CHANTING FOR THE RUSTICS AND THE BENIGHTED: A Review of Iyorwuese Hagher’s Once Upon an Eagle
By
Anthony C. Oha
Lecturer in Creative Writing and History of Ideas, Benson Idahosa University,
Benin City, Nigeria. +234-806-206-0012
It was Plato, the classical philosopher who alerted the people of the republic that the poets must be banished for telling people lies. For him, poetry is embodiment fictionality and has nothing to contribute in the development of a nation. He was so vehement about this proposition that he advised creative writers to embrace reality which would be helpful to mankind than those aesthetic manoeuvres which only entertain without bringing solutions. On my first encounter with Once Upon an Eagle, I was struck by the realities that the poems embody. At first one is overtaken by the volume of 101 poems. The number of the poems is significant as it reveals a burden and a massage. Hagher’s poetry is a commitment in message and method; in meaning and matter; in aesthetics and realities. According to Edward H. Bickersteth (1825-1906) in his work “Thus wondrous fair!”:
All beauty is a gleam from the fountain of beauty. No work of beauty can be more beautiful than the mind which designed it. I do not think a sculptor can possibly chisel a marble so as to make it more beautiful that his own ideal conception. I do not think a painter can produce a painting more beautiful than the thought of his mind which led up to it; I do not think a musician can express in sound, or a port in paper, anything beyond the thought within him. I know, indeed, that the conception of either may grow with the process by which it is presented to others, and that the man may, as he proceeds, have a fairer and nobler view of what he is trying to express; but, after all, the mind of the sculptor is more beautiful than the marble which he has sculptured; and the mind of the painter is a more beautiful thing than the work of art which he has painted; and the mind of the musician is better and higher and nobler than the most exquisite symphony which he has composed and reduced to writing; and the mind of the poet is better than his most beautiful piece of poetry. And so, we must rise from all the fragments of beauty which God has scattered so widely over His world...
Literature is a response, by a genuine life, to an overmastering reality. To paraphrase Thoreau, “...a writer resides behind the truth he utters.” This is the thesis statement of this review. Professor Hagher is not far from his poetry. One reads his mind in these poems. In other words, writing is a constant confession of who we are through the blurring or enhancement of facts, or myth; the supplantation, transposition and translation of memories, hence it is crucial not to brush aside the salient questions raised in Once Upon an Eagle lest it comes later to haunt us. When we reach the autochthonous essence, what’ll come out is who we are. Writing is more associated with identity than anything else. Once we find our true identity and intimate it, it’ll communicate itself.
The poet leads us through a very tedious mental flight from the abyss of poverty to the zenith of melancholy. We see out enclaves in torture, not like the fabled stream not any tributary thereof like the beauties of out Africa, but all the telltale signs of river water are relegated as those evidence: the forest now thicker, swaying bamboos in its make-up, the wetness of the soil with some maroon- redness to it are relegated. Where is beauty when there is no food? Where is hope when there is no tomorrow? Where is love when there is no peace? The chirping of burrowed and surface insects in the undergrowth may be louder, with other eerier sounds, the sounds of hunger. There is a definite sense of foreboding. These are no longer indifferent, page-laid lines of poetry as we see and fear that uneasy calm plays musical chairs to the staccato sounds of out heartbeats.
Prof. Hagher begins very soberly in his preface to OUAE, “my primary motivation in writing these poems is to shout and scream, using the Kwelegh and Asongo traditions of Tiv on Nigeria, against injustice, terror, greed, corruption and oppression in today’s world. I seek to take up issues as a voice of the downtrodden, the poor and the weak” [ix] Surprisingly, this poet wrote these poems when he was Nigeria’s Ambassador to Mexico. What has an Ambassador got to do with the downtrodden? As a diplomat, he belonged to the rank of the high and mighty. He is not a member of the party of poverty. But he pitied the poor and the benighted to the extent of making his poetic art a complete dedication to the downtrodden. He cries out about the tragedies of the African nations, their fears and their tears. He towed Derek Walcott’s ‘hunger empore’ to call his poems ‘hunger poems’ but I call them ‘hungry poems’. I prefer the phrase ‘hunger poems’ because the poems in this collection represent the downtrodden in all facet as each poem assumes a human flesh to lament neglect and abuse.
