NAKED: A POETRY COLLECTION

Abiodun Oyewole’s Naked: A New Poetry Collection is imbibed with wonderfully unadorned free-form poetics that transfigure the natural world with boundless and mystical cadence. Oyewole – poet, teacher, and founding member of the spoken-word group The Last Poets – expertly weaves the physical state of being naked and the essence of truth excavated from naked language. The poems in this collection provide an emotional and complex literary landscape carved by life experiences and the essential quest for freedom.
ABIODUN OYEWOLE (Author and founding member of The Last Poets)

These collected poems are inhabited by an “I” or the voice of Oyewole. We know this because of the autobiographical content in poems like “On Being Here” and “Older But Not Old.” With nostalgic echoes of the past, Oyewole uses language with great dexterity. In “Anti-Superstition,” we hear his voice remark on past hardships:

I took the shackles
On my wrist and ankles
And made bracelets I could sell

But there’s also a hearkening to a collective past. Hardships endured by generations before – a communion between tragic history and future fortunes.

A broom swept his feet
He spits on it
And won the lotto

The short verses, simple language, and unabashed declarations of faith, trust, and love give each of these poems a powerful upward momentum. In these times when we can’t reach out to those we love, where a hug or a kiss can be a death sentence, Oyewole’s poetry reminds us of the importance of hope. We live in a country that fights to deny the truth of its past sins, but we have to persevere, aspire, and fight for justice in the hopes that our collective voices will put this country on a righteous and equitable path to redemption.

Like the “naked poetry” of Juan Ramón Jiménez that inspired this collection, Oyewole’s Naked is about disrobing and renouncing the superficial impositions of materialism. What is left is an unfettered path towards transcendence.

DIGGING THROUGH THE FAT: Gessy Alvarez, October 19, 2020

THE MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW
THE SOCIAL ISSUES SHELF/WISCONSIN BOOKWATCH

Black Lives Have Always Mattered
Volume 14, Number 2, February 2019

Compiled and edited by poet, teacher, and founding member of the American music and spoken-word group, The Last Poets, Abiodun Oyewole, Black Lives Have Always Mattered: A Collection of Essays, Poems, and Personal Narratives extends beyond the Black Lives Matter movement’s primary agenda of police brutality to acknowledge that even when affronted with slavery, segregation and Jim Crow, racial injustice and inequality, black lives have always mattered. This anthology of essays, personal narratives, poetry and prose is organized into five sections: “Mourning Black Lives That Mattered,” “Black Skin/White Masks,” “Black Spaces/Black Places,” “Black Lives Remembered/ Reclaimed,” and “The Legacy of Black Protest Continues” that addresses a wide range of hot-button issues that disproportionately impact the black community. While written primarily by African American poets, writers, activists and scholars, selections are also from people of the Latino and African diasporas, and white activists. Collectively, these 79 contributors provide a call-to-action that challenges readers to confront long-held values and beliefs about black lives, as well as white privilege and fragility, as it surveys the historical and contemporary ravages of racism and its persistence of structural inequality. Black Lives Have Always Mattered also provides a first-hand perspective to a problem known to the African American community long before the Black Lives Matter movement revealed it to the general public that black lives have always mattered. Connecting the past to the present, the contributors of Black Lives Have Always Mattered provide an eye-opening and engaging collection that has the potential to reignite a broader push for black liberation and equality for all. Unreservedly recommended as a core addition to both community and academic library Contemporary Social Issues collections in general, and African-American Studies supplemental reading lists in particular, it should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that Black Lives Have Always Mattered is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $9.99).