Why Ikyaabo Tells Tales behind our Phoney Smiles
Title Behind the Phoney Smiles
Author Ikyaabo Barnabas Terhemba
Genre Poetry
Publisher Premier Media
Pages 60
Reviewer Vanger Fater
African poetry has gained popularity in our contemporary society. With
the advancement in written literature, it has received much attention
even from people who thought the genre was an exclusive literary field
for literary scholars. This much is a credit which must be sealed, as
one wraps a present, and decorated on the tables of contemporary poets.
African first generation poets had compelled the society in which they
lived to think of poetic messages as some abstract ideas entombed in
lines or verses which only an abstract being divulges. This gave poetry a
very low patronage while its Prose and Drama counterparts continued to
receive societal accolades and attention. Of course, such a development
was not a failure which arose from the society; the problem hung on
these poets who believed that obscurity defined a good poem, and since
writers stand the risk of being influenced by the activities of
antecedent colleagues, the modern generation of poets, although most
tried not to be influenced, had a considerable number of poets who took
over with obscurity.
The effect of this was that poetry
continued with the plague of an unpopular stand even among students of
Literature. However, with the coming on board of the contemporary poet
and his refusal to patronize obscurity of diction, poetry has gradually
rebuilt its glory among people of all professions which we can argue –
and rightly so – that was not even there. The contemporary African poet
has boycotted obscurity to birth verses whose messages reveal the
essence of human life – its meaninglessness; man’s bestial nature; the
irony of life and all that pertains to it.
In Barnabas Ikyaabo’s
“Behind the Phoney Smiles” – a collection of 51 poems – the contemporary
poet has set forth to reveal this ironic nature of not just life, but
of men whom it exists in; of everything man engages in; of the world at
large. This explains why the first two poems in the collection take an
eponymous title after the collection. The poet expresses his profound
understanding of what lies beneath smiling lips in his eponymous “Behind
the Phoney Smile I”. He reveals that “Behind the spurious smiles/There
lies a lonely heart; intoxicated with rage and tears” (1). The message
in these lines is deeply revealing that one wonders why a lonely heart
gripped by rage and tears dripping in torrents still chooses the path of
smiling. This revelation is of the ironic nature of life as the next
stanza lays it before us: “Behind the pseudo smiles/Are agonizing
pains/And there lies [sic]/the distance [sic] echoes of our daily cries”
(1).
As this ironic smile is revealed, one questions its
essence. It is confusing that a hurt mind chooses to smile even when the
heart continues to wallow in an interior inferno. However, this
confusion becomes murdered when the last stanza explains that “the rich
steps upon the hearts of the poor/and they smile back, hiding the
pains/these fabricated…smiles/Are but hurtful feelings in disguise” (1).
It is now understood that the poet’s mind and sympathy lie with the
poor; and having come from the part of the world where the poor are
deprived of freedom, we understand that smiling has remained an only
option when struck by the mighty.
It is this same message that
is continued in ‘Behind the Phoney Simile II”. The poet’s lamentations
as the world continues to paint smiles whose stand from reality is as
Pluto from the Sun is expressed with deep imagery. We are told that
“Behind the phoney smile/deep pains lie…/Eating up the flesh with
venomous acidic bits” (2). There is an attempt by the poet to have his
readers understand the fierce nature of these ironic smiles, and this
explains why he brings in images of flesh being eaten up with venomous
acid. Imagery has remained a powerful tool in the hands of not just
African poets, but of poetry in general. Hence, Ikyaabo utilizes on it
to press home his message of an abnormal world albeit smiles drawn on
faces. We are told that rivers have burst their banks; walls are
smashed; funnels of the earth are being flooded with blood; the ocean
too has become a vessels filled with brackish liquids (2). His use of
imagery is akin to Kukogho Samson and Kolade Olanrewaju whose “I said
these Words” and “Punctured Silence” respectively contain verses deeply
bath in the pool of imagery.
Ikyaabo’s collection – like
Su’eddie’s “Home Equals Holes” and Terseer Baki’s “Euphoria of
Sophistry” – is an all encompassing work which has touched on many
subjects. In “This Remains a Mystery”, the poet questions the nature of
the world in which we inhabit; wonders about the power(s) behind
creation; imagines why man whose sake the beautiful world is created is
certain of lying someday where words and touches will be thrown in vain.
These are all mysteries which the poet seeks in vain to unravel, and
when it becomes clear that his efforts will forever be fruitless, he
gives into wishes where he says “Have I the powers, I would pay the moon
visit/ to have a double feel of its bleached glow/And the boundless
luminosity of its sparkle/And then to the sun to unearth the mystery of
its flawless radiation” (5). Other subjects like love, death, morality
and politics are well captured in the collection as the poet unravels
the excitement which thrills in youths; the agonizing tucks of death;
the fall of man before his creator; the raping of a nation’s resources
while the masses starve to death.
The decision to tell these
tales whose yoke centres on the phoney nature of the smiles humans, all
of us, put is believed to have stemmed from the hopelessness of humanity
itself. The hallmark of the poet’s message comes in our understanding
that he paints, in the most vivid manner, the picture of a pretentious
world in which men – rich and the poor – live putting on smiles which
are indeed at loggerheads with the pain that burns within them. His
ability to have his readers understand what motivates the smiles which
decorate most faces as being bitterness than the actual happiness those
smiles appear to set is all that Ikyaabo has achieved in his collection.
We can as well argue, and rightly so, that the poet has been troubled
over the clandestine manner that men live which makes things on the
surface not in conformity with those beneath.
However,
Ikyaabo’s collection is not bereft of mistakes and typos. The poet’s
lack of adherence to rules governing subject/verb agreement (concord);
of proper tenses within the verses is rampant. Poems like “I Smile”,
“Behind the Phoney Smile”, “The Rapist is Back”, and “Baby Babbles” have
all relegated concord, while “The Puddle Jumper”, “Hunger Bite” and
others have had wrong tenses uncorrected. Yet, these do not hinder his
verses’ beauty. Being a first edition, it is expected that the poet and
his publishers sit to tame these errors of concord, tenses, and
punctuation in later editions.
In conclusion, therefore, “Behind
the Phoney Smiles”, being the poet’s debut collection, has earned him
much credit since the verses have captured life’s bothering issues which
humanity keeps pondering on. For allowing his lines flow in simplicity
amidst complexity, Ikyaabo’s poetry possesses a reservoir of intrigues
which makes one laughs over human’s stupidity while wondering why
beings are being beasts with imaginary terrifying tusks. With such feet
attained, Ikyaabo has joined the league of African contemporary poets
determined to unmask poetry as a genre with the desire of making its
patronage akin to that which prose and drama enjoy.
Poetry is food for the soul, and Africa is blessed with the cooks.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Mr Vanger.
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