I WANT to start with a risk, precisely a guess, that Prof. Mark Nwagwu is not done yet with the calibration of his eternal romance with the subject of his robust poetry ' Helen, his wife of fifty years on. Helen, Not-of-Troy (2009) and Cat Man Dew (Bookbuilders Ltd, Ibadan; 2012) are two collections dedicated to Helen Nwagwu, and as I whispered to the poet sometime ago, I suspect that a third collection is coming on the heels of these collections. But it is to this second collection of poems that I turn.To put it literally, this title is a big deal: Cat Man Dew, What Can't Man Do' Kathmandu, the song. Kathmandu, the Nepalese city, west of Mt. Everest. Here is a pyrotechnic title with multiple mis/interpretations but its ultimate intimation is that of feeling, humanity and a naturalness of eternal love. 'Cat Man Dew' is apparently a phonoaesthetic reference to the Kathmandu, a place and a memory which the poet visited and experienced with his wife in 2009.The term 'Kathmandu' is the contraction of two Sanskrit words, 'Kaasth' which means wood and 'Mandap' for beautiful shade. Is it too far-fetched then if a widely-travelled poet titles his love poetry after a place of beauty such as Kathmandu, a physical place which he remembers vividly in two eponymous poems ' 'A Kathmandu Christmas' (53) and 'A Christmas Kathmandu' (81).In the latter poem, the poet says: 'collapsed into eternity Christmas hearts take flight/ seeking new heights wings flapping in fury/ to the top of the world Everest capped in snow/ low-lying Bethlehem within easy reach/ nothing to it like the valley Kathmandu.I shall return to the significance of the title in relation to the symbolisms of these key and other words in the collection.The tone is set right from the beginning. Of love serenaded in many colourful and breathless lines, of images stringed on the cosmic metaphor of the moon, beginning with the moon lighting the candle and ending with the lunar fire stroking the candle.MORE than one-third of the poems in this collection, that is 49 out of 133, forms Part I of the book, and they are all decidedly committed to the poet's reflection on romance, courtship, affection and devotion.The first poem, 'When you turned nineteenth' is a reminiscence of the beginning of a long-term relationship, the very foundation of a life-time shared between two passionate people, in this instance, of the poet and his spouse.The third poem, 'Your still soft eyes' buttresses the influence of the feline character in question, Helen, on the poet. The refrain, 'I'll find you', is suggestive of a perpetually seismic affection for the spouse; at the very end of the poem, the refrain achieves consummation and the poet declares joyfully, 'now I have you'.Of all these poems, the conceit of that brief poem 'You're a place' is unforgettable: you're a place/ when/ i'm with you/ i've reached/ my destination/ place person time/ all wrapped in you.Part two of the collection, entitled 'Of the Spirit... The Moon Said to the Cat', has an existential appeal. Right from the first poem ('Life'), the poet questions the very reason for and purpose of existence. He finds some measure of consolation of faith in God, submitting to His power of creation and salvation.Part three, 'Of the Soul... The Moon in Seance' also shares that semblance of faith and religious devotion, with emphasis placed on the activities that surround the birth and salvation of Christ. Through the use of metaphor and acute sense of imagery, the poet retells the tales of salvation as exemplified in the poems 'Mary and Joseph' and 'Our Own Emmanuel.'While Part four, 'Of Others... The Moon in Dew', recapitulates various experiences of the poet both home and abroad, Part V, as indicated by the title 'Of Family... The Moon Curls', revolves round the significance of family as an essential tool for human survival. This section is, in fact, a metaphor for the re-institutionalisation of family as a paramount unit of any given society.Africa, in the past, prides itself on a collective and communal way of life. The poet indirectly warns of the dominant effect of Western values which encourages individualism. Poems such as 'In heaven's pearls' and 'My granddaughter Oluchukwu' eulogise a younger generation, while 'Love in the same urn', 'Ma's eyes' and 'No longer fixed in time' assume the imagination of a union beyond life and another future built around remembrance. Part VI essentially consists of a series of remarkable poems as tributes to friends, heroes and places.Cat Man Dew is thus a poetic charting of a journey with people, in time and places, a journey with a lover, with God, with friends and family, a long journey'.NWAGWU's poetry is heavily laden with symbols, and the force of some of the images are absolutely remarkable, organic as well as cosmic. The cursory reader can not miss the poet's consistent employment of the metaphor of eyes in this collection, a trademark motif which Nwagwu also used to considerable effect in Helen Not-of-Troy.Poems like 'Your still soft eyes' (5), 'I'll dance in your eyes' (14), 'The joy of your eyes' (30) and 'The feast of your eyes' (33) are very good instances of the activation of the metaphor of gaze, fixation, devotion and enthrallment.In 'The feast of your eyes', the poet concludes delectably: 'my marrows dance to the feast of your eyes' (33). It will interest the statistical