The mystery of life and the endless questions, with no answers

| Friday September 4, 2009 00:00

Reviewed by
DORCAS MOLEFE
Correspondent

View from an Escalator is an anthology of poems by a South African woman poet, Liesl Jobson. The anthology, of 35 poems, arises from a grant by the Centre for the Book under the National Library of South Africa. Jobson's awards and prizes are many including winning the POWA Women's Writing Poetry Prize, the Faye Goldie Award and receiving first prize in the English House Poetry Contest in 2003.

Her poetry was performed at the Art of Survival exhibition of the University of Alaska Fairbank's Women's Art Group. In 2004 she was nominated the focus poet, in 2005 she won People Opposing Women Abuse Poetry Competition, in 2006 she was awarded the Ernst van Heerden Creative Writing Award for her flash fiction. Her other works include a book entitled 100 papers (2008). Her work has appeared in journals and publications in South Africa, United Kingdom (UK) and United States of America (US).

The poems in View from an Escalator are about a variety of subjects: loss and death and how these rob loved ones of lovers and children; love and lost love; relationships (of parents and children, wives and husbands); sadness; poverty; hunger; disease; irreversibility of time; the mystery of life and the endless questions, with no answers.

Jobson's poems are about various human emotions, and raise very pertinent questions about the meaning of life, the search for meaning and sometimes the absence of answers to life's questions. The first poem, Genetic gift, reflects that the search for genetic inheritance is a mystery. Even after the search what one ends up with is another question. It seems to ask the timeless one of Who am I? Similarly, Night Bird is 12 lines of 11 questions and uses the night as an embodiment of mystery.

The theme of loss is well-captured in Compensation; having lost an eight-year-old, the bereaved buys a bright coloured parrot as she leaves the cemetery hoping for its comfort. But the parrot's comfort, brightness, singing does not match the loss.

Dissatisfied with the parrot and returning it to the seller, the poet does not feel the pinch and loss of the five percent charge levy for returning an unwanted parrot.

Another poem, No More Surprises is about a mother who is separated from the father of her daughter and in missing her daughter and not having access to her, she has to endure and holdback her emotions. She desires to buy things for the daughter and win her onto her side.

The theme of loss can be closely tied in to hopelessness in the nature of things and rites of passage. In Recital in Christ, Blairgowrie the speaker admires Gili a recorder player who adds life to the church. Despite this important role, Gili goes to become an infantry soldier. The irony of life is that even as one gives life, brightens other people's lives, the giver still has to pass on, exit the stage, play the last note and die.

This theme also runs in Brass Plaque, about a medical doctor whose life was dedicated to healing and curing people's ailments.

Having died what remains of him is the memories in his haunted child, his wife and his name on the brass plaque. The difficulty for loved ones to cope with death of their beloveds recurs despite knowledge that human beings are mortal.

The medical doctor's efforts are to prolong human life and the brass plaque is another humans' attempt to make his life be of more permanence.

Similar to what the reader gets reading the anthology, reading Zulu love letter, the woven beads evoke memories of childhood. The message, orange, blue, white paralleled that of apartheid taught by her mother and the message of sufferance and hope. There are also subtler meanings of combining mother's teachings and her own experiences and coming up with something new and different.

The theme of unpredictability recurs and is well-captured in Common Elements, which denotes the similarities between children and poems as being unpredictable.

There is no predicting of their conception, how they arrive, what they will do once out of sight and that they both may go astray. It is also captured in What I Should Have Worn at My Wedding where the speaker suggests that what she wore on the occasion of her wedding was inappropriate for the life that followed. The brightness of the clothes worn that day should have been the dull brown of potato skins, pearls should have been pills, fuchsias for fists and anything that signifies the dull, painful and sufferance she experienced in her married life.

The theme of tolerance, especially parental tolerance, is reflected in The Graffiti Artist, in which a parent's gift of black markers to an adolescent daughter is used by the daughter to write graffiti of scriptures on one side of a wall. The parent bears the daughter's deed knowing full well the implications of repainting the wall.

The repainting costs are outweighed by the value of the graffiti that is keeping the adolescent busy.

The parent assesses the two variables of cost and value, and while she does not have regard for the religious significance of scripture, she appreciates it for keeping the adolescent daughter out of idleness and possible mischief.

While many of the poems are about serious and sad moods, Summer Supper describes the abundance and delight brought by the coming of summer.

The beauty of summer colours, such as, purple, electric, green and peach echo the poem's celebration of summer moods, such as, radiance, joy, passion, glint and abundance.

Jobson brings out the beauty and celebration of ordinary and simple every day things.Chewing Right celebrates such, the art of masticating, carefully to avoid disappointment and pain over a good meal, one has to know which side of the mouth is heat or cold sensitive and is appropriate to use.

View From An Escalator is both the title of the anthology and also a poem. The poem is about relationships. An animated grandmother at a dress shop in a bright red winter coat, rose pink lace over, wine dark silk is imagined to be advising female shoppers to choose very carefully their men, it should be those who can afford such dresses 'because a well-cut dress can outlast a man', because while love needs space and time, a well-cut dress can outlast the man who bought it, can speak louder than words and time.

Still on relationships another poem, Lovebirds, compares a pianist's relationship with his students, he is happy about their coming, learning and going away after he has empowered them, which contrasts to his sadness, the possessive wife's whom he describes as a pelican ready to catch and not let go.

Many of the poems are about people and creatures, and people compare their lives with those of lesser creatures and realise how the animals enrich the human's life. The poetic style is varied with there being short and long poems. This work by a renowned poet is highly insightful and evokes the reader's emotions and moods. Readers at different levels will enjoy it. e-mail dorcasmolefe@yahoo.com