Gabriel Awuah Mainoo’s 60 Aces of Haiku
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Last Updated on September 14, 2019 by Memorila
Gabriel Awuah Mainoo’s 60 Aces of Haiku, an anthology that captures moments in court tennis game is enjoyable, Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy writes
My first contact with the haiku style of poetry was in a literature textbook I read back in my university days. The first haiku I read was Ezra Pound’s ‘In a Station of the Metro’, and what fascinated me the most then were the tons of analysis that accompanied this seemingly simple poem of three lines! I have since then gone on to read many other poems written in the haiku style and I have never stopped marveling at the multiplicity of images and depth of message called up by such husbandry of words.
Gabriel Awuah Mainoo does the job of an ace sport photographer in his 60 Aces of Haiku. However, Mainoo does not need a camera to create the beautiful images offered in the anthology, he conjures his images from the tip of his pen onto paper using words and makes them come alive in our mind eyes! Each poem in the anthology captures specific moments in court tennis game using a merger of tennis lexicon and images called up from nature.
The sweet thing about these poems is that one may not need to rack one’s brain working out the mathematical equation of meaning in the poems, as the tennis lexicon that may pose a barrier to meaning are explained off in footnotes; these make the conceits become easily discernible, and they allow the reader enjoy the anthology as he is able to run through the poems quickly.
The conceits conjured up in the poems are amazