The Struggle Between Faith and Finality

No, the Nigerian poet Feranmi Ariyo’s debut chapbook, I Watch You Disappear, does not feature any prose poems. Yet, the diction, movement and narrative structure of the poetry share characteristics (such as scene-setting, dialogue and narrative causality) that are central to personal nonfiction, as well as to the most impersonal fiction, which often take stylistic distinction of style as its breathing force. It is immediately noticeable that Ariyo’s habitude to the prosaic is somewhat disabling: his expository poetics invests too heavily in the lambent quality of his poetry. No sooner does he dazzle us with his velvet diction than we were touched by the nagging sense that we should be reading through compressions and implications, two requisites of rewarding poetry. Simply put, Ariyo leaves nothing to the reader’s imagination. And yes, the poems are as dour as an oncologist’s silence, for they are a child’s account of his experience witnessing the harrowing process of his father’s cruel battle with cancer and his eventual succumb to death.