In the poem “A Diplomat’s Prayer”, he voiced out his vision for his nation as a diplomat. He has no power of his own. He believes in divine guidance for a new vision in other to prepare himself for the greater task in a foreign land and to touch live in all facets. Like the Biblical Solomon, he asks God for wisdom:
Give me a fresh vision,
With which to see the collection of Nations Not as so much bees, in beehives;
But a collection of rainbows;
That end in shinning white light [3]
The humility in this request runs through the entire verses. In the seventh poem “And God Answered back”, we see almost an assumed God’s response to his earlier prayers as he was asked to “Go thank and love these others/then you will find your real self/and come out of your hiding rocks...” [14], he begins then with series of other prayers as guide, “A Prayer for Tolerance’ [15], “Forgive us our Debts” [55], “the Peasant Farmer’s Prayer” [80] and “Prayer for the New Year” [160]. Each prayer crashes here and there to reconcile his mind in the quest for sanity and emancipation of the downtrodden.
There are various contours of poetry in Once Upon an Eagle. These 101 poems with the title poems as the longest are very touching. Each poem has a punch and drives on into seas of the pity while pushing one into provocative realities about the absurd stat of man, A African man, Nigerian man in the midst of plenty but thriving in squalor, abject poverty. I classify these poems into six groupings: [1] Poems of love, [2] Poems for the Earth [3] Poems of Death [4] Philosophical Poems [5] Poems of Poverty [6] Political/diplomatic Poems.
The poems of love include “Anna and Pablo” [4], “Beauty Queen” [11], “Egyptian Queen” [26], “Magdalene” [42], “Manatee” [44]. One wonders why there is expression of love in a collection of hungry poems. The messages are clear as each poem attempts to illustrate through series of human emotion about the sensibilities of human perceptions of relationships. The poor also have even as the rich hate. There is fascinating revelation between the love of arts and human relationship in “Anna and Pablo”, Pablo Picasso is a fine artist carving realities for human aesthetics while Anna is the aesthetic realization of the artistic touch. In this analogy, a man preserves his love as an artist preserves his art because:
The share feelings, passions and pets they dance and sleep together
they exchange smiles
that travel miles
The images of expectation and waiting are thoroughly revealed. “Beauty Queen” satirically attacks the women who destroy their natural make-up for artificialities. “Egyptian Queen” celebrates the beauty of Egyptian mummies as an art worthy of appreciation. It shows the poet’s love for art. “Magdalene” attacks loneliness and seclusion while “Manatee” celebrates the beauty of Manatee-Moniwate of the Benue River. In this section, beauty is celebrated in art and humanity while its abuse id attacked and abhorred. “The Cockerels’ Fight” [70] laments the demise of true love where like two fighting cockerels man “abandons love and romance to venom” [177]. One fascinating poem in this category is he poem “Ballad of the Widow” [19], which is a dramatic account of the abuse of widowhood. It showcases the fight between two men over the love of a widow. Widowhood should generate care not abuse because the widow has acquired:
love’s broken spine, lies in houses without roofs, worms crawl;
as brains splatter’.
Some poems reflect the ecosystem. They are classified here as poems for the earth. The poor are the poor victims of climatic changes as they lack the wherewithal to fight the hazards of nature. Some of these poems include “Heat waves” [34], the poets give a personalized account of one of his troubled moments. In the course of this frenzied moment, the poet touches on the harsh ecosystem reflecting the abuse of the ozone which the poor suffer:
I stand in the swirl
Of changeless days and months Dreaming of changeless years ahead of Me, standing like guards
Parades,
Like dying embers of smoked fish Gilded in thick lack acrid smoke [66]
The picture of hopelessness is painted to reflect the state of the poor where they seem to be the victims of eco-destruction. “The Rhinoceros” [82], laments the destruction and extinction of some animal species by their “tormenting rivals” which is man. “Earthquake” [49] compares human anger to earthquake which “grumbled and the earth trembled” [49]. “Like flies we die” [83] reflects on deaths by tsunamis. Death comes in batches to destroy the joy of the downtrodden. The poet draws from the decaying eco-system comparatively to expose the dying state of the poor and the downtrodden.
