Ogbebor’s in collective consciousness of The Dot In All Things Beautiful

Author: Uhomoabhi Mark Ogbebor
Publisher: Redletter Crib signature
Reviewer : Muyiwa Babatope
Year of Publication: 2021
Genre: Poetry
Title: The dot in all things beautiful

Mark Ogbebor pokes the collective consciousness and dalliance with life in this new collection of poems titled, The dot in all things beautiful. The amazing metaphors in his strips of works are not only overwhelming and demanding, but they also call for answers to lingering questions of governance and social and economic realities wrapped in pragmatic postulations concerning the future of his country.

Ogbebor runs the land of research into the vagaries of human experiences to bestow this piece of art to readers. This collection of poems is delightsome exploring different themes of beauty and uncertainties and other imperative issues of existentialism.

In the poem, Rivers, Ogbebor admonishes his readers to walk through complex situations with boldness. Teaching his readers to summon the courage to Ford through the rivers of vicissitudes and maintain joy.

The currents could be swelling and threatening but would eventually cease at any attempt to step in with boldness not minding the noisome ripples and currents of the ocean. He writes:
Drift like lampshades on the Iroko
we come bearing seeds and nectarines
the ample chunk of mini raving apples
before the plunge into the river of hays
plunge o plunge, people
salvation is in the current;
tumble by the bank of joy
meet the ace divers on bleating trunks

In the poem, Games of power, the poet speaks lucidly about the power drunken persona in the poem whose ways and means are inimical to the progress of the society and sees himself as pivotal to the emergence of any entity in the country.

The ruthless disposition of the persona to the polity unveils his tilt towards neoliberalism especially as practised under the American President, Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom, which is always a policy that eventually widens the gap between the rich and the poor and then a reenactment of class struggle.

Mark wrote about the malaise of incessant maltreatment of the people by a fascist and impervious government and their coteries and highlighted the aloofness of the law enforcement agencies in the poem, Animal City, as seen in the lines:
The nozzle on a careless spree
do guns really enter into our bodies like nails into a wood ?
I bet we take the nails to fit our design
but these nails make these bodies drip with solutes
bodies are for warmth and covering
Not for shells and blood spurting corpuscles
when they came with guns slung like roaches in a beeline of vengeance

In the poem, Home, Mark reminisces about his home and the nostalgia it brings when you stub the mind on things that remind us of home.

The feelings of nostalgia and the richness of such expressions sink into the smithy prowess of Mark, who gently glides through the corners of memories and emotes in such a sinless flow of words.

Mark’s use of metaphors and litotes is divine and drowns it in the truth of his evictions as a baby heaves an innocuous sigh. A home is definitely a place of memory for all.

In the titular poem, the dot in all things beautiful, Ogbebor defamiliarises the polarity of life. That for there to be darkness, there must be light and being a design strategist, he is able to elicit the negative that is necessary for developing the positive – as all fruits spring from seed that was once in darkness. A wise man once said to us that we should not curse the darkness but shine the light.

This poem calls readers to reason and to always remember that pain is necessary for growth and sometimes scars are the excruciating henna of wisdom.

Mark has given his readers a prismatic collection of poems and it is hoped he preserves the same level of good writing in other collections. This is a brilliant piece and should be copped by every literati.