Reviews

Ndewo, Colorado by Uche Ogbuji

jeff_holt_4's review

5.0

Many talk of everything either being One, at its center, or becoming One, in one type of apocalyptic scenario or another. What one rarely finds, however, is concrete imagery woven into carefully crafted verse that brings readers closer to a vision of such an apocalyptic Becoming. And yet, what one finds in Uche Ogbuji's "Ndewo, Colorado," is a narrator who is, while solidly grounded in the natural world, constantly experiencing this supposedly "external" natural world merging with his sense of self. Being accustomed, personally, to reading poetry that dwells on the past, I have found it most refreshing to take the journey with this narrator and to experience, vicariously, the fear, but primarily the wonder and joy, the narrator expresses regarding his daily adventures in finding identification with a greater sense of Self, or Oneness. To pick out a representative quote from this stunning volume, I turn to "The Wayfaring Mysteries," in which the narrator asks, in a repeating line, "This bounding mystery, what is it to me?" Students of poetry may notice the cleverness of this line, both in its attribution of "bounding" to "mystery" to make mystery seem like a wild animal, as well as the internal rhyme in the line. But the line is more than technically beautiful. It may be seen as the central question of this work, and it is asked in hunger. While no final answer is ever supplied, readers who take the journey with Ogjubi will be treated to the many discoveries the author finds in attempting to answer it, all in well honed verse that reads easily but bears study to those inclined to do so. I encourage people to take this journey. You will be enriched by it.