A Review of 25 Golden Words Vol. 4 by Kudo Eresia-Eke By EME N. EKEKWE, PhD

INTRODUCTION

The book reviewer at an event like this faces a challenge of expectations — it is assumed he must be an expert. I will be honest: I am not one in this subject area. But the reviewer’s task is to excite people to read the book, and I can manage that easily. Please, when you get back home, read the 25 GOLDEN WORDS collection thoroughly. Doing so will help you see where I got it right or wrong, and where we agree or disagree. It will also help you see some nuggets of wisdom in the collection that I missed or completely misunderstood. Thank you for not walking out yet!

I see poetry as a rarefied and varied form of Art — it comes from the soul and speaks to the soul. Real art, whether poetry, painting, music, or drama, endures. It is the sort of thing of which people say, “It grows on you.” It outlasts its producers. Because it springs from the spirit, Art is appreciated differently by each of us. No two people understand any work of art in exactly the same way, even when both agree it is beautiful — the reasons for that beauty will differ. This reflects the fact that every spirit has free will, exercised uniquely by each person.

The poem demands particular attention because it is built on a strict economy of words. In a novel, a reader may miss a passage and still come away with a satisfactory understanding. With the poem, that margin is narrow or absent. If the reader misses or misinterprets just one word, that person may have lost the meaning of the poem. The economy of words reflects the intuition from which the poet draws: intuition presents not in sentences but most often in pictures. Releasing the poet from the constraints of regular expression — the so-called poetic licence — is not an invitation to inflict nonsense on the public; it is a challenge to rise above the ordinary. A great responsibility accompanies that licence.

I will present this review in four parts, following the structure of the collection: (i) Man and Spirit, (ii) Wisdom and Freedom, (iii) Attitude and Gratitude, and (iv) Love and Life. The sections are not strictly compartmentalised; a poem from one section may speak directly to another in a different section. All the poems represent the author’s attempt to communicate his understanding of the spirituality of the human being, consciously and without apology. Reviews are highly subjective; mine is no exception. But the reviewer has an obligation to be as fair as possible, and I will try to be. But I must emphasise that on matters that touch not just the intellect but the soul, readers must ultimately make their own judgement.

I. MAN AND SPIRIT

The heading aptly encapsulates the essence of this section, and it already points us to what we can expect from the entire collection. The declaration of that heading is simple: Man is spirit! The first poem sets out what he must do for full self-realisation as such — submit to the Laws of Nature and live in harmony with the universe:

GREATEST HAPPINESS

The place of greatest happiness,

Is at the peak of obedience,

To divine laws,

Living in harmony,

With the universe,

And indeed, all of life.

Man is not forced to obey these laws. As a spirit being, he is endowed with free will, which is the basis for the responsibility he bears for all his choices and actions. The reciprocal effect of his thoughts, words and actions, is certain: obedience ushers him into the greatest happiness; not before and not otherwise. In NIGHTMARE (p. 16), SCARY (p. 17), and EMPATHY (p. 65), we glimpse those laws at work. The man who tortured his wife “unto death” is handed “a cobra” in a later life — the Laws of Nature are no respecters of persons, and they are, so to speak, patient. As INEVITABLE (p. 20) makes clear, “Nothing can stop the bowing to God’s Will.”

In THE WINNER IS… (p. 3), the poet acknowledges that it is not easy to remain faithful to the laws. Man is locked in a battle between good and evil, strength and weakness. Yet he is in the driving seat: “The winner will always be the one I grow.” Those four words underline the unshakeable responsibility each person bears. RAT RACE (p. 4) clarifies the choice further — between “stealing and killing” and surviving on crumbs, or submitting to the laws as a soul must, and sitting at the table eating as much as he likes. Choosing the crumbs is SELF POISONING (p. 5): it is no use claiming that the Devil made us do evil, when we made ourselves available for his use.

Yet even as a spirit being with the power and responsibility to drive events on earth, man must recognise just how small he is in Creation. MICROCOSM (p. 8) brings us squarely back to that reality:

MICROCOSM

If this earth

Were the universe,

I would be but a cell,

In a tiny body of man,

Carrying within it,

The whole universe itself.

Notice the great contrasts — cell and man, man and earth, earth and universe — and notice also the unity between them. Take one element out, and the rest is incomplete.

Because man is spirit, one might think the physical body unimportant. The poet corrects that. In PRIORITIES, A DYING PLEA, and in THE PLEDGE (pp. 10–12), the body reminds us that “without me / Your priorities are waste.” The blood flowing through our veins is the “liquid of life” whose radiation enables the spirit to anchor in the body. Without it, the body is dead — and with it, the spirit’s work on earth is enabled.

