Monday, September 27, 2010

THE SKELETON SAYS IT ALL - An Anthology of Poems

 http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=64164


                                              BACK AND FRONT COVER OF THE BOOK –
“                                    THE SKELETON SAYS IT ALL: An Anthology of Poems”
                                                 By Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna (VOA)
           Published by AuthorHouse, UK. ISBN: 9781449002923 BOOK ID: 64164

ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Skeleton Says It All is a special collection of one hundred poems spanning across all speres of life, and composed over several years from the Biafran war time of 1967. From dingy experiences of the wasteful war, the deep emotional pangs of the the judicial murder of the Nigerian environmental activist Ken Saro Wiwa by a brutal dictator, the murder of the ace journalist Dele Giwa by a benevolent Dictator the "evil genius", endemic corruption that has rendered most Nigerian citizens hapless, down memory lane to the rigors of intense love for Ifeoma which was uprooted by peer ego. They are frank perceptions of issues, events, encounters, experiences and ironies in our national life, love, romance, integrity, challenges, injustices, nature and philosophy. Truly, life is good but the system is bad.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna, popularly known as VOA by his peers, was born on November 11 at Aba in Nigeria. He attended Government Secondary School, Afikpo where he was Mboto House Captain and Editor-in-Chief of the school's "Purple Times" newsletter, and got his West African School Certificate and the London University GCE. He also attended the University of Nigeria, Nsukka where he acquired the Bachelor of Science (B.Sc Hons) degree in Biochemistry, and was the President of the Society of Biochemistry Students; the College of Medicine of the University of Lagos, Nigeria where he obtained the Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery (M.B.,B.S) degrees and was Editor-in-Chief of the "MEDILAG Journal". He is a member of the American College of Physician Executives. He has been a prolific writer from childhood, and has written many newspaper articles and features. Most of his early works got lost during the Nigeria-Biafra war (1967-1970). This is his first complete work.
He holds a first class chieftaincy title Ichie Nwanonukpo II Umuoji of his native homeland.

PREVIEW
IN MEMORY OF GEORGE AKABOGU
Our minds gladdened from afar
Unto the plum sets of undetermined fortunes.
When the sweetest scents of nature blossomed
And rain beaten earth granulated amidst stones
Giving life far into the green expanse
Of savannah vegetation coursing miles. ...................
And sandflies - invisible black itches
Slapped viciously to bring relief and spill blood.
Afi kpo!
The good old days were then
Yet we did not know it;
Where at the end of our childhood
We began a hilarious romance with reality.
The walls and landscape lost definition
The narrow gates that lit our salvation
And the surplus of integrity in our backyard
Which our whole nation has searched for
These several years and more. .....................
George Akabogu!
The alchemist that turned us to gold;
Defined, divined and refined us
For the best a disciplined nation could have.
Egbe! You shot thousands of seasoned bullets
Into Nigeria and the universe
And planted so much on fertile grounds.
You taught us right but Nigeria got us wrong. .................................

MATYR OF TENTH NOVEMBER
(FOR KENULE SARO WIWA)
Glue thy kiss to mother earth
That thy whole being may bow fully
To the noose of violence;
That hungry state maggots
May quench their long drawn hunger
On the sweet elements
Of your spunky carrion.
I died my soul to starvation
And lost my memory to your fate
On Eko bridge on my marred natal anniversary
Least presumptuous and day-dreaming
In the noon traffic
Of the anarchy that is called power
Flowing from empty tunnels
Of cadavers in vicious motion. ................................

ETHICAL REVOLUTION
Blow out the sunlight
as it rises in the East
and let’s go to bed again.
Ne’er may the west see the sun
even at its setting,
when clouds fool us
to believe they give us light.
Dusk’s sentinels labour ceaselessly
as angels seeking repose
in the hamlets of hell.
When lions begin to breastfeed the kid,
as white lamb swim
in street gutters searching for mosquitoes to eat;
The trees grow no more, ...............................

ODE TO BIAFRA.
Even the grasses would fight
but the last man had stronger veins.
No power in black Africa can subdue Biafra
But starvation did!
Where is his power, what his colour?
How many black dead make one missing white?
Mathematicians yet have no answer.
History cannot deny, nor posterity discount
this sensational legend ..........................

EPITAPH
Here lies the Republic of Biafra!
Born in crisis, bred in war.
Dead at tender two and a half.
In amnesty Biafra lay in state
before all nations,
and was buried in Nigerian unity.
Rest in peace.

IDAH AND THE BEAST.
Flashy and infinite is this road to nowhere
that a noxious woman trails
somewhere yet hidden
in the ancient river town of Idah.
She reigns a nuisance
in the little academic world
of the blissful ingénues
which fortune has erred to place at her command.
This eagled eyed lion heart, ..............


