The Event, the Experience and the Poem: Is Richie Maccs' 'FORGOTTEN LIVES' Alive Without the Visual?

A raw, quick and direct review as shared with Richie Maccs (Richard M. Oduor) on his poem, 'Forgotten Lives' Poem.

FORGOTTEN LIVES

Their bones dance in the wind,
skulls rolling haltingly in the dust
to rest a kilometer away in dry river beds,
amidst piles of rot and souls in commune,
that hug and hide their faces
from the disdain of the land that bore them.
The black feathery beasts of the wild
circle, as if haunted, and map the expanse
for the freshness of death.
They watch bemused at the hopelessness
of children crawling on their bellies defeated,
and parents blankly stare – tears.

Inspiration: Does Richie turn reader into the unfortunate kid?

The old, having witnessed life in passing
wait patiently for their souls to desert them.
Their bodies are ant hills of jutting bones
their lips dry, cracking, and pursed –
their tongues have lost ownership of words.
There is no need to speak; no sounds come out
of a belly sunk and plastered on bent spine.
The lungs can no longer hold air for a full breath;
gasps and little coughs squeeze
out of a throat taunting – to close.

Where are the city folks with glistening skins,
cultured accents, and famine solutions to boot?
Do they think of the child that crawls to death
a few hours away, under the roasting sun?
Where are the ministers, with broad grins
and a wealth of verbiage to shoot?
Did they not make the garbage collector
and gas stations wealthy men?
Yet behind their mansions, the young
cuddle garbage cans for warmth;
their mouths frothy with refuse and gum.
Voiceless, their only distress call is a sigh,
before they pass away – waiting for us.

Abandoned in misery’s dark corners, children
wasting; their shriveled behinds gashed with deep lines,
their bones covered by dried-out skin,
pause for us to temper the vagaries of nature
and trap the vestiges of our selfishness.
We walk on – without a care!
But the face of a suffering child is the heart of God
reaching out to stir the depths of our being.
Let’s desire nothing, than to see others too
experience relief and joy.

***

Vultures watch the tussle between soul and body,
celebrate as the body tumbles and stills in the hazy heat,
and moves in – to have a fill.
 
© Richard M. Oduor, 2012.

Richie, let me begin with smooching your forehead, patting your back and kissing the hand that you have used to pen ‘Forgotten Lives’. You have done well my friend and I think you deserve a round, or several, of self stimulation and pleasure!

I must confess that I have read the piece twice, yet, like always I think it is my first reading and initial reflections that are most useful in helping me share with you my thoughts on the tone and achievement of the poem; while it is in the second that I can comfortably lend you my two pence with regard to the architecture of the poem. (I must confess that I have also sampled ‘audience reaction’ from the numerous ‘this is deep’ crowd to the ones who see theirs in yours and to the historically inclined like that square that is round. Interesting!)
 

In so far as I look for vividness in poetry, interpretation of feelings, attitude and story in the conciseness of words and the rhythm between the diction and human experience, I am glad that you have nailed it. The generalization of the first stanza that sets the horror of the experience and introduces a ‘bemused’ Vulture is effective in its compactness. The magnitude of the problem of the drought certainly comes out with the suggestion that the feathery bird even has to map the strewn meal laid below. That the vultures are blessed with abundance and humans deprived of nutrition is the most heart-piercing image of this forgotten experience. Yet, I do not know what the phrase ‘as if haunted’ was meant to achieve. I may be wrong, but I feel it distorts the ‘attitude’ of the vulture in this set. With the abundance, I would surely be surprised at any vulture that would project worry. Is it possible that this description needs to be attached to the ‘parents’ blankly staring? And is it possible that the ‘stare’ should be an active verb, ‘staring’? I find no place for ‘tears’…for is it not possible that the subject is malnourished of tears?
 

The second stanza is equally profound in meaning and the choice of words and their sewing is facilitative to the appreciation of the human experience. I see the stanza now ‘specializing’ on a category of people’s experiences…parting slowly away from the generalizations of the first. And that is sweet in so far as the poem’s story is unfolding. I should mention that I believe to some extent that some of the responses/reactions you have got from friends are based on reading the poem side-by-side with the Carter’s celebrated picture. Yet, I want to weigh the success of this poem in the absence of this visual stimuli, and in so doing, I think the second stanza stands out. It is here that you, the poet, is dissecting and analyzing the emotions and goings on at this bleak moment. Having lost all ownership of words and awaiting relieving death, the impact of the famine has been well established. You have nailed it on this. Only that I would like to question your choice of tense in ‘no sounds come out’. Why not, ‘no sounds WOULD come out…’? For I feel that this description with ‘would’ would complement completely the need not to speak.
 

Richie Maccs walks distracted at 3rd Stanza!

And then the shock of the third stanza. With all due reflection Richie, I believe that this stanza is unnecessary, spoils the intended audience’s experience, is preachy and a poor attempt at finger pointing. It is a poor expression of your frustrations with a targeted ‘culprit’. It deflects away any energies of sympathy that the audience may have mustered, ready for action. I feel you have directed your readers the wrong way…for just expressing the experience of the starved was enough. I hate the whole of it and would objectively advice a revision…a chopping even. You have introduced a persona that is very unnecessary in the appreciation of human suffering. You have left your poet’s gowns and crown and donned a politician’s rag and masks. Shame. Shame. Oh shame…must such poetic beauty suffer the stink of carelessness? I hope to bits that you can reconsider this stanza!

And yet, the fourth stanza lets the plot flow so very well…the structural specialization. Finally we get to suffer with the child, enter his emaciated, weak and ‘forgotten’ tiny contraption of human parts! I think the line, ‘We walk on - without a care!’ achieves all that you wanted to achieve in that despicable third stanza. This fourth stanza I feel is complete with the moment that you have creatively put the heart of Mwenye Enzi into that little suffering, nearly dead body. Why then dear Richie, do you preach abominably with the lines, ’LET’S DESIRE NOTHING, THAN TO SEE OTHERS TOO EXPERIENCE RELIEF AND JOY’? is not this an uncreative line befitting ownership by a one less schooled in poetry? It adds not any value I believe and it waters down the experience, again, as the third stanza does. I would have it migrate away from your poem. For only then can we ejaculatingly appreciate the vulture homing in for a feast and the human soul (and body) succumbing to the inevitable feeding of the earth. Maybe I would have changed the word ‘celebrate’ with ‘salivating’ to achieve a continuum of sadness and close the phenomenon .
 

VERDICT

I think you set out to prickle the hearts of men and women who have no want. You have achieved that...creatively provoked your audience to the point where to tip would have them take action. I however feel that you have fallen into the temptation of didactic-ism, of seemingly deciding to take up the problem as your own and direct the potential fury generated by your readers towards a certain class of characters. You, by identifying the 'city dwellers' have narrowed a catholic problem to village-level political wars. You seem undecided, as you clutch on distracting ideas, un-useful blame games and i-spiritual preaching. I find them unnecessary. It certainly is not the role of a poet to burden themselves with finding solutions to human experiences that are considered de-humanizing!

It is my verdict that your poem is approaching the gates of a classic and you can help it reach there by culling away the unnecessary third stanza and the last line of the fourth stanza. Probably a critical revisit of the way the words would sound and how to achieve uniformity (or flow) of the story-plot should be considered. In a sense too, I think that you are close to knitting the poem completely, so that it may be read without the visual photo and yet elicit similar guilt, sadness and compassion.
 

I hope that this short review is useful and none the tiring…and as always, I may be wrong!

*Richie Maccs runs the blog:  http://granddebate.wordpress.com/