Our body deserves great care from us, but often we abuse it through overindulgence in one thing or another, or do not nourish it adequately. The pain of an abused and dying body is communicated to us through the poet in

A DYING PLEA

Oh my master,

Have mercy on me

Your humble body

Pray, exercise,

And give me some oxygen,

For better flow

Of my liquid of life.

II. WISDOM AND FREEDOM

Having established in the foregoing section that man is a spirit being, section II draws attention to some of the qualities of the spirit: wisdom, discipline, courage and diligence. In this section, the pairing of Wisdom and Freedom suggests that he who acquires wisdom also attains freedom — not the removal of physical constraints, but the unburdening of the spirit, freeing it from attachment to material things. As A RARE FREEDOM (p. 56) puts it:

Soaring above the chains

Of those who wish to enslave us

By taunting our human appetites

We have achieved a freedom

Most only dream of.

Acquiring wisdom includes knowing the laws that lead to the greatest happiness, as we saw in a prior section. We are reminded that we reap what we sow, even in our thoughts about others and about ourselves. FEAR FEAR (p. 35), FAILURE FEAR (p. 42), THOUGHTS AGAINST SELF (p. 46), and BEFORE WISHING (p. 52) all speak to this.

Man is on earth to learn, so for him, time is of the essence; he cannot afford to fritter it away. Some of us think that our challenge in this regard is time itself, and not how we use it. We claim that because time flies, we are unable to fully utilise it and accomplish what we could within a certain period. In SILENT FEET (p. 40), the poet removes our excuse for laziness. He argues that actually time walks “slowly, slowly, ghostly ghostly … on silent feet.” If we are to maximise the use of it we must be disciplined and hardworking. The human spirit is imbued with various talents that need to be nurtured, as he makes plain in the TALENT SEED (p. 58):

TALENT SEED

Talent is a planted seed

In need of the watering of hardwork,

The nutrients of grit

And the sunlight of discipline

To grow to tree.

Courage is equally essential. CAPTAIN KITE could not fly “Till she faced opposing wind / Only then could she climb / Up the skies” (p. 36). My understanding here is that unless we let them, adversities do not defeat us; they actually make us spiritually stronger. In any case, on those occasions when the going is hardest and few seem to care, CLAP FOR YOURSELF (p. 57) and keep pushing ahead.

Wisdom also demands deepening our objectivity and circumspection, and deepening our perception. In FREE HOOK (p. 43), we see the unwary fish making a hasty call and mistaking a deadly hook for a wriggling worm. The wise person looks closely and considers BOTH SIDES (p. 41) of any matter before taking his bearing, and recognises that goodness can be concealed in the most unlikely places. As ALL GOOD (p. 38) puts it: "If you look at anything / And do not see its goodness / Look and look again / For it is surely there.”

III. ATTITUDE AND GRATITUDE

The image constant in my mind as I read this section was of a person who, as soul, recognises the love and goodness of the Almighty Father and makes every honest effort to live life to the full, weaving joy and gratitude into each day. The opening poem says it plainly:

ONLY THE GREEDY

Only greedy people,

Blind to all the blessings

Overflowing around them,

Can muster the capacity

To be gloomy and sad,

Down and depressed,

For long.

Those who feel blessed are “too blessed to be down for long” (p. 67). They live simply (p. 68), yet feel as though living on earth and in heaven at once. They have no desire to disturb the peace of their relationships, and even when hurt, they have the richness of soul to declare NO TIME FOR QUARREL (p. 69).

Gratitude is intrinsic to this contentment. SEEING ONLY VALUE (p. 70) tells us that who sees goodness in everything is “drenched and always dripping / With gratitude.” The next poem, UNSEEN TEARS, shows the blessed heart figuratively “Arrested in gratitude / Detained in thanksgiving” lets the tears of joy flow freely. In the poem SUCKING NECTAR (p. 78), the picture of the happy and contented soul stands in clear relief: the bearer of such a soul “grows finer / Grows younger / And happier everyday/ Sucking sweet nectar / From every scene.”

Underlying all of this is the recognition that the source of our existence and our blessings is the Creator. The poem MY FATHER gives that recognition its most personal and powerful form. The possessive pronoun “MY” makes all the difference. This poem speaks to the beginning, the middle, and the conclusion of the poet’s inspiration: it is the foundation on which man as spirit has any meaning. Besides it, all else pales into insignificance.

IV. LOVE AND LIFE

This final section, at its heart, reinforces and resonates with what came before. For instance, we saw earlier that the poem THE MEDIAN (p.34) called attention to the virtue of moderation in how we live – moderation in eating, drinking, and “taking or talking”. This nugget of wisdom is echoed here, this time in the picture of the mighty oak tree as a model for life:

OAK MODEL

Find me a model for life,

Like a huge oak tree,

With head and heart

High in heaven,

But feet and roots,

Deep in earth.