VIOLINS NIGHT
Only last night
I took a solitary walk along the lane of tears.
I saw lovers gamble in lonely corners.
The fresh cool night breeze
pushed through crevices, wheezing gravely
and sent my sorrows
deep down my epigastrium.
I heard my pounding heart playing the drums.
I listened to wild tunes
piercing the still night peace; ...........................

BEDMATICS
Why won’t this mattress
stop its chit-chat
with this stubborn
grease proof quadruped.
Blowing all my secrets
to the whole world.

BATS
Dirty grey old rags
hanging loose
on tree tops and ceilings,
numb and lifeless,
and clumsily wrapped
in a mischievous spider’s net,
for as long as the sun
lasts in the sky.

PALM-WINE TAPPER
When at dawn I hear the robins
whistling their daybreak summons
calm, calculated and mellow;
the morning cold paralysing the fingers
aggressive,
refreshed as arterial blood.
I see bats twittering in undignified haste,
accelerating voraciously around the palm,
the morning birds pecking
at the ripe kernels,
and the beetles seeking shelter
within the spines. ............
[Award winning poem. First Prize Certificate East Central State of Nigeria
Festival of the Arts and Culture. Enugu, 1972.]

ENUGU
City on the hills
blessed gardens of noiseless hope,
on abashed virgin vegetation.
Concealed black rocks
of potential light and heat,
sealed up in Milliken glory;
black power for ages dormant
in good nature’s grave,
exhumed in miner’s delight
and roasted to life of light.
Silent energies harnessed
to drive Herculean engines
and move the whirlwinds in the ocean;
steaming angrily to speed desolate pistons,
inert stores of sun bright,
streamlined innocent beams
blare peaceful home light.
City in the valley,
mark of the miner’s labourious delight ...............................


SOME COMMENTARIES ABOUT THE BOOK:
Congratulations on this literary achievement. If the appetizer you served up is a foretaste of what follows, this will turn out to be a delicious feast of words put together with a deftness that verges on Shakespearean. Thank you for this work. We are proud of you.
                                                                                              -Obi Nwasokwa MD, PhD.


….congratulations to you on this masterpiece. If proof was needed of the quality and value added by GSSA education, this is it. – Obi Nwasike.


….the book is a veritable cornucopia of poetic literature. – Awe Iyoho


Awesome. …. This book is only a few hours old and has already been rated first class. –Kemo International


A glimpse of your poems indicate brilliance and sense of purpose from which the depth of the verses emanate. I read the verses…, and was fascinated by the capture and delivery of life events. – Chuma Mbonu Ph.D

AVAILABILITY:
In addition to being available through AuthorHouse, customersupport@authorhouse.com the book is also available to purchase or order through many different retail outlets all over the world. These include, but are not limited to www.amazon.com , Barnes & Noble, Tesco.com, and Borders.
The book is also now available in Nigeria at the University of Lagos UNILAG BOOKSHOP at Akoka, Lagos; THE APAPA CLUB BOOKSHOP 13, Park Lane, Apapa, Lagos; The GOLDEN TULIP HOTEL mini store at Amuwo-Odofin (near Festac Town), Lagos. Very soon the Nigerian Edition will be available in more retail outlets.

CONVENIENT LINKS:
http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore/ItemDetail.aspx?bookid=64164
Books by Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna at Tesco.com

BOOK REVIEW


Poetic Chronicle of tears and love
Book title:    The Skeleton Say It All - An Anthology of Poems
Author:        Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna
Publisher:    Author House, United Kingodm
Pages:        147
Price:          N2,500
Year published:  2009
Reviewer:   Blessed Mudiaga Adjekpagbon


Victor Anyaegbuna, a medical expert and former Editor-in-Chief of the Medilag Journal, foray into creative writing spans from 1967, which culminated in the debut of his poetry book, The Skeleton Says  It All, chronicling the sad experiences 
Nigeria has been facing up to its present independence golden jubilee era.

The book is a special collection of one hundred poems spanning across all ramifications of life, in its 147 pages. It contains such poems titled The Skeleton Says It All; In Memory of George Akabokgu; Oh Michael; Dele’s Fours; The Price of the Gun; It Is Finished Ramat; White Africans; Scientific Rigging; Federal Character; Leadership; Big Man; Woman; Olanireti; Bedmatics; Invisible Cross; 
Be Yourself etc, and six sonnets as follows; Victory; Love; True Love; Disappointed; My Heart; I Saw Her, respectively.  In the poem, The Skeleton Says It All, which is an Ode to Ichie Nwanonukpo, the author pages tribute to the subject who he describes as follows, “...Esteemed apostle of integrity/In mortal doom, in cold rigidity../” Still in the same poem, Anyaegbuna paints a glomy picture of a society like ours, where many people of integrity are not celebrated.  He laments the hypocritical situation of the cultural, ethnic, religious and political system of giving honours to well known questionable personalities in the nation, while the truth and hard working ones are left uncelebrated. Hear him in these lines: "...In the prolonged battle for existence / Frail tears of rapture scuttle deserved peace / Vanity at the peak of truth denied / Trailing a soiled generation, famished / Renting sweet balms of mission in the dust / Yes! The Skeleton Says it all, and must!"

