Official Review: The call of man by John osiemo
Posted: 04 Feb 2016, 17:27
[Following is the official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The call of man" by John osiemo.]
2 out of 4 stars
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The Call of Man is a book of poetry that all bear a similar theme: nature is good and men are bad. While I cannot say I disagree, it made many of the poems a little depressing and difficult to read after a time. This collection reminded me a little bit of the required readings we were given in school, as it has a page after each poem where you are to write your reflections on it, the title, how it made you feel, what lessons you learned from the poem, etc. I feel as though that kind of took away from the purity of the poems. Many of them had real potential for a life of their own, but the reflection page on the other side of the book stared at me so intensely that it made me feel pressured to really, really think about what I was reading instead of just enjoying it.
The poems cover a variety of topics, but as I stated before, one of the biggest themes is nature and how important it is. His writing style reminds me a bit of Shelley’s ‘The Sensitive Plant’ poem. Some of the poems were a bit repetitive and are almost alike to others in the book, while others were kind of confusing and the words seemed to stumble over each other rather than flow smoothly like poetry should. This made some of them difficult for me to understand and piece together.
The writer definitely comes from a religious perspective, after all, no poet is completely unbiased, but the creationist and very linear way of thinking did get a little old after a while. He speaks highly of the church in one of his poems, saying that it was the most rightful ruler of the world, and often talks about corruption, sinners, the devil, and such.
In one poem he blatantly implies that women who are pro-choice or get abortions are sinners, evil, and monsters. As a woman who is also pro-choice, I found this offensive. Though I know everyone has a right to their opinions, it just rubbed me the wrong way. He goes on in many of his other poems to claim to want equality, but then implies that most women are more apt to cheat on their spouses, be aloof in relationships, be unappreciative, whiny, bad, think of themselves as goddesses, be the cause of a divorce, and are something good to ‘own’. This upset me greatly and I was offended. I do not know if that was the writer’s intention, but that is how I took it. Others may interpret it differently, since that is how poetry works, after all.
On multiple occasions he says that he is anti-racism and pro-equality, which I whole-heartedly believe. But not once does he mention LGBT peoples, and every relationship or duality example he puts forth for the reader to eat up is very cis-hetero-oriented. I myself am a bisexual and am engaged to a woman, so this lack of representation bothered me. I do not think that some people would even notice it, but to me, it stood out and it made me kind of sad that with all those love poems, relationship poems and poems about ‘man and woman’ trans, gay, lesbian and bisexuals were just completely left out. As I said before though, to each their own.
One thing that the author and I can seem to agree on is that there is something quite wrong with the government, and that a change needs to be made. I will not get into politics here, but I did enjoy those poems about the destruction of man at the hands of the rich very much. He also was very adamant, as I mentioned before, on the elimination of racism and discrimination by skin color and class. As a Native American, I could not agree more!
Overall, I rate this book a 2 out of 4. While I personally did not agree with many of his perspectives that does not necessarily mean that the poetry itself was bad. Some people would really enjoy this book! But I guess it was just not really my cup of tea.
******
The call of man
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2 out of 4 stars
Share This Review
The Call of Man is a book of poetry that all bear a similar theme: nature is good and men are bad. While I cannot say I disagree, it made many of the poems a little depressing and difficult to read after a time. This collection reminded me a little bit of the required readings we were given in school, as it has a page after each poem where you are to write your reflections on it, the title, how it made you feel, what lessons you learned from the poem, etc. I feel as though that kind of took away from the purity of the poems. Many of them had real potential for a life of their own, but the reflection page on the other side of the book stared at me so intensely that it made me feel pressured to really, really think about what I was reading instead of just enjoying it.
The poems cover a variety of topics, but as I stated before, one of the biggest themes is nature and how important it is. His writing style reminds me a bit of Shelley’s ‘The Sensitive Plant’ poem. Some of the poems were a bit repetitive and are almost alike to others in the book, while others were kind of confusing and the words seemed to stumble over each other rather than flow smoothly like poetry should. This made some of them difficult for me to understand and piece together.
The writer definitely comes from a religious perspective, after all, no poet is completely unbiased, but the creationist and very linear way of thinking did get a little old after a while. He speaks highly of the church in one of his poems, saying that it was the most rightful ruler of the world, and often talks about corruption, sinners, the devil, and such.
In one poem he blatantly implies that women who are pro-choice or get abortions are sinners, evil, and monsters. As a woman who is also pro-choice, I found this offensive. Though I know everyone has a right to their opinions, it just rubbed me the wrong way. He goes on in many of his other poems to claim to want equality, but then implies that most women are more apt to cheat on their spouses, be aloof in relationships, be unappreciative, whiny, bad, think of themselves as goddesses, be the cause of a divorce, and are something good to ‘own’. This upset me greatly and I was offended. I do not know if that was the writer’s intention, but that is how I took it. Others may interpret it differently, since that is how poetry works, after all.
On multiple occasions he says that he is anti-racism and pro-equality, which I whole-heartedly believe. But not once does he mention LGBT peoples, and every relationship or duality example he puts forth for the reader to eat up is very cis-hetero-oriented. I myself am a bisexual and am engaged to a woman, so this lack of representation bothered me. I do not think that some people would even notice it, but to me, it stood out and it made me kind of sad that with all those love poems, relationship poems and poems about ‘man and woman’ trans, gay, lesbian and bisexuals were just completely left out. As I said before though, to each their own.
One thing that the author and I can seem to agree on is that there is something quite wrong with the government, and that a change needs to be made. I will not get into politics here, but I did enjoy those poems about the destruction of man at the hands of the rich very much. He also was very adamant, as I mentioned before, on the elimination of racism and discrimination by skin color and class. As a Native American, I could not agree more!
Overall, I rate this book a 2 out of 4. While I personally did not agree with many of his perspectives that does not necessarily mean that the poetry itself was bad. Some people would really enjoy this book! But I guess it was just not really my cup of tea.
******
The call of man
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Like TeaAndSpooks's review? Post a comment saying so!