The poet tasks us to see every experience — welcome or unwelcome — as nourishment for the soul. In LIFE NUTRITION (p. 99), he frames every difficulty as a recipe for “spiritual growth”, while LOVE WORLD shows how we might be strengthened even by those we regard as traitors. Similarly, SURPRISE BUMPS (p. 91) reminds us that it is better to experience the inconvenient bumps on the roads of life than the tragedy resulting in falling asleep at the wheel.

I find it remarkable that the last poem in the volume is GREATNESS ROADMAP:

GREATNESS ROADMAP

To reach the shore of greatness,

By any route,

Any route at all,

We must practice

Daily,

Daily,

Practice, practice,

Daily practice,

Practice, practice, practice.

For me, this poem points to the imperative of working relentlessly on ourselves. Life is like a school, and 25 GOLDEN WORDS reminds us of our responsibility. No matter how good the school and the teachers are, the student must work hard. In this sense, the last poem connects back to the very first: the “greatness roadmap” leads through knowledge, wisdom, courage, and hard work to the trophy of the “greatest happiness.”

CHALLENGES

I must not leave the impression that I understood or agreed with everything in this volume. I could make little sense of PRAY FOR DREAMS (p. 51), and the import of THE SMALL ROOM (p. 54) was lost on me despite honest effort.

This review has also been silent on the pictorial images that accompany each poem. Among those I found problematic: the illustration for MICROCOSM (p. 8) closely resembles that of THE WINNER IS (p. 3), and its scale undermines the very idea of smallness the poem communicates. The illustration for INEVITABLE (p. 20) shows a figure that appears resigned rather than subject to an irresistible force. In FREE HOOK (p. 43), the hook makes no pretence of hiding in the worm. And in STONE OF ENVY (p. 53), the boulders of envy are tied to the ankles rather than around the waist as the poem describes.

There are also great and appropriate illustrations. The footprints in SILENT FEET (p. 40) look so fresh that one feels the feet passed only moments ago. The picture for BOTH SIDES (p. 41) perfectly captures two people snug in their own views — a ready trap for anyone who listens to only one side.

I also found myself in disagreement with three poems. Assuming I understand the import of LAND OF WOLVES (p. 44), I find the advice to behave like a wolf when among wolves troubling. The’lamb can only pretend to be a wolf for so long before it is mauled. In any case, the lamb that tarries among wolves and begins to behave like them was, perhaps, never truly a lamb.

In TRUSTWORTHY (p. 59), the poet advises trusting one’s feelings as a compass. I would counsel the opposite: feelings are as changeable as the wind. It is the intuition — the voice of the soul, so to speak — that merits trust. Perhaps this is where poetic licence comes in, and I am misreading it.

Most seriously, I cannot reconcile MICROCOSM (p. 8), which rightly places man as a tiny cell in the vast creation, with WHOSE BIRTHDAY (p. 19), where man seemingly claims “Like God I am Light / I am Sound / I am Soul.” The two perspectives are contradictory, and they reflect a serious misconception. Man is indeed a spirit being, but he is a creature nevertheless. It would be preposterous to compare him with his Creator In any sense whatsoever. The poems GREATEST HAPPINESS (p. 2), INEVITABLE (p. 20), MY FATHER (p. 76), and PURELY BY GRACE (p. 87) all affirm man’s creaturely dependence on the Creator. WHOSE BIRTHDAY sits in stark and uncomfortable contrast to them.

LIGHTER MOMENTS

All the poems address serious issues. But if as I tried to read and understand them in the context of life’s experiences, some lighter moments were obvious. Take for instance the case of DR DO GOOD (p. 29). That name put fear into us in Primary School. It was the common name for the teacher’s cane! I recalled a schoolmate whose backside was always hosting “Dr. Do Good”, and whose lyrical screams at each stroke made quite a spectacle for the rest of us.

The poem, CLAP FOR YOURSELF (p. 57), brought to mind the red-headed lizards we see around daily. We may all have noticed that after running just a short distance, they stop and nod in recognition of the progress just made — they take self-applause very seriously indeed.

The rat, as ever, comes off poorly. In both RAT RACE (p. 4) and RAT INTERVIEW (p. 50), I spared a thought for the poor creature that seems to have no relieving feature in its reputation. I read BOTH SIDES several times, hoping to find some angle to appreciate the rat, and even called ALL GOOD (p. 38) and SEEING ONLY VALUE (p. 70) to my aid — but I found none.

And finally, there is the matter of the poem section II. Anybody who has ever lived in “Face-Me-I Face-You” quarters will confirm that THE SMALL ROOM (p. 54) is purpose-built for responding to the law of nature. It is not the place you are allowed to sit in the mornings, notebook and pencil in hand, trying to improve on Einstein’s Theory of Relativity.