I WILL WRITE MY OWN SUMPTUOUS TALE: A POETIC ANALYSIS OF OGEDENGBE TOLULOPE IMPACT’S “A SUMPTUOUS TALE” – BY EBUBECHUKWU BRUNO NWAGBO
A SUMPTUOUS TALE | Ogedengbe Tolulope Impact
Home will ask us for a tale
That will drool down dazzling desires
Of culinary delight in the bowels of hungry men,
And we shall reply it with a folklore,
A sumptuous tale of meals and delicacies
That drives screaming bellies into nocturnal bliss.
We shall tell of the lofty cadence,
The palpable rhythm of the periodic pestle
That plunges in proud perfection
Into the cardiac cavity of maternal mortar;
We shall tell of the emergence of pounded yam,
And a mountain of white flexible spirals.
We shall tell of the pleasant aroma
That emanates from the seasoned egusi,
Blended with fresh vegetable leaves,
Stocked with ponmo, dried fish, and succulent beefs,
And the sweet taste that comes along with
The peppered stew flavoured with locust beans.
We shall tell of boys who sit in circles
Outside a thatched cottage with local lamps
To caress the body of pounded yam
Robed in the sleeves of hot egusi blends
As the evening breeze blows and whistles
Gustatory pleasures into their ears.
Egusi – melon
Ponmo – processed cow skin
References
1. Chinua Achebe, THINGS FALL APART (1958)
2. Yemisi Aribisala, A Mountain Called Okene (2019)
Reading Ogedengbe Tolulope Impact’s “A Sumptuous Tale” brings vivid images of a love feast I attended sometime in August 2019. It tells me what to do when;
“Home will ask us (me) for a tale
That will drool down dazzling desires
Of culinary delight in the bowels of hungry men,”
Reading this poem, I am sure you can recall a similar tale. We would all remember the “proud perfection” in our bellies out of the kind heart of our mothers. In describing how mother’s maternal mortar birthed succor for her maternal mortals, the poet speaks of the miracle that happens in the “cardiac cavity of maternal mortar”. Have you ever wondered what would have happened to mortals without food? I guess you wouldn’t want to imagine that.
Telling the testimony of mortals’ salvation from undue mortality, Ogendegbe Tolulope Impact tells us how food emerged to save us all –
…the emergence of
pounded yam,
And a mountain of white flexible
spirals.
… of the pleasant aroma
That emanates from the seasoned
egusi,
Blended with fresh vegetable leaves,
Stocked with ponmo, dried fish, and
succulent beefs,
And the sweet taste that comes
along with
The peppered stew flavoured with
locust beans.
This folk lore reminds me of a song always sung by my late grandmother, whenever the floodgates of her heart opens in praise of food. She sings:
“What would we have
done without kerosene?
The water that mercifully
decided to ignite flames.
All thanks to cassava, the tree that
mercifully gives us food”
That was my late grandma’s own “Sumptuous Tale”. The tale of how she was able to feed her many children and dependents in her large family.
Following the same palpable rhythm of granny’s song about cassava/ fufu, Ogendengbe makes more melodious its “lofty cadence” by telling us about the cousin to fufu— pounded yam, which he describes as “mountain of white flexible spirals”. This looks like an allusion to the mountain of pounded yam a wealthy man in Chinua Achebe’s 1958 novel THINGS FALL APART presented to his guests.
In THINGS FALL APART, “the pounded yam dish placed in front of the partakers of the new yam festival was as big as a mountain. People had to eat their way through it all night and it was only during the following day when the pounded yam ‘mountain’ had gone down that people on one either side recognized and greeted their family members for the first time. “Both pounded yam and fufu are “mountains of white flexible spirals” that go through the same process of pounding on the “palpable rhythm of the pestle” in the stomach of the mortar.
As the wealthy man’s guests demolish the mountain of pounded yam, by immersing it in what food author Yemisi Aribisala describes as “lubricating hot broth”, Ogendegbe’s guests “caress the body of pounded yam/robed in the sleeves of hot egusi blends”.
Tolulope Impact, an ace poet brings alliteration to bear in this work. As /d/ alliterates in “drool down dazzling desires” in stanza 1, /p/ alliterates in “palpable rhythm of the periodic pestle/That plunges in proud perfection” in the second stanza.
Eulogizing the power of food, he tells us how the belly “screams” in hunger, as if the belly has a mouth. Then, food like a pacifist speaks peace to it by “drooling down dazzling desires/Of culinary delight in the bowels of hungry men”. The belly is also personified with the ability to feel “delight” here. Did you also notice that the breeze is said to “whistle” in the last stanza of the poem?
The ability of the ace poet to use words that strike very vivid imagery makes the poem a truly appetizing food poem. Appealing to the reader’s sense of taste and smell, Ogendengbe invokes imagery of “ponmo, dried fish, succulent beef, pounded yam, yam, stew, vegetable leaves, locust beans” that gets you salivating. Words such as “sweet taste, succulent, seasoned, flavour, pleasant aroma” give you a scintillating sensation.
I bet you might see yourself eating in your dream after reading this sumptuous poem, if you don’t have any food to satiate the feelings it invokes. That was my experience in 2018 when I first came in contact with that year’s entries on the PIN Food Poetry Contest, one of which is “A Sumptuous Tale”. For now, I am grateful to the poet for telling this tale that has birthed a food poem I have been labouring to write – of how I was treated to a king’s feast on the night of 24th August 2019 at Ijebu-Igbo in Ogun State, during a love feast of a group of Anglican Students Fellowship of Olabisi Onabanjo University Ago-Iwoye. Thanks, Ogedengbe! I am off to write my own sumptuous tale!
Ebubechukwu Bruno Nwagbo
For: ANNUAL PIN FOOD POETRY CONTEST