Some poems emphasize the inevitability of death. The downtrodden sings songs of death as they epitomize the living dead in our society. The Poem of Death include “Born to Die” [16] which emphasizes the need for purposeful death. Everyone is born to die but death must be meaningfully done because to die without ‘a course’ is wasteful death. The strugglings for material things by the privileged will lead them to wasteful deaths because “to live for self/brings no joy” [31]. “Blood Diamonds” [27], reflects on the same theme of greed which breeds rancour and hatred among nations especially in Africa where a natural gifts like diamond has turned he people into slaves and war-mongers in their homes. Children become baby solders. Divided loyalties. Oil becomes blood. The greedy nations reaping the gains of war and strife remain adamant as you “don’t mention to those that profit” [30]. “Dying in Africa’s Sudan” [24], continues this neglect of African by the profit mongers who never minded the genocides but the gains. The organizers of this evil acts know that these:
deaths were preventable but prevention
became a business of death [47]
“Merchant of death” [91] carries a warning and a appeasement to the benighted. It decries those who pilot death acts to clear the hopeless from the face of the earth. Death becomes business for the greedy.
There are also Philosophical Poems that reflect on the poets’ attempts at viewing the human condition with much thoughtfulness, they include “Cycles of Ignorance” [35] which questions the meaninglessness of dogmas and traditionalities pervading the threshold of the downtrodden. “Graduation” [31], reflects on the triumphs and feelings of accomplishments that follow an academic quest. The poet is reflecting on the endless tortuous night of reading, challenges, and feelings of accomplishment that accompany academic quest. He believes that learning should never stop:
For if you rest now,
What would you be doing there, later, in the grave,
When nothing, absolutely nothing, shall spoil your Rest [16]
One still observes the endless fears of death in the poem. Knowledge terminates at death (rest), but it is better getting the best of it while alive. Like the philosopher king, he professes quest for the knowledge as man’ ultimate need. For the downtrodden without hopes of this knowledge acquisition, it becomes a very sad thing to express. “Happiest on Earth” [63] attacks pretence of quietude and peace when things are no longer at ease. To pretend to be happy “where poverty’s redemption/hides in empty barns of ridicule” is like accepting death by hanging. The poet admonishes and advises that the downtrodden should shout out their frustrations in the midst of plenty. “May life” [95] is the poet’s personal examination of his life which he explains has borne “the stillness of love” as each of his life’s foible, intricacies and intensities illuminate the true colour of love. “My Pen a hoe” [102] is a reflection on paternal wisdom and advice. It is an embrace on Africa’s deep thought of facts of life. Education as alternative to farming is expressed. The pen like a keyboard plays the music of life for the user. The pen is mightier than the hoe as the poet echoes: “my pen has stolen my life/it grows with the growth of my growth” [103]. “Quest into me” [179] and “Tree of Knowledge” [249] penetrate the poet’s minds to expose this innermost desires to “dismount from rivals’ greed” [250]. “What Tribe is money?” [253] is the poet’s attempts at wondering over the mysteries surrounding money and its enormous power of influence and affluence.
Even though there are underlying themes of poverty and deprivation in almost all the poems of OUAE, some of the poems directly expose the core poverty of the rustics and the benighted. These poems of poverty include, “Maids” [87], a poem explaining the trouble faced by housemaids who are often ill-treated by their masters. They appear unimportant as even their masters’ dogs enjoy hugs, kisses, use of Jacuzzis and frequent visit to doctors while the maids receive “... slave wages, next to nothing” [88] while “dogs operate accounts and growl at bank managers” [88]. On another level of interpretation, we have the corrupt politicians and the power-mongers as the dogs while the maids are the downtrodden. “Blameless Children” [20], ament the abuse of children, while “Pity the poor peasant farmer” [141] appears to me as the most provocative poem about poverty in this collection. It talks about the utter hopelessness of the peasant farmers who live a hand to mouth existence with the rich depriving them of their land and penny’s worth. “Refugee Women” [181] paints the picture of squalor associated with poverty and disease, “The Miserable” [212] laments abuse of beauty and love where the beauty is a poor fellow inhabiting ‘bags of tears’ because of:
Disease, hunger, depravity, perversion, Singularity, obesity, starvation and ignorance Then, it is the world that is miserable [214]
“The Peasant Farmer’s Prayer” [217] re-echoes a typical prayer of the poor in all humanity. “Street Child” [188] examines the odds of child abuse especially by the rich who use the poor children as slaves and hawkers. “May Farm” [48] expresses the fears of the peasant farmers over unforeseen happenings or manipulations from the high and mighty.
