Tuesday 5 January 2016

When A Poet Falls In Love: A Review Of Kayode Taiwo Olla’s Softlie


Book: Softlie
Author: Kayode Taiwo Olla
Reviewer: Rahaman Abiola Toheeb
Year Published: 2014
front & back page of Softlie
Prior to this time has been a little shift of interest in the dimension of Nigerian poetry owned to the new wave of consciousness and unquenchable flame of epochal quest for new phase of poetry, chiefly love poetry in lieu of politically cantered ones. In relation to this awareness, contemporary writers have taken on the mantle and assumed this task, thereafter creating a space for love poetry in their collection, despite the fact that they are still aware of the political confusion, shipwreck and imbalance, economic dire and melt-down, moral decadence, tyrannical display of power-drunkenness by political post-bearers, and most importantly, the gladiatorial rancour and horn-knot among the over-zealous elder statesmen, especially in almost parts of Africa.
Without any scintilla of doubt, this conscious responsibility has breathed life to the voices of young owlets like Kayode Taiwo Olla who are mindful of the fact that  the common men like them need  not to always find their solace only at the armpit of angry and revolutionary poetry projected due to the acute leadership failure in Africa- what young poets like Tosin Gbogi Akeem Lasisi, and others of this ideology have come to preach against having been indoctrinated  into the poetic revolutionary spirit led by Niyi Osundare, Odia Ofeimum, and Franz Aig-Imoukhuede and other poets whose voices echoed to kick-out the post-colonial dilemma and contemporary banes. But rather they embark on new dimension of poetry thematized on other aspects of life and necessitating factors for human succour and survival.
Having read the poetry collection more than two times I instantly reached the conclusion that the poet, Kayode Taiwo Olla is of the Nerudan– a poetic ideology of late Chilean poet and politician Pablo Neruda who came to scribble poetry of love in between the bridge-gap of political frame works and socio-cultural realities. And beyond doubt this is the kind of ideology and orientation expressed by Toni Kan in his poetry collection Song of Absence and Despair- a collection of poem which source and inspiration are traceable to Pablo Neruda’s Song of Love and Despair.
 Pablo Neruda was right when he said: “Of all fire, love is the only inexhaustible one. .  love is a voyage with water and a star in drowning air and squalls of precipitate brain; love is a war of lights in the lightning flashes, two bodies blasted in a single burst of honey .”  Love, considering it from the real sense is the reason why we tend to live together as husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, families and friends. Love is the unifying factor that depicts how passionate God is towards His creatures on earth; it’s the necessitating factor for universe to hold and man to exist in it. Love is the reason why Providence had it, from the pedigree that the first man shouldn’t have been living alone without a partner who in him he would find solace.  I think this is the bone behind Kayode Olla’s poetry collection of poems, Softlie.

***You Can Also Read Review of Tosin Gbogi's the tongues of a shattered s-k-y****

Soflie is a poetry collection of fifty-five pages that reminds us of the universal realities by taking us on a brief escapade into the mystical realm of love. The collection is a typical quintessence of unabated cravenness and wishes of man; an harbinger that opens us to the collective responsibility on the need to stand resilient against the individualistic ideology of the modern Age which has metamorphosed and transfigured us into clueless entities.  No wonder Gbemisola Adeoti, a renowned prolific award winning poet of the widely-endorsed collection of poetry, Naked Sole  and a pedagogue describes it as a collection which ‘images evoke cross-cultural experience of people in the past and the contemporary Africa. This enables the poet to consciously interject what seems to be private with people and political . . .’
                                     When
                                                                    Poet falls
                                                                                                      In love.  . . 
For someone who has read the tragic play of William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, will never doubt the fact that love is more driven than the brief madness of over-drunkenness and excessive alcoholic in-take. What does it take to be a lover? Why do we fall in love? Are madmen surveying the boulevards better than a lover overwhelmingly propelled by the beauty of a ripe virgin lady delivering the message of Cupid to the world?  I believe these are the verisimilitudes of questions Soflie has come to fill their vacuum with copious rejoinders.  The book is a fascinating collection of love poems spun into storyline with memories ranging from the lovers’ first sight till the present blissful moment of their platonic love.
The poet has successfully broken the jawbone of conundrum by easily ‘blending poetic with narrative and melodic with the dramatic- Aremu and Arewa.’ Starting from the first poem till the last there is subtle arrangement of different subject matters paramount to our daily living and existence, beautifully expressed in diction so subtle, sublime and simple that it reaches and suits the mind of common man. Considering the book from the social view, the book merges love with modern reality common among today’s youths, and the poem ‘If It Is Love’ is a close portrait of this reality. 
Softlie respectively talks on the general truth and cultural reality by extending its wing across the issues of sexual life and matrimonial problems. The poet tries to talk on the general needs for everyman to love and to be loved no matter the odds and exceptions. He says:
                                                         The hardest, stoniest heat
Has a soft spot
The most stoic body
Inwardly yearns for a loving caress
Men’s deepest wish
Men’s deepest longing
Men’s deepest desire
Is not power or prestige-
I have seen it is to feel loved
We all want it badly!
                               (We all want it – pg 14)

