Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe

Collected Poems by Chinua Achebe

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Within the bright yet unremarkable cover of this small book is the world as seen through the eyes of Mr. Chinua Achebe. The world witnessed by this talented Nigerian-born author and poet contains death, hope, strife, hunger, joy, love, wisdom, and wonder—and Achebe ushers his audience on an emotional journey through them all. As I read Collected Poems, I became more interested in the poet himself and was driven to learn more about the man behind the words. What continues to impress me the most about Achebe is the half-century span of his creative effort and quiet achievement in literature. As I thought more on this, I found that beside his sometimes brutally heart-wrenching imagery, what disturbs me about this man’s literary work is that America is mostly unaware of its existence.

As undeniable proof that big things come in small packages, Achebe’s mastery of the English vocabulary shines in this thin but powerful collection of poetry. He begins with a short preface then presents his poetry in five categorized chapters. At the back of the book are a few pages of notes, which I found to be a welcome and indispensable reference.

Steeped in the tragedies of a Biafra too soon forgotten, the chapter titled “Poems About War” is perhaps the most compelling. Achebe brings to light aspects of war sometimes overlooked. For example, in “A Mother In A Refugee Camp”, a mother’s love for her child converges with her hopeless acceptance of that child’s imminent death from starvation. Passing on into the chapter of “Poems Not About War,” the reader will discover such gems as “Public Execution In Pictures” and marvel at Achebe’s ability to capture the emotion of such an event. The poem expresses gratitude that children who see atrocities in newspaper photographs have not themselves witnessed them firsthand. At the same time, there is an unspoken regret that they may never fully understand injustice and or human suffering.

Much of this book has seen prior publication in 1973’s Christmas in Biafra and Other Poems. For those of us whose memory of the Biafran War has grown dim and for those unfortunate enough not to have read his earlier book, the reintroduction of Achebe’s vision in Collected Poems is nothing short of a gift. So mired are we in our own day-to-day minutia that we rarely notice what has happened or what is happening elsewhere in human terms. Mr. Achebe has, with his elegant words in Collected Poems, given both a reason and a means to see beyond our own doorstep.

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