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Book Review… Caribbean poet delivers from the heart of Japan
Book: The Way I Learned To Ignore
Author: Juleus Ghunta
Reviewer: Dr Glenville Ashby
A Jamaican writing from a remote village in Japan is a bit unique; as unique as the compelling amalgam of poems he has compiled.
Juleus Ghunta’s work is haunting, indelible and provocative. There is a maternal thread running through his every thought. There is nostalgia, aphorisms and a poet discernibly disturbed. There are ironies, paradoxes; twists and turns that leave the reader dizzy, guessing: what comes next?
The Way
And the phantasmagoric character of the West Indian mind is never effaced.
“My grandmother feared ghosts. I mocked her. Alone, I learned that despair is a graveyard. Like her, I sprinkled salt after dark sprinkled Psalms, each verse a charm for vanquishing the kind of ghosts who, like rain, seep into crack-riddled homes,”
Yes, this is an excerpt from the eponymous The way I learned to ignore.
Ghunta’s art is definitive, a revolution in poetic construction. But this is just the beginning. Ghunta recalls the unseen, the psalmic invocations of his ancestors and the suffocating love of his parents that borders on hate. His play of words is demonstrative. He writes: “At fourteen I craved simple things: my parents talking tenderly to me, syllables soft as Q-tips, and always with their hands around my neck, fingers intertwined like an amulet.”
But through a baptism of searing quietude, he finds solace and learns to shut the door to his demons. And in Reincarnation, the fantastical rears its head: “Manzie says miss Merle came back as a vulture circling her house……such a desirable bird for a devout woman who made dukunu and coconut-drops, spoke in tongues, and sang spiritedly at penny concerts….I tell Manzie God’s ways are higher than man’s, miss Merle shall never be hunted.”
And there is a subtle darkness to the highly metaphorical, Moving Again – where terror and a sense of dread are unmistakable.
In A Drought Ended, there is the specter of domestic violence in all its gore: “He would throw her across the room, some men make sport of such things, I was warned to see and blind, still I watched through the window how children, forced into a ritual dandy shandy, dodged their wailing mother…..” But poetic justice balances the scale and the victim fights back. The end is not pretty, but it “serve him right, they said …injustice don’t sleep long as death.”
And leaning on the beaten down but resilient woman, he lends the proverbial words that only she can offer in Reassurance: “The struggle will be long but it will not be forever.”
And with simplicity but poignancy, he recalls the days of yore in For Mamma Georgie. The rustic days are ever present: “This poem is about the endurance of the Pell River Spring which filled our pots and buckets, long after our standpipes stopped running….”
And some degree of levity emerges in Jonah: “If I had been Jonah I would have taken a few items into a belly of the big fish……had he taken a list of Grace Kennedy-approved recipes, some utensils and seasonings….”
Indeed, every poem is instructive and well timed – for sure, no easy feat.
Ghunta is a genuine, visionary poet with depth and an enviable range; equally comfortable as a philosopher, a satirist or a story teller. Maybe his publishers should explore a Japanese translation of this brilliant work – for obvious reasons. How fitting would that be!
(ISBN-10:9769561029
Publisher: Bamboo Talk Press
Available: Amazon.com
Ratings: Highly recommended)
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