Most of the opening poems in the early pages of the book are dedicated to some personalities in the Nigeria. Such personalities include the late George Akabogu, Kenule Saro Wiwa, Michael Adigweme, 
Dele Giwa, General Murtala Muhammed etc.  For instance, in the poem titled In Memory of George Akabogu, the author bemoans the past childhood experiences he had until things started falling apart as he grew up to adulthood.  In this poem, he points out that "…The good old says were then / Yet we did not know it; / Where at the end of our childhood / We began a hilarious romance with reality / The walls and landscape lost definition/The narrow gates that lit our salvation /And the surplus of integrity in our backyard / which our whole nation has searched for / These several years and more…/ our intellect imprisoned, our souls wept / That we were mangled in our decency.”

In the poem, White Africans, the author reminds the reader about the colonization of Africa by the colonial masters. Hear him “…You foreign agents on African soil / How wobbly and weary is your toil / Is the African blood also black in colour / Neither black nor white blood is redder / Nor intellect so bleak or black / As to lie wounded in a morbid tank? Head the blare!  The black power is rising / And the flag of victory will soon be flying.”  The beauty of this poem is its even couplet 
rhyme schemes giving it a kind of musicality that emphasizes the suffering meted on South Africans  by their former colonial masters.

The poems bares the poet’s candid views on not only issues concerning Nigeria and 
Africa, but universal occurrences anchored on injustices, sorrow challenges, romance, love and mysticism etc.  For example, in the poem, My Country Weeps, the medical poet wonder thus  “…Who will stop these rapists/whose carnal pleasures defile my fatherland/ere she dies / in their hands? / My Country Weeps / she weeps, she burns! / I too will keep crying in my unimportance / Till my tears drown her or save her.”  He further bemoans the somewhat hopeless situation Nigeria has been facing in the following lines in the poem, Regrets Only: “…Truth will come into our nation / But not in our generation / social and economic rapists are too many / In command to let it prevail…”

Though most of the pieces in the book were written since thirty years ago as indicated in the dates below them, it is very saddening that things are even getting worse everyday since after when they were written. It is therefore, not surprising that the poem titled Backward Ever, written in 1979, is still as relevant as ever. Anyaegbuna somehow prophetically offers in this particular poem thus: “Tribal and ethnic jingoism / politics of envy and blackmail / greed and hypocrisy/cultural intolerance and religious bigotry/bitterness before, now and again…/ For how long shall we sing / this song of silence and endurance/ In this united capitivity? / Till the bones rise again?”

The falling standards of education in the Nigerian society is one of the areas the physician poet uses his medical stethoscope, cylinders and test tubes to poetically diagnose  in the anatomy of the poem titled Half Kobo Professor.  He makes a caricature of many University dons involved in the condemnable act of awarding grades to undeserving students. He chastises them "...You revel in dishonesty and immorality / You are scared of challenges? You dreaded to profess abroad / lest well tutored students expose / Your empty politics / Your students never pass your examinations / either you teach too much or too little / Little girls buy degrees from you / when your office table serve as beds / On which the bargain is made good.”

However, the book is not all about a potpourri of sorrowful expressions.  Anyaegbuna still has some space in his worried mind to express love to the opposite sex in poems such as The 
Beautiful Ones; The Midnight Drivers; Who Else; Olanireti; and Bedmatics etc.  In The Beautiful Ones, the poet shows that he is not just a saver of lives through his medical profession, but also a mender of broken hearts with his tender feelings and lines. Admiring young daughters of Eve in the aforesaid poem, he says  “…Pretty little girls of eleven, shapely, shy and mannerly; / just beginning to peep / into the seeds of womanhood / give great meaning to this nature’s light / sighs of our great loves of the future…” Still waxing very romantic in Bedmatics, Anyaegbuna reminds the reader of Toni Kan’s Night of the Creaking Bed.  Though very brief, Bedmatics speaks volume as follows: “Why won’t this mattress / stop its chit-chat / With this stubborn / grease proof quadruped / Blowing all my secrets / to the whole world?”

Nonetheless, inspite of all the amorous feelings men have towards women, there are times love becomes tasteless like life generally. Hence, in the lines of the poem titled Sometimes, the author offers that; “Many a time, Solomon was precious / Yet the five late virgins were valued / Sometimes, I try to make odd ends meet / When even ends are at odds / In my flying moments / it is the philosophy of confusion.”