reader as well to know that the direct usage of the word 'eyes' (not counting its synonymy) appears in this collection 86 times within the space of 145 pages.In my critique of Helen Not-of-Troy, titled 'Helen of the Beholder: How to Love a Woman Forever', I drew attention to this choice thus:'The beauty of Nwagwu's writing is that of a conscious awareness of the right and articulate metaphor. The consistent and extended metaphor of the eye, or eyes, is exactly appropriate for the critical choice of the term fixitude, the state of being fixed, enraptured, enamoured to a site, a body or phenomenon. As it were, Helen is the 'site' of the lover-poet's possession and craving.'Apart from the metaphor of eyes, five other images are crucial for an intimate reading of this collection: moon, candle, cat, dew and coffee. The moon, indeed, is a cosmic metaphor for every personality as an agent of brilliance and emotion. It navigates between self-discovery and functionality within a world that is made up of a cluster of both physical and metaphysical peculiarities.The 'candle' represents the flare of light, the flair of love, a symbol of the beginning of a journey; the 'cat' represents spiritualism, intelligence and feline warmth; the 'dew' exudes the magical orbit of Nature's freshness, a relief beyond worldly pressures; and the tasty metaphor of coffee directs us to the liquid gravity of a union and the ritual that comes with it.In two brief poems on coffee, Nwagwu eases the reader into the secrecy of his bonding with wife and family. Love is brewed ritualistically in the family cup of coffee, and tasty energy of the magical bean is all about loving and doting.'In a cup of coffee': every morning/ you bring me/ a cup of coffee/ a moment/ a heartbeat/ brewed love/ in your hands.../ brown beans brew/ our minds flow/ form purity crystals/ in a cup of coffee.Taken together, Nwagwu's imagism is a very interesting course in organic, cosmic and human relations. In the eponymous poem, 'Cat Man Dew', the reader will find the typical Nwagwu imagism in flight, a piece which is a celebration of oneness in love, through the drudgery of day and the excitement of holiday; it is a metaphysical re-telling of a life of 'laughter in friendship' of two lovers perpetually in journey 'walking and hiking our hearts' towards romantic perfection and in celebration too of the values of family and affiliations (112-113).Beyond the interpretation of its pyrotechnic title, I will assay the proof of the imagistic nature of this collection by requesting the radical reader to do something experimental with Mark Nwagwu's book: take a glimpse of the Table of Contents and attempt a string reading of the titles of the poems, vertically.Part I: When you turned nineteen/Helen flows down/Your still soft eyes/Ineffable joy/The way you talk to me/Your dress your address/Eyes on dome/Lonely in business class/And I'm all for her/Behind you/Shoulds/Vast seas of your mind/I'll dance in your eyes/I'm not sixteen/My shirt will air your soul/1944/Creation anew/Everest/Wings/The Himalayas of my being/You now live in minds/Poetic joy/What of love/Your face was not in the cup/The joy of your eyes/You're a place/Unstoppable tide/The feast of your eyes/Mere words/Absence distance/Last night/'The curled heavens of your lips/Helen (because of nature)'/Waiting for Helen/What about now'/A prism of joy/In a cup of coffee/Orbital eyes/any which way/Looking at you/Worse makes better/Married fingers/In your eyes/A Kathmandu Christmas/To say. Part II: etc.Indeed, a fine mixture of spiritual and emotional love is ingrained in the body of this collection.BUT Nwagwu's collection is not all about love: he also writes about the remembrance of the pains of school math homework ('1944', p. 17), the experience of a faulty car on a lonely road ('On the road to Awka', pp. 97-98), the rigor of an old man eating beef ('Tooth and nail', p. 102), the delicacy of ugu ukazi and onugbu vegetables ('Ofe Owerri is ready', p. 111 and 'Exquisite Wole', pp. 150-151), as well as what the poet refers to as 'the meaning of little things/the littlest of things' ('A perfect 10', p. 118). The poems may not be all about love, but they are all reflections or intimations of the feelings of a poet who has his full dosage of life's uneven and parabolic equations which we all glibly call experience.Here too is a poet not only as lover but as philosopher, especially in such poems as 'No greater love than this' (82-83), and 'In what does joy consist' (88-90). In the latter poem, the poet submits: until we can love perfectly/ until we find joy in suffering/ joy remains a mystery (90).If you read his lines with care and the details they deserve, the poetry of Mark Nwagwu will teach you how to love a woman for all seasons. As Matthew Arnold speaks of Heinrich Heine's, Mark Nwagwu's poetry is of 'the most exquisite lightness and ease, and yet it has at the same time the inborn fullness, pathos, and old-world charm of all true forms of popular poetry.'Here is poetry for poets and all lovers of the inspired word. This collection is both a journey and an endless dance. I will encourage you to take it, read it, and enjoy it as much as I do.'Prof. Aderemi Raji-Oyelade is of the Department of English, University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Oyo State
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