BEING A WOMAN AND MORE (A REVIEW: By Som Ogboh)

Ben Johnson, the writer of the Elizabethan era, sees poetry and pictures as arts of like nature. Reading through the poems in this book, I see different pictures of the author in her different stages of life. 

First, as a dejected widow, a lonely and helpless woman who is merely existing rather than living, a single mother battling with parenting, and then an accomplished writer.

William Wordsworth, the poet of the Romantic England, says that poetry is the imaginative expression of strong feelings, usually rhythmic, the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings recollected in tranquillity. Edwin Arlington Robinson, an American poet notable for his lyrical and narrative poetry, adds that poetry is the language that tells us, through a more or less emotional reaction, something that cannot be said. 

The poems in this collection, especially in part one, prove the veracity of Wordsworth and Robinson's assertion. Lines 24-32 of Brokenness read:

       "When despair 

       holds sway my heart,

       I pant for words

       with tear-sodden eyes,

       but the weight of my grief

       seizes my voice

      torn in patches,

      I fumble in vain

     to speak"

 

The emotional reaction to sorrow and solitude is the imaginative creation of the poems contained in this volume. This also credits what Nikola Tesla said, that being alone is the secret of invention, and ideas are born when one is alone.

It is said that life is the greatest gift, and thus, one must appreciate being alive. Thomas Hardy, the English poet and novelist who is known as the bridge between the Victorian and Twentieth century England because his novels are strictly Victorian, and his poems belong to the Twentieth century says that poetry is the emotion put in pleasure and measure; the motion must come by nature but the measure can be acquired by art. The poems in part two, with the sub-theme: Celebrating Life, portray Hardy's stance.

Though the author sourced the name Being a Woman and More from the third part of the book, the book is not all about being a woman; it is a collection of lots. First, it is a memoir, then it comes as a charge _ an instruction to keep sailing in the voyage of life even when the elements appear unfriendly; even when there is a reversal of fortune, or twist of fate, one must not lose hope. This reminds me of the words of Martin Luther King on marble: "We must accept finite disappointment, but we must not lose infinite hope". Hope, with its theme of optimism, affirms this. 

Preceding the poems in each part with an introductory note is akin to letting one perceive the aroma of the meal one is about to have. This style is plausible.

Being a Woman and More  is therefore recommended for young 
people, for women, for writers, in fact, for all, because the message of perseverance rings throughout the pages of the collection. 

A REVIEW: By Som Ogboh