Obadike/Bohince

In thinking about the way these two collections unfold as entire books, I found each to have its merits.

Obadike was the more useful of the two to me. (Perhaps it is just because I enjoyed her writing more than Bohince's, but that's neither here nor there.) I liked that the book started out at one time in the author's life and then went off into unconnected territories. This book made me think about collections of poems in terms of constellations. I admire the way that Obadike used the book in a non-linear fashion, but at the same time achieved some sense of what we might call narrative. By starting at one place in time and then moving backward or into the metaphysical and then returning to the original place with a renewed sense of authority or uncertainty was an original approach to the lyric tradition.

It is for this reason that I enjoyed Obadike more than I enjoyed Bohince. Bohince's work all stemmed from a place of authority that did not seem earned. Perhaps the author deserves the kind of weight she was trying to impart onto the collection, but if it does not come from within the book itself, the reader is wary of such authority. The process mentioned above, of beginning, leaving and returning, employed by Obadike gave her final poems the kind of authority that Bohince's flatly try to assert.