Another interesting point is how cultural reality is manifested in the poetry through its celebration of typical African traditional marriage. This is due to the fact that the poet is quiet aware of the richness and beauty of African culture, having hailed from the black nation where matrimonial rites are incumbent upon the bridegrooms. As decreed by the customs, a bridegroom is expected to observe some marriage rites and sacramental rights before the nuptial tie will be knotted.  The poet writes:
Can I find a good expression
For your lovely good looks Arewa?
Ah take me to know your mama
Take me to know your people
They in whose eyes you matured. . .
A bag of beads, a pot of kola nut
A gourd of palm wine, a keg of palm oil
                                                     (Love Song- pg 24-25)

Similarly, the poetry is a lamentation of chronic malady and epidemic syndrome daily plaguing the society where the poet hails from. Without any doubt, Softlie is a glaring epiphany of different ironies that are webbed with the destiny of human being fighting for survival like candle in the wind, especially in Africa where many are being mesmerized by western viruses that have taken on many colourations. Subconsciously, the poet expresses different ironic parts of human existence ranging from the world of opulence to that of poverty; from political reality to social truth; from cultural view to moral decadence, e.t.c. the poet says:
The beggar sleep in cold night, unsheathed
The rich man suffers from insomnia in bed
 *                        *                          *
The adolescent virgin is tired of keeping herself:
The womanizing guy is wishing to marry a virgin. . .
Some people rape, some people eagerly open laps-
And they forget there’s always an ‘after waiting. . .
Or pilling!
                                 (Life of Ironies- page 48)   

The fact that the book runs from nuptial knot to general barrier plaguing modern marriage, shipwrecking some blissful homes and rendering the children of estranged couples clueless at the cross-road shouldn’t be marginalized. Softlie gives us a clear portrait of the afore-mentioned problems and how the affected children are deprived of parental affection, leading to psychological imbalance and bizarre performance of many of these children in school perhaps.  It reads thus:
I played and played in your lap
Till I slept off and still dreamt about you
*              *                 *
I would wake up one day
And won’t see you no more
Oh daddy come back!
Couldn’t guess why you and mummy had to part
Your baby is crying!
Oh daddy why not coming back today?
     (Love letter of a broken-hearted kid- pg61)

A critical assessment and in-depth evaluation of the book from the diction to thematic pre-occupation prove it worthy of kudos- what modern world wants. There is no disputation that the collection of poetry turns words to music, owing to its rhythmical employment of words in uncomplicated way that provokes emotion from the mind of common man. I am also keenly interested on the philosophically embellished axiom and sayings denoting the real self of man and the reality of his world which he can’t afford to jettison.  The poem ‘There are No More Words’ and ‘Life of Ironies’ are close portraits of this philosophical view. The poem reads:
Sorrow is not at its depth
When it can just be expressed
       With tears 
Joy is not at its height
When it can only be expressed
        With laughter
 Love is not at its best
                                                When it can still be expressed in
                                                                    In words. . .
                                                  (There are no more words –pg32)

However, despite the poetry deep in music and better understood in performance, I found the diction of the collection too simple. The exploitation of language in poetry is usually more intense, frequent, and more discriminate than we have in other forms of literature. Poetry shouldn’t be what you read at a sit and the meaning comes with ease. This is the reason why literary scholars like Edgar Allan Poe and William Wordsworth are of the opinion that poetry and its language should be allusive, concentrated, embellished, heightened, imagistic, metaphorical, paradoxical, suggestive, symbolic and polyvalent to the depth so as capture the complexity and full panoply of their thoughts and feelings. The prose-like style-switch technique employed by the poet makes the book more mind-numbing and monotonous at a point.  
                                                                   





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