From the foregoing, it is quite clear that Anyaegbuna is a gifted writer. His diction is clear, laced with metaphors, alliterations and rhythmic mellifluousness. Though most of the pieces are 
blank verses, trickles of 'even and alternate' rhyme schemes come to the fore with rhythmic musicality that underscores the poet’s mastery of poetry rudiments. The book is well binded though its cover looks mystically frightening with picture of a human skull that throws light on the vanity of life. There are some typographical errors in the book which requires correction before reprint. But this does not in any way reduce the messages of disillusionment, confusion, intense, love and mysticism the poems evoke in the readers mind. It is a good material not only for literature or arts lovers, but for all readers who wants to broaden their knowledge on practical issues Nigeria and the world have been facing over thirty years till date.

Born in Aba, 
Abia State, 59 years ago, Anyaegbuna holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry, from the University of Nigeria Nsukka.  He also bagged Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery degrees from the University of Lagos. He is a member of the American College of Physician Executives, and a former Editor-in-Chief of the Medilag Journal. Many of his articles have been published in various newspapers from time immemorial. The Skeleton Says It All, is his first complete work, as most of his early works got lost during the Nigeria-Biafra fratricidal war.





Pains of the bereaved
The Skeleton Says It All by Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna 
By PITA OKUTE
SUN NEWS online
Thursday, September 30, 2010
A bio-sketch at the end of this book describes Anyaegbuna a “prolific writer from childhood”. Perhaps, the proof is here in his broad collection of 100 poems “composed over a period of 29 years from 1967”.
No denying it, Victor Okechukwu Anyaegbuna, ‘VOA’ to his peers, has a keen sight and better still, an even brighter mind. But his book, The Skeleton Says It All bears testimony to this important point: that in matters pertaining to poetic imagination, prolific is not quite the same as proficient.
 

The opening lines of the title poem, Honour denied integrity interred/Service divined mortally accomplished/The finest of unsullied youth, in dearth,/Grieve and balk at the mess of deified earth/In joy concealed mental agitation offers a brusque introduction to a turgid pedagogy dressed up in verse. Described on the blurb as ‘frank perceptions of issues, events, encounters’, the epic monologue takes off on a haunting string of elegies to his father (excerpted above) and others such as George Akabogu, Ken Saro-Wiwa, Dele Giwa, Murtala Muhammed, an infant three months old, a school mate lost in war and an aged matriarch.
 

Anyaegbuna’s vision is intense; to stir our hearts with poetic candour. He stumbles on the mission, nearly always, by deploying so much logic and too little imagery to convey his passionate messages. Result: the practical condensation of thought flying on the wings of engaging pictures- aka poetry in its element- is lost in prosaic commentary delivered in the accepted manner of poetic insight.
 

You foreign agents on African soil/How wobbly and weary is your toil/Is the African blood also black in colour?/Neither black nor white blood is redder./(White African). Pressure bloated ribs silently float,/observing the mediocrity/expend and expand amidst/plenty of starvation ulcers/and ample food for thought./(New Dawn)
These two references should suffice for lack of space.
 

They point to the prime burden of the book fault lines of intent clashing with content, of form and formula in constant conflict. Somehow still, the gems of Anyaegbuna’s poetic wit and power shine through the motley assembly like twinkling stars on a vast, moonless night. Behind the great courtier’s lawn/trimmed in glistening curls/white headed black lambs/throttle majestically…/(Justice)/Here lies the Republic of Biafra!/Born in crisis, bred in war/Dead at tender two and a half./In amnesty Biafra lay in state before all nations, /and was buried in Nigerian unity./Rest in peace./(Epitaph)
 
Curiously, these engaging pieces come from the shorter poems. Others peep through the verbiage of longer compositions like furtive sparks of vision. More compelling, perhaps is the sheer range of Anyaegbuna’s themes- from minute private sorrows to large public concerns- about racism, democracy, food security, national; political issues and so on to the purely sensual.

Why won’t this mattress/stop its chit-chat /with this stubborn /grease- proof/quadruped./Blowing all my secrets /to the whole world./(Bedmatics) A poet always has something to say, the reverred critic D.N. Nwoga famously observed. In this regard, VOA Anyaegbuna qualifies for the accolade of that enigmatic asset who have ‘license’ to say it as they please.
Nonetheless, this piece is a call for Anyaegbuna to temper the strident frankness of his perceptions with oil and spice of engaging imageries, biting irony and lyricism. Some of the poems cited above and others suggest that he has these in him but would rather use his pen as a microphone. There is more to poetry than pedantic sermonizing.

(Courtesy the Sun Newspapers online)

No comments:

Post a Comment