It's a new year folks! Lit ‘n’ life uses this medium to thank its readers (yes, you and you and you!) for their support in
the past year. You guys were just mwah! Going over the posts and comments gives
me joy every time I do.
I’m plunging into blogging this year with the review of
Kayode Taiwo Olla’s new poetry collection, Softlie.
Read and leave your comments in the comments box. Do have a lovely year ahead.
I love poetry. It stands out of the three genres of literature, for me. It has a way of attracting attention to itself. The virtual world gives it a redefinition, one which is as good as it is bad. I’ll make my point clearer; the virtual world is poetry’s bane and friend alike. Poets and poems are born by the second in the virtual world. Refreshing a Facebook page is all it takes for a new poem to be birthed. The consistency of its production, however, doesn’t point to a consistency in terms of the production of delectable, undiluted, poignant poetry.
Softlie is a collection of love poems spun into a story line. Love
poems. A love poem is line upon line of desire, passion, ambition and lust...
It is itself a stereotype that will continue to remain, if man must continue to
love. And lust. Softlie is an
attestation to this verity. However, Kayode decides to take a different route
in telling his love tales. Love’s about making exchanges. These exchanges are what
Kayode Taiwo Olla packs into his sixty five paged book. Softlie’s
not about good loving alone. It’s about love and the so many shades in which it
manifests. I have heard people pronounce the title as either ‘softly’ or ‘soft
lie’. Whichever way, the poem picks on both true, good love and its converse. Here’s
a portion I love:
Look at the sad tale of this beauteous Rose,
How handsome Lust, charmed by her sweet
beauty,
Just with impulsive desire
Plucked her onto his breast, cooing:
I love you.
And then he rashly unbuttoned the rose’s
petal clothes
Cast off her folds, tasted of her secret
nectar at once.
And what is more? His appetite filled, his
fancy
Ended, our friend passed on from there,
notoriously hissing…
I had you. (Page 46)
Softlie is a collection of poetry, with characters. Arewa and Aremu,
Kayode’s puppets are students of a tertiary institution. They play their love
to the dictates of Kayode’s muse. They make exchanges that are not devoid of the
twists and turns of love; and isms.
Aremu plays the Romantic here:
Come with me to nature
Come with me to song
We will have the village green
For ‘ballroom’
We will have the birdsong
For music
We will have the turtledove pairs
For fellow dancers – no, walkers. (Page 11)
And Arewa’s finding it hard to play
the Victorian:
yes this oh my! his broad broad
shoulders deep rough deep
voice oh my goodness! His hard
hard iron pinning someone down his
keen masculine keen penetrating
perfume poured inside me as i
just opened my secret door for
him after all…
God! what are you thinking girl! (Page 40)
Softlie’s not the
perfect poetry collection. It is not without its slips. A prominent one is the
contradiction of settings that comes to fore here:
Down the path she walked to the river
an earthen pot on her bare shoulder
and around her body she had a wrapper (Page
16)
How did a university campus suddenly turn rustic?
Poetry is not prose. It is the
rendering of the longest routes of thoughts and experiences in the shortest
lexical formations; it is economy. Poetry is nothing but itself; it is poetry;
the complication of the simplest; the simplification of the complex… It is a
phenomenon whose essence is there, buried in an ellipsis. You stop talking
about it when you don’t know what else to qualify it with. Poetry is not just
words stashed together in lines and stanzas; it is an art that de-emphasizes the
de-economisation of words. I hold the view that Kayode Taiwo Olla’s isn’t
poetry. It is poetry unlike poetry.
There are many words. Too many. What’s more? It is poetry, not meant for print.
I have read the collection more than twice and every time I do, something in me
reads the poems like the conversational lyrics of the remix of Beyonce’s If I were a Boy. These, notwithstanding,
are deviations that accrue to Softlie’s
distinctiveness. Softlie is poetry, I
repeat, not meant for print. I would prefer to have it on stage, performed.
This, for instance will translate well on stage:
…Life!
Some people work;
Some people steal from what is reaped.
Some babies die, some kiddies die;
Some people live as if they will never
leave!
Some people keep chaste, some people keep
lose;
Some people wonder if there’s a tomorrow to
protect!
Some people rape, some people eagerly open
laps –
And they forget there’s always and
‘after’ waiting… (Page 48)
The slips notwithstanding, Softlie means something to me:
a mile covered on what is the long road of Kayode Taiwo Olla’s literary journey.
2 comments:
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