recent films into the depths of a personal tragedy which lingers, for the reader as it does for the poet, throughout the collection. That connection -- between film and life -- is stark and telling; not overdone, not overwrought.

The second to the last poem in the collection, "Wanting" -- though not without faults (there is something almost pedestrian about the sentiment closing the first stanza in this age of self-empowerment; and the closing clause leaves me either baffled or unsatisfied, I'm not yet sure which) -- offers up a real gem:

Wanting puts your heart out on a string,
trawling for the thing that's wanting you.

Those are lines that ache as much as they reveal. Which is precisely what the best of the poems in this collection manage to do.

More about Megan Hall is available on her Poetry International page, including links to additional reviews of Fourth Child; there is also a review of Fourth Child by Grace Kim on the LitNet site.

Melissa Butler, Removing

Two days into my reading for National Poetry Month -- only two days in, I should emphasize -- but I worry I am becoming a bit of a curmudgeon. Why? Because I have yet to be swept away.

That's putting an awful burden on these poets, I know.

Melissa Butler's collection, Removing, comes close but never quite carries me over. There are poems where I've scrawled notes to myself, "does it work?" (and in the case of a poem like, "Cited", with each of the 16 words in the one line footnoted, I feel, "not quite" -- though I do wish I could have heard it read as a duet), whereas others most certainly do:

(Remember): The familiar
gathers itself slowly
and then you are there, in a life edged
by dinner time, a garbage truck
and the neighbor
who walks her dog.

"What gathers slowly" (32-3)

Liberally sprinkled throughout this brief collection (22 pieces and one extended cycle; very much a chapbook) are prose poems. Truth be told, I've never been a great fan of prose poems. Butler comes closest to making them work for me, though it would take a much closer reading on my part (and perhaps a discussion with the poet herself) to puzzle through to a satisfactory answer as to why prose, why here, why in these instances.

She hits her stride, I think, in the closing cycle, "Hadeda geographies", six four-stanza poems with a structure and coherence that allow for and build towards something much more than a pithy insight or a dropped pearl of wisdom. And that, it seems on reflection, is the real strength of Butler's work, and what holds promise for her future work: she's not after the sunburst but instead looks to build and weave quietly. While this may mean that in some instances the reader will sweep through a poem like a little noticed spider's web, Butler will (one trusts) spin another. Which may very well be her most perfect one yet, pulling us up, just short, in wonder.

Francis B Nyamnjoh, Predicaments

I learned a lesson some time ago: never read the introduction to a novel or book of verse prior to reading the book itself. I had one too many books ruined for me by awful introductions.

Whether that's stood me in good stead or bad is an open question; though on the whole I think it's greatly benefited the pleasure I've taken in my reading.

In the case of Francis B Nyamnjoh's, Predicaments, however, I am left to wonder. It is in the brief foreword -- by Emmanuel Fru Doh -- and the introduction -- by Nyamnjoh himself -- that the reader learns that we have at hand Nyamnjoh's "juvenilia"; twenty-five years old and he "would rewrite them today" (ix).

I wish he had.

Despite Doh's (seemingly tepid) endorsement and Nyamnjoh's wish for us to "find at least one poem in this collection that titillates or tantalizes... or more" (ix) this is a mostly undistinguished volume, memorable more for repeated clumsy and labored grammatical reorderings to turn a line-ending rhyme, the affectation of "Oh!"s, and PRAISE IN ALL CAPS than for... well, for the poetry itself.

There are intriguing glimmers of what might have been. "The Whitemen of God" offers up an angry recapitulation of the missionary endeavor, of how "We were taught to hear the bible of a god we knew by proxy" and how "We rejected our cultures and ourselves". But because there is little poetic tension to the piece the ambiguity of the closing line -- "We were forced to forgive, forced to go to heaven" -- lacks any particular punch. It's intriguing (on reflection) but ultimately unsatisfying as it stands.

The strongest poem, by far, is "To the Leader". While it too suffers odd grammatical structures -- "The world won't have you to blame / When the baton on must pass"... really? "on must pass"? why? -- it also has the most evocative lines in the collection:

Let people in you an enigma see,
Not a noodle to be rolled and fingered

This is marvelous. And powerful. And unfortunately noteworthy for how much it stands out.

