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50books_poc#29: Ogun Abibiman by Wole Soyinka
#30: Bill of Rights by Fred D'Aguiar
These are both long poems (though Ogun Abibiman is only 24 pages long to the 133 pages of Bill of Rights), and poetry being poetry, I don't feel very confident in reviewing them, but I'll try. Ogun Abibiman is about Ogun, the Yoruba smith-god, seen as a symbolic revolutionary figure that could unite Africa; it was written in 1976 after the president of Mozambique effectively declared war on the white rulers of Rhodesia -- now Zimbabwe, and the fact that the end of white rule gave Zimbabwe a whole new set of problems that they're still struggling with casts a bit of a shadow over the poem. Because, in a way, the good guys won -- but what did they win?
I got the feeling that there were things I was missing -- if I knew more about Yoruba mythology or 20th century African history, I think I would have appreciated it more. Which is not to say that I didn't appreciate it. It took me a few pages to get into it, and there were quite a few pages where I wasn't sure what he was getting at, but I always felt that he was getting at something, and I could see glimmers of it through the haze of my own ignorance. Even when I wasn't sure of the meaning, the poem felt right, if you know what I mean; if I had read it aloud, it would have felt like music. I want to try some of Soyinka's other poetry and see if that context makes Ogun Abibiman more comprehensible to me.
Bill of Rights, on the other hand, is dense with references that I did get, which just goes to show that the more you read, the more you get from what you read. D'Aguiar references Shakespeare and Bob Dylan and Benjamin Zephaniah and W.H. Auden and the Bible and a bunch of others, as well as the patois native to Guyana, where D'Aguiar was born and where the story of the poem takes place. The poem is a sort of imaginative reconstruction of the last days of Jonestown, as seen by a black man from Brixton who joined the People's Temple and just barely managed to survive. It's moody and atmospheric, capturing the squalor of the settlement, the tyranny Jones exercised over his followers, and the sense of being trapped that remains for the nameless protagonist even after he's left Jonestown.
It's one of those books that I get absorbed in, and then when I put it down I have a little trouble picking it up again; the rhythm of the lines and the oppressive atmosphere pull me in when I'm actually reading, and then I need time to digest what I've read and recover from it a little bit. I'm still not sure that I've digested it, but that's just a sign that there was something there to digest.
#30: Bill of Rights by Fred D'Aguiar
These are both long poems (though Ogun Abibiman is only 24 pages long to the 133 pages of Bill of Rights), and poetry being poetry, I don't feel very confident in reviewing them, but I'll try. Ogun Abibiman is about Ogun, the Yoruba smith-god, seen as a symbolic revolutionary figure that could unite Africa; it was written in 1976 after the president of Mozambique effectively declared war on the white rulers of Rhodesia -- now Zimbabwe, and the fact that the end of white rule gave Zimbabwe a whole new set of problems that they're still struggling with casts a bit of a shadow over the poem. Because, in a way, the good guys won -- but what did they win?
I got the feeling that there were things I was missing -- if I knew more about Yoruba mythology or 20th century African history, I think I would have appreciated it more. Which is not to say that I didn't appreciate it. It took me a few pages to get into it, and there were quite a few pages where I wasn't sure what he was getting at, but I always felt that he was getting at something, and I could see glimmers of it through the haze of my own ignorance. Even when I wasn't sure of the meaning, the poem felt right, if you know what I mean; if I had read it aloud, it would have felt like music. I want to try some of Soyinka's other poetry and see if that context makes Ogun Abibiman more comprehensible to me.
Bill of Rights, on the other hand, is dense with references that I did get, which just goes to show that the more you read, the more you get from what you read. D'Aguiar references Shakespeare and Bob Dylan and Benjamin Zephaniah and W.H. Auden and the Bible and a bunch of others, as well as the patois native to Guyana, where D'Aguiar was born and where the story of the poem takes place. The poem is a sort of imaginative reconstruction of the last days of Jonestown, as seen by a black man from Brixton who joined the People's Temple and just barely managed to survive. It's moody and atmospheric, capturing the squalor of the settlement, the tyranny Jones exercised over his followers, and the sense of being trapped that remains for the nameless protagonist even after he's left Jonestown.
It's one of those books that I get absorbed in, and then when I put it down I have a little trouble picking it up again; the rhythm of the lines and the oppressive atmosphere pull me in when I'm actually reading, and then I need time to digest what I've read and recover from it a little bit. I'm still not sure that I've digested it, but that's just a sign that there was something there to digest.
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