Reviewed by Danielle Eyango
The least one can say is that Nnane’s poetry is very manly… I can say dynamic, but it can transpire the ferocity, boldness, and even sexual rythm of her poetry…
“… I am caressed by the careless hands of fear
I am romanced by the rough fingers of hatred
My brother’s blood is now cooking oil
My husband’s body, chicken for supper
…Butcher me with your eyes,
Slaughter me with your words,
I shall kiss your weapons and take them to bed
I shall remove the man in them
And make them eunuchs
Your brutality shall impregnate me,
And i shall give birth to warriors…”
Do you see those traditional African fights or traditional dances…? Do you feel the libido in the rough beauty of those sweating bodies…? Do you feel the struggle and pain, or emotions, that very libido increases…? If you do, then you see, then you feel Nnane’s poetry.
For, she is a HE crying with the heart of a SHE, while spitting words of a HE. Nnane is androgynously delicious reading.
Her poetry happens to be very much and deeply influenced, by the war in the NOSO region, and pain of our anglophone brothers and sisters, which I find very normal. The poet is not some kind of coward-dreamer living far away from reality… He is a griot singing loud to God, the tears of the world he lives in.
I love the eclectic sound of Nnane’s writing. She roars like an injured lion, spitting on your face wounds from her womb… Then, there she is, dancing on some kind of negro blues, that particular melancholic rhythm, African Americans started right from the cotton fields… Actually, my favorite poem is drowned in that negro blues’ melancholy.
With that poem, Nnane broke in, without permission, in the very narrow and secret garden of my favorite poets of all time. The poem is Knock (the sound that kills many); however, Nnane did not bother to knock at the door of my garden before coming in. She broke in. Like a burglar in the night.
I do celebrate talents when they are still very much alive. You need to read Nnane Ntube’s Litany of a foreign wife. The girl is a genius. As simple as that.
Danielle EYANGO, Author of Le parfum de ma mère