Had I read the foreword and introduction in advance perhaps I would have been a bit more forgiving in my initial approach. But I doubt seriously it would have made the poetry any better for it.

Robert Berold, All the Days

It took me a while to warm to Robert Berold's All My Days. More than a while, in fact. Well, actually, it took something of a gap between readings.

All My Days is a slim book, as most collections are. And I like to read these things, if I can, in one single push. It gives me, it seems, a better sense of the poet, of the rhythm, of the style and voice. If the poetry is done well, I'm caught up, almost trance-like, and carried through. Done poorly, I slog it out and don't have to come back.

I didn't make it all the way through Berold's book in one go. Not because it was badly done. I'm sure something came up: such as morning, and having to get my son fed, dressed, and off to school. But I do remember being somewhat underwhelmed when I closed it up that first time.

And on a post-it note stuck to the front I scrawled, in my tight, small-cap hand: "a penchant for description by listing -- 'setting the scene'" followed by a drawn line and the rather under-enthusiastic, even wary "and then there are the thicker, chunkier, prose pieces..." (yes, ellipsis and all).

I never did warm to the latter, and it's not as if the early poems don't strike a resonant line here and there. Berold's poem, "Beloved", opens with "Love burnt both of us. / Now rain falls in this scorched place. / I lean into your gravity" (26).

But it's later in the collection that things started clicking for me. "Night shift Hangzhou" doesn't quite make it as a whole -- the second stanza works a little too hard at mimicking the scene Berold is trying to describe -- but the first three lines crackle: "Down, down, below zero, and the wind biting, / I am almost falling asleep on my feet. I imagine / summer in South Africa, sizzling with electric fences" (44). The lines break just right on the page and in the reading; the opposites oddly, and effectively, echoing one another. Those three lines are masterfully done.

"Proposal" is cute (but in a playful, not saccharin, sense) and familiar; and "To myself at 20" (55) might very well be one of the better poems I've read, opening:

I think of myself in Ingrid's bedroom,
under that poster of Bonnie and Clyde
with dark rings under my eyes,
while her mother wept continuously
and her brother muttered threats.

He manages to capture the bravado, fear, and utter cluelessness of youth. And that still sort of stings.

All My Days has been reviewed elsewhere by Kobus Moolman and Vonani Bila, in both cases glowingly and in enviable depth.

This is the fourth collection of Berold's -- and I'll be reading all four (bought in South Africa last October). In reverse. So a bit of me was expecting... whiz bang? I wanted to love it. Some I do. I should probably re-read the whole. When I go back to look at all four together, I will.

This time in one sitting.

Gail Dendy, People Crossing

I had the pleasure of meeting Gail Dendy during my trip to South Africa last year. Right at the tail end of the trip, quite literally (and lamentedly, as she was a delight and the conversation over lunch a real pleasure): when we finished eating she put me on a shuttle for the airport.

People Crossing is Dendy's second collection, and is probably a stronger than the usual sophomore effort. There is a great deal of sensuousness (in the scandalous sense of that word) about many of these poems; and while not all of it works, much of it does.

In "Spider-watch" (in which Dendy evokes the rather over-worked image of the black widow spider) we read the incredibly evocative:

She's endless,
tonight, all give.

[....]

The stitching is complete.
One of them is satisfied.

And in "Fragment" (in its entirety):

It has to be passionate,
leg-wrapped.
I know his clung kiss, sharp
as a bloodburst.

While the most titillating might very well be the closing lines of "Exposed":

To them
I was all
night lover –
a spool
of yearning.
Unravel me
then.

Oh my!!

But Dendy is far from "merely" a sensuous poet. The denouement of "Assault" is... well, frightfully powerful: you know what's coming, the turn is not particularly artful (nor is it artless), but it's still sickening and lands like a punch.

She is a relatively prolific poet but there is little of her poetry accessible and available here in the United States. I foolishly left South Africa with this volume only. There are a few short biographical pieces (here and here) as well as some brief interviews (here and here). For those with a taste for... well... poetry, I've managed to find the following poems of Dendy's online:

• The Lady Missionary
• No Partic'lar
• Shoot
  

I do look forward to continuing our discussion and, hopefully, getting my hands on another volume or two of her work before the next trip back to the RSA.

