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language: English (illustrations Frederick Butafa)
country: Solomon Islands
year: 1998
form: poetry
dates read: 2.8.23
the Solomon Islander poet Celo Kulaghoe’s collection Raindrops is…hm. overall just kind of reactionary? in a way that makes sense when you read his bio:
Celo Kulaghoe (also Celestine Kulagoe) is from Solomon Islands. He attended Marist Brothers School on Guadalcanal and High School on Bougainville 1961-1968. In 1969 he joined the Marist Brothers Teaching Order as a novice but left in 1974. […] After teaching at Catholic Secondary School, Honiara, 1975-1976, he returned to the USP to study for the degree of Bachelor of Education in 1977, graduating in 1981. […] In 1992 he summarily ceased writing poetry following a dream in which the Blessed Virgin Mary told him that writing poetry was no longer for him; he was also told to discontinue use of his pen name, Celo Kulaghoe. Since then he has found it impossible to put words together in poetry though he continues to ‘write’ in prose. He is now recording on tape a philosophical work entitled ‘The Woman of Genesis 3:15 Revisited.’
like, I was reading through and thinking, “hmm, a bunch of this makes me mildly uncomfortable in a way I can’t put my finger on”, and of course it’s coming from a devout Catholic who was a novice for five years:
You and I know of the man
who came across the seas
to peel off the wrapping of wrong
that our ancestors, for protection,
attired themselves in.
(from “The Missionary”)
(“The Missionary” is also one of a number in the collection with epigraphs from Lobsang Rampa, who I’d never heard of until today but who sounds WILD.)
that said, note that Mary told him that poetry was “no longer for him” in 1992 but he published this collection in 1998, which feels to me like obeying the letter of divine will but not exactly the spirit.
anyway, there’s also a poem that appears to be about marital infidelity (“Spear of betrayal / Glitter of menace / Shone anew, igniting ice, / Quenching the warmth of her face — // Piercing the heart, / Splintering the wall.”), and a poem titled “Civilization Came Home”, which, on the one hand, is critical of the sexual ethics of Peace Corps volunteers, but critical of the sexual ethics of Peace Corps volunteers by way of holding up “traditional” heterosexual marriage with dowry and bride-price negotiations as a superior alternative.
the highlights — aside from “Be the Beast, O Bitch”, which I suspect isn’t actually meant to be a litany against self-censorship and more just misogynistic — were probably “Beware the Vulture”, which I take to be about planes/air traffic (“Your [i.e., the eagle’s] air is no longer free / but full of crossing flights / by the defiant poaching vulture”), and the more personal poems, particularly the laments, and some of the nature poems, although the one I liked best, “Watching Raindrops” is marred by a Lobsang Rampa epigraph:
Watching Raindrops
I say quite definitely that every person must stand alone.
— Lobsang RampaOn a rainy day when the clouds are thick,
charged with lightning, I love
to sit by the roots of the banyan tree,
hear the echoing rumble of thunder, feel the sparks
tickling my toes, my hair a shadow
of the peacock weather-vane, my mind chiselled
like a quarter moon, floating aimlessly
between raindrops, watching them, slow motion,
feeling the tear in every drop,
as they fight to hold together,
smiling in downward flight.On a rainy day when the oblique sun
wages war on the squall overhead, sun
and squall each claiming parcels of the air,
I sit under my umbrella listening
to the pattering of rats’ feet in the field of my mind.
I watch them, torpid, clawing at each other
like life and death.On a day such as this, the weatherman announces gladly
the sparkle trapped in raindrops.
anyway. weird vibes overall from this one.
oh, also, I almost forgot to say — the actual highlight of the collection was definitely Frederick Butafa’s illustrations, which are gorgeous, and helpfully glossed for a non-Solomon Islander audience.
moods: emotional