Review by: Jeremy T. Karn
Book Genre: Poetry
Author: Temidayo Jacob
Temidayo Jacos’s new micro-chapbook, “flowers & other names of love”, is a beautiful poetry collection that is comprised of six powerful poems that are centered on love, loss and lust.
The collection begins with a brief introduction of the book wherein the poet gives an overview of the entire collection. Though we are yet to know the real meaning of love, but we know the symbol of love; we know how it feels like and how it tastes on our skins. Temidayo’s book paints the art of love so well by representing it with different types of flower. The meaning of love was beautifully presented in the poet’s metaphorical expressions.
The first poem of the book begins with strong opening lines showing grief as another meaning of love. How we show love to our loved ones after they die was expressed by Temidayo this way:
i bring together
the seven petals of rose
you left behind,
and assemble them
upon your grave.
The collection choices are really intriguing, especially its ability to use “flower” to discuss love, loss and lust in a very simply way. The poet’s aim of this book is to make readers fall more in love with poetry, by pinching the readers to love things that are meant to be love and also embracing their losses and lusts. The poet also aim to make people see how a particular social phenomenon can be viewed from different perspectives.
The poet also gives a mental and physical picture of what he expressed in each poem in the collection. The love, loss and lust. The poet expresses how loss feels, and how it eats us up when you fail to embrace it:
everyone who walks through
this garden acts like i do not exist.
i am tearing apart my sepals in tears —
and in a peculiar way, i begin to wear
my sadness comfortably, day and night
The poet began every poem in the book with a quotation from other poets and writers. Each quotation serves as an introduction to the poem on or in which it is being used.
Temidayo Jacob illustrates how love feels like when it is wanted and starved for. In one of the poems in the collection the poet expresses his feeling of being wanted and depressed of this thing called love:
make me know love —
touch me, kiss me
& make love to me
Temidayo continue this same poem with a twist by showing how after wanting love, we also want to be broken. We crave to be heartbroken to validate the fact that we can love and we have loved:
make love to me
deflower me, break me
—make me know love
Just like we know the symbol of love is a flower and that in many cases, the symbol of flower is love; some of the poems in the book show us that the symbol of loss and lust can be the very feelings that are roaming in our throats. The feelings that will make us sob in dark places waiting for our lovers to fall in our arms.
flowers & other names of love, is beautiful in and out. From the cover art which makes you anticipate reading it, to the introduction, dedication, as well as the poems themselves. Temidayo Jacob’s book is an encompassing poetry collection that was fearlessly written to blend raw emotion to celebrate love, lust and loss.
—Jeremy T. Karn, a Poet and Sociologist from Monrovia, Liberia.
foenix press 