Sammy Oke Akombi, Beware the Drives

Beware the Drives is one of the poetry collections I was able to pick up at this year's African Literature Association conference, held in Burlington, Vermont. Exciting for me as it heralds the emergence of what is to me a new publishing house in Cameroon: Langaa Research and Publishing Common Initiative Group (distributed in the US & Europe by the marvelous African Books Collective).

The book is well-edited and produced, and for all those reasons, a delight.

The poetry much less-so.

There are some strong lines, but they stand out for their rarity. Perhaps the strongest of the entire collection are the closing lines of "A Poet's Epitaph": "You too, poet or no poet, sure shall find peace / In doing, pieces, for yourself and mankind" (1).

The opening poem.

I am more than willing to grant Akombi that, "Always there's something to be understood / That hasn't been understood" (from "Poetry" (21)), but on the whole the collection reads more like an old commonplace book than a vibrant new poetry collection; a collection of aphorisms, and rather obvious ones at that, lacking the song and punch of poetry.

When children, innocent and clean
As they always have been
Die in storms and quakes --
Earthwuakes, techno-quakes, hunger-quakes
Socio-politico-ideologico-quakes
And then gun and bomb quakes,
One can't help but question,
Is that why they were born?

"Victims" (5)

It is lines like these that are, to my mind (and ear), simply inexplicable as poetry. There is real potential in "hunger-quake" -- it could soar -- but... "Socio-politico-ideologico-quakes"??

To me it's yet unknown
Where to place my napkin at meal
Which hand for the fork,
Which for the knife and which for the spoon,
And here comes the chopstick.

"Globalisation" (37)

It's a suggestive trope, and the wonderful start to a set piece. And perhaps by this point in the collection I had wearied, but it's not quite working as poetry. Not yet.

Kofi Anyidoho, PraiseSong for TheLand

It pains me to write this, but I was unimpressed by Anyidoho's PraiseSong for TheLand.

Perhaps it is the reading from the page that is lacking. But they feel... unoriginal. There's little spark, few memorable lines or images that haven't been presented more forcefully, movingly, elsewhere (and in some instances, by Anyidoho himself).

To get an idea of the true power -- the potential -- of Anyidoho's poetry, fast forward to the 57th minute of University of Iowa's International Writing Program's "Africa Night" reading (12 September 2002).

Too many of the poems in PraiseSong turn on imagery that is all too familiar, worn: not comfortable so much as predictable. And Anyidoho's seeming fetishization of capitalization (Winds, Witness, Thunder, Solitude, Orphan Child, and on and on) distracts in print -- perhaps more than it should (and perhaps that's more my fault than that of the poet) -- but not (obviously) in the readings on the accompanying cd. And here is the collections most noteworthy and spectacular (and redeeming) aspect: the inclusion of a compact disc of Anyidoho reading (and singing, with others) the collection.

It is this -- the readings, Anyidoho's voice and performance of the verse -- that make this a collection worth having. And worth returning to. I'm not sure how, on a second and third listen, I'll feel about the imagery and evocation of common themes and background. Perhaps just weary rather than seduced. But there is a passion in the audio, heard, and felt, that is absent in print -- and a passion I am willing to return to, and perhaps be redeemed by, if there is redemption to be had.

Tanure Ojaide, The Tale of the Harmattan

The Tale of the Harmattan is the first collection of Ojaide's that I've read in some time. I picked it up at last year's African Literature Association conference.

I have been, at best, ambivalent about Ojaide's poetry, at least from my encounters with his earlier works (as published). But I have always really enjoyed his readings, his performances, and the cover of this one was so appealing that I picked it up (and he quite graciously inscribed it to me as well).

I am not sure I would have picked up on the pose that the back cover blurb presents -- "Tanure Ojaide adopts the persona of a homeboy griot returning from travels" -- though perhaps I ought to have connected the poet with the cyclic return of the harmattan. No never-mind.

There are striking lines and some very evocative, almost heartbreaking passages:

At the wobbling Kaiama Bridge that holds the Delta
together, I see a procession of oil-soaked water spirits
wailing their way out. No boats of fishermen plying
the waterways; no regatta and no swimmers in sight.

"At the Kaiama Bridge" (34)

It is a little disconcerting to read what amounts to a paean "For the Egbesu Boys" though perhaps not surprising considering the horrors wrought on the Niger Delta and its people.

