BY UCHE UWADINACHI
To read a poem is to taste a poem. Like a hot chunk of bean ball within the upper tongue and soft palate, you can’t immediately swallow it instead you gently crunch, licking it spice with your saliva until the very taste is squeezed out for utmost satisfaction.
Poetry brokers no fast reading like is done to a newspapers, newsletters, magazines and some other piece of official documents where you read ,hurrying to get to the end of the story for the basic information or resolution-thereby swallowing the whole content without waiting to taste the words, the context, and it concurrent relationship with the other unit of words. And the result comes out against consummation, what has been achieved is mere consumption, a bowel movement without any meaning gained therein for the whole body and the life so lived.
The sound, shape and arrangement of the words are of essence to a poetic piece as much as the message. Infact, the appeal commences from the eyes, to every other organs: the ear, nose, mouth, tongue, and the ear, all alert, alive and aloud to enable the maximum derivation of the best. The brain, coordinating all these senses, the heart pulsing beat to match the rhythm of the poem. The failing of any of these attributes is a minus to doing justice to the poem.
To learn to savour a poem, one has to realize that poetry is concrete and sensitive. Reading a poem is to first realize it a physical object though in An Abstract medium by which ideas conveyed. A piece of poem whether short or long, possesses a presence which is equivalent to a material existence, just like a standing sculpture, a painting or even a meal of tasty barbecue.
TASTE is an internalized self receptor which is felt in the bud-deep down inside of the individual, which is when a poem can begin to communicate. So even when one listens to the poem read by another person, it is still not adequately felt because taste differs in tongues. It is pertinent that you read it to yourself-by yourself, aloud or at least mouthed to oneself.
To read a poem is to taste a poem. When you feel a poem, you have succeeded in creating your own sound of the perception of the words you speak. Your mouth is the taste bud of poetry and not your flipping eyes. Thus a rich poem is a rich tongue.
