Reviewer: Afer Ventus

Genre: Poetry (a collection)

Author: Oluwaseun Alele

Publisher: McSeal Publishers

Year of Publication: 2021

Date of Review: 7th December, 2021

Vicissitudes of Beauty: A Review of Selected Poems in Oluwaseun Alele’s ‘A Constellation of Cravings’

Beauty is adire! Adire is Africa! Africa is ‘A Constellation of Cravings’! ‘A Constellation of Cravings is beauty! Born in Lagos, Nigeria and resides in England, Still, Oluwaseun’s concern for his Father Land is touching. He mixes grandeur in beautiful simplicity which this review will select.

Have you ever had a breadwinner who gambles? Is his lot to breadwin or breadlose? Well, the latter with hatred for the persona’s father is the bone of contention in the poem, ‘My Father Is A Gambler’.

The first stanza started out with the persona describing the effect of her late father’s devastating habit. She describes the family living in a one room apartment with seven brothers and two mothers and how the fathers are late with the word ‘[b]astard’ used in denoting the idea. Further dictions used were: ‘hot-steamed poverty,/Stones for pillows,/dust socked our feet./We were living backwards/From death beds to daily bread.’ The listed choices of syntaxes connote the various aspects where penury took charge of the persona’s family and metaphorically adding that ‘Every day was a resurrection’.

Paddling in, the second stanza concludes of the speaker’s anger for her late father. For instance, she buried her father’s spoon beside his grave. The spoon is a metonymy for his ‘wealth’ or financial status. Also, she left his smiling portrait alongside which reminds her of Poker in the card game, and how her father ‘was too high to have a Royal Flush.’ This ‘Royal Flush’ signifies the strongest hand in poker which couldn’t be offered to the dead man who ‘flushed his wealth away in that casino.’

Secondly, ‘Spring’ preaches of the joy in rebirth. It is about the persona’s quest to go back to writing, which she had forsaken months ago. It suggests the persona only takes to writing whenever s/he feels sad.

However, the persona feels that his/her sadness is giving way to happiness. Here, the poet contrasts the symbol of winter and spring. To the persona, s/he is ‘smelling a newness like the freshness of leaves in spring…for ‘it’s the murky clouds giving/way to blue skies’. This is a song of hope for the reborn of good qualities.

Lastly, ‘At the Birth of Debt’ is episodic on the physiological and psychological damages to an extreme state of owing people. Sometimes, my friends will joke about how owing someone makes you feel like even the water you drink is on credit. That’s why you sometimes choke while drinking it because it would feel like even the water is trying to find its way back to the owner. Many will go into hiding like a bear in hibernation. Well, the poet is not far from our plight, as no writer writes in a vacuum. He may, one way or another, have experienced what it means when debt uses a home as its footstool.

The first episode treats how life changed into a large picture of darkness and misfortune when debts make the persona’s parents so emaciated, as they were compared to ‘breaking bones’. Guys! This is so possible, but one in his prayers (if he prays at all), shouldn’t forget to pray against debt, for she’s a treat.

The second shows that hunger begins to set in till they ‘…broke fast in dreams.’ This suggests the persona’s religious background and a clue to how they sought for solution by fasting and praying and then breaking fast in illusions (dreams).

The final stanza progresses to how the persona’s mother stays in hiding ‘for fear of being broken by her/creditors’ or the fear of being killed in their traps that must have been set for her. This is similar to Small Doctor (a Nigerian singer) who has something to say about if you no get money…. Furthermore, father is also unspared at the birth of debt. He begins to wallow in uninteresting things and staring ‘into the ceiling as if/she would disgorge a money miracle’. The last line somewhat implies the poet’s suggestion to better ways of relieving debt of her anarchy rather than waiting for a giveaway or a dash.

In conclusion, Oluwaseun Alele has shown the different sides of beauty in his collection. And the beauty lies in his technique. For me, and like Polonius, this is ‘the soul of wit’ to cloak anew that which is known to people.