A Peer into Giovanni's New Room

Make no mistakes: I do not review Saraba’s fourth poetry chapbook as a contributor or its part-publisher; I review it as a literary consumer in awe of its relevance and finesse.
Its title, GNR alludes to the seminal work of one of Black’s greatest, James Baldwin. Although Baldwin’s book deals with a rather different and precarious kind of love, it retains an aptness only fit for this anthology of poems.
Love is an elusive concept. It supersedes definitions and keeps being reinvented; only the characters are different. Boy and girl, boy and boy, girl and girl. Love in its mutation has knocked out gender as a denominator, rather it dominates in every hearted emotion, be it incest or the conventional love shared between lovers.
Love in its elusiveness cannot be boxed into a suite of an emotional kind. It keeps unveiling and relieving itself in varying circumstances retaining a unique feature: animals. Humans as animals only enjoy a higher kind of love elevated well above the cusps of lust and this is what we find in GNR, a suite of expressions and impressions and expectations on the act of loving.
The motive of love in itself is questioned in the poetry of Zino Asalor where he affirms, “I love because I can/I love because I do”. This is a rhetoric answer, the panacea to all questions that question the need for love.
The poetry of Dadepo Aderemi is expressive in all filial intents, it surmises familial love into an entanglement that present itself with doubt, dowry and divinity.
Rayo Adebayo’s suicidal litany is suggestive of the fate of awry love, which is love nonetheless. It speaks into the highs and lows and the occasional overflow of passionate love and the result is poignant and satisfactory to all those who identify with it.
My poems and that of Emmanuel Iduma are an urban dialogue reminiscent of J.P Clark’s Streamside Exchange only that the characters are different, they are two heterosexual lovers trying to outwit their adulation with The Love Songs of Alfred J. Prudfrock in context.
Uche Peter Umez’s economy is the gift of words not said. Meaning is substantial and replete in his renderings that shapes earthly beauties as a woman’s anatomy.
Numero Unoma, the Queen of erotica, presents poems that thrive on word plays with such astonishing depth. Her sense of Imagery is almost clinical, scalpel-sharp and precise.
And Ajayi Kolade’s Odes to his Late Father is a fit conclusion to this intriguing spherical odyssey on the means and meaning of love. There is love in here, all of it!!!