Blog Review: Ode of Sheobi
Blog Source: http://odeofsheobi.tumblr.com/
Reviewer: C.M. Ledin
Review Date: July 12, 2013
It feels appropriate to begin this commentary with a quote that, interestingly, Sheobi posted on her blog some time ago:
"Look at you. You’re young. And you’re scared. Why are you so scared? Stop being paralyzed. Stop swallowing your words…” [Louise Flory]
Flory, an American actress for those of you unfamiliar, holds a mirror for this writer. "Look at you," inquisitively the moment you read Sheobi's work, wondering, "These words are passionate, emotional, complex." Whether that is the opening from adolescence into a broader understanding of love, desire, and passion; or even if that is a simple touch and artistic expression through Sheobi's second-person directives, the point of the matter is that Sheobi's writing is about touch.
Sheobi's abstract narratives are precise in emotion, evocative and fleshful - asking the reader not to see the surroundings, but to grasp the mind's image. I've previously mentioned her second-person directives, by which I mean her deliberate nudging toward a specific person [or even persons], who his never revealed. For example:
Darling, the emotions I exude
when I'm with you is something
out of the ordinary
and I struggle everyday to let you know
but I still think it’s not enough[.]
This passage is taken from a longer, untitled poem. You'll notice the absence of a particular subject, and, presumably, the I is that of the writer whose interest in another is defined by the outpouring of poetry. While, as a reader and a poet, I feel slightly demured by the absence of concrete imagery and vague emotions, Sheobi's work is not unlike many young writers I have read - including the [continued] development of my own work.
Sheobi's writing, however, is genuine; and I challenge Sheobi to continue broadening her abilities through concrete imagery. Start with narratives. Read Andrew Hudgin's Air View of an Industrial Scene and listen to how poetic details fill your head with such majestic sounds. And then return to emotion, and feel how the emotion can turn into shapes in the mind's eye: Create pictures, show bodies, visceral passion. Share your own experiences and show us your world connected between the outside and the internal.
The greatest poetry is made in pictures of ourselves. Let others see us through clarity and precision.