Apart from the continuous references to poverty, politics underlies every part of these poems. According to Hagher in his ‘Preface to OUAE’,
As a politician, artist and diplomat, my life has been tension between the wondrous idealism that art and diplomacy offer, and the stark horror of politics in my country pervaded by endemic corruption, thuggery, the oppression of the simple rural people and wastage by a ruling class engaged in a fresh ‘scramble for Africa’ (xi).
The title poem “Once upon an Eagle” is the longest poem in the collection which explores the years of kingship and power-mongering in Africa using the persona of Gaga Gyuve, a new name for Nigeria by the poet. The poem explores various experiences in Nigerian socio-political experiences power abuses and assumption of extraordinary limits make Nigerian leadership questionable and not less friendly to the downtrodden. Nigerian becomes the poet’s worry especially in question of leadership:
I tried to run with men
But they wore me out,
Forty years in Nigeria’s
Wilderness have had their toll
My youth these rogues have stolen
And now to wrest from thieves and reclaim my new birth
From the strongboxes of death
Some of these political cum diplomatic poems include “Political Insults” [159], which ruminates on the bad sides of going into politics as insults are common experiences. “Predators of the Savanna” [162], exposes the deceit in politics while “Slaves of Power” [185] explains that the leaders are born not made as some people are born ‘to hold the torch’ [186]. “Stolen Rights” [187] admonishes political depravations and denials to the poor while “The Children of those who stole our Wealth” [194] laments the squandermania of the children of the politicians who spend the wealth of millions stolen by their parents with reckless abandon. “The Corrupt” [198] attacks the corrupt leaders, “This Thing Politics” [234] ruminates on the absurdities surrounding politics and its vicious colours. “Those that steal hope” [236] sees bad politicians as destroyers of a people’s future. “Volcano in Aso Rock” [251] attacks the power odds in Nigeria with the rulers being peddlers of poverty and deprivation.
On the diplomatic terrain in Mexico, we have such poems as “A Day in Mexico City” [1] which reveals the harsh winds of renewal that gave him a new vision of life. “Africa in Zacatecas” eulogizes the beauty of being black even as a half black. A black Mexican woman distinguishes herself at exploring human dignity and labour. He gives us the treatise of his poetic commitment in the poem “A new Song for a Nation”:
How can I sing a new song?
My spirit heavy lid stone rolls over your face
With caresses that finger questions Searching your face for answers
And for my life that has fallen to pieces
And died a thousand death inside your intolerance, swimming in the blood: Yearning for lost unity, and a look and touch of Love
These ink drops, war angry alphabets;
And my song in your throat, a dry whimper
How then can I sing you a new song?
One fascinating thing about this Once upon an Eagle is the immediacy of the message. The language and style is simple, direct and meaningful. There are no linguistic aberrations except deliberate coinages that help his message like the proverbial sugar that make the medicine go down. It appeals to one’s sensibilities as the poems chime in musicality. At a point you feel like ululating at the sounds in the verses. I quite understood why the poet felt initially like accompanying the poems with his native musical instruments. Who knows, while the poor sing and dance, they flush our disease and pains of denial.
Reviewing a collection as enormous as Once Upon an Eagle is not an easy feat. This collection is comparable to notable classics where the states of man are lamented in various forms. I attempted a careful selection of the poems that carry the depth and the feeling of the poet while revealing the realities that capture the minds of the expected consumers. The poems treated in this review are carefully selected to reflect the ideals, ideas and the indexicalities of poverty encompassing the entire poetic journey. Professor Iyorwuese Hagher has prepared a delicious meal with different condiments: deprivation, starvation, disease, poverty, political and power abuse, child abuse, widowhood abuse, wars, scrambles for Africa and eco-destruction. You have to consume this meal with caution because it will definitely cause you to reflect, to pity, to cry, to ponder, to ruminate, to complain, to renounce, to instigate, to protest and to pray. Just bear this in mind: this meal could cause you to go to the streets in protest of the enormity of human depravity but remember that art is life as it records according to Ngugi Wa Thiongo, “the conflicts and tensions in our changing society.” Let us hope and pray that one day our Hagher will hold the torch to light the ways of the deprived.
God Bless you all.