It is to the Delta that Ojaide returns, time and again. There is little abject nostalgia (Ojaide is far too adept a thinker, let alone poet, for that); and though not every verse works -- the call and response of "Dialogue" (43-4) just never snaps, for instance -- and there are pages where the relentless and sometimes far too repetitive imagery and cadence of corruption and abstracted oppression threaten to swamp all else, the collection as a whole holds up the promise of the cover: a minimalist, striking, stripped down poetic portrayal of a largely denuded landscape.

Harmattan is a strong collection, and one that will bring me back more readily to Ojaide's extensive offerings ( though I do wish his website were up-to-date and the links all functioning as they ought).

Gabeba Baderoon, The Dream in the Next Body

I first encountered Gabeba Baderoon at the 2008 African Literature Association Conference in Macomb, Illinois of all places. She was completely new to me: as a poet, a critic, a commentator. But she captivated at a roundtable I attended and I picked up what was on offer at a reading later that night: The Dream in the Next Body.

I wasn't disappointed. She's a skilled poet and, for the record, a marvelous reader. Her voice blends wonderfully with her verse, and it's hard not to hear her reading to you as you read her lines.

It's a strong collection, but uneven. Let me quote one poem in it's entirety:

To come to this country,
my body must assemble itself

into photographs and signatures.
Among them they will search of me.

I must leave behind all uncertainties.
I cannot myself be a question.

"I Cannot Myself" (23)

Those first three lines, I think, are masterful. There's a distancing Baderoon creates with the use of "my body" that is telling. And yet abandoned in the denouement. It feels too... pat? too neat? Or just that she hasn't bridged that distance? It just breaks down at the turn.

If there is a weakness to the collection as a whole it's that -- taken in one sitting -- the poetry eventually comes to feel like so many set-pieces. There are no punchlines, these aren't gags, and she's not trying out various dramatic effects. But in aggregate I felt like I had just wandered among museum boxes or walked through a hall of dioramas. They were lovely. And evocative. But there was also something consciously-constructed and distant about them.

I do look forward to reading more of her work; and, with luck, hearing her read live again. There is a way in through her voice, perhaps, that I was missing on the page.

Toyin Adewale, 25 New Nigerian Poets

Anthologies of multiple poets are always spotty affairs. Toyin Adewale's 25 Nigerian Poets is no different.

Interestingly, it includes two rather unremarkable poems by Helon Habila -- "Birds in the Graveyard" and "After the Obsession" (the latter starts strong but becomes mired in cliche when he explicitly conjures the obsession) -- three years before he "burst" onto the scene with his novel, Waiting for an Angel.

The strongest poem in the book is probably Remi Raji's "Cyclone", which opens:

Nightmare flickers
In our twice – thrice-beaten
eyes, no more meaning
in the gram, no gram
in the grammar of lives
my pain goes
like a stubborn present
our pain
Is a stubborn
Present
Tense

Adewale hopes that this collection is "enjoyed as an appetizer" (v) and yet there is little joy in these poems, midwived, as she says to open the "Introduction" to the collection, by "[t]he stimuli of suffering, the pain of the motherland, the desperate passion of a people who have found their collective national heritage pillaged by thieving generals" (iii). One does wish there was just a bit more art to them, though.

Uche Nduka, Eel on Reef

I finished Uche Nduka's Eel on Reef yesterday morning and have been wondering what to make of it since. Well, truth be told, I was wondering what the hell to make of it just a few poems in.

I know that I'll be writing a more detailed review for the African Poetry Review (USA) shortly. But in the meantime...

Oh goodness!

I purposely avoided reading Kwame Dawes's introduction hoping to come to Nduka's poetry fresh. But instead, in my darker moments, I read it as just so many words chewed up and spit out on the page. Dawes is a much more generous reader, yet even he at times "felt as if the poet was working too hard to confuse me and I resented that" (11).

Resentment is too strong a word for my own feelings. Baffled? Not just by the "what" but the "why" of the collection (which, I might add, is beautifully put together and very attractively laid out). Dawes is a fan of the imagism, encouraging the reader to surrender and "write" the poetry fresh; rush through and linger. He sees reward where I only felt a degree of weariness.

There were glimmers that struck, an eroticism that almost rolled at times. But for the most part I was left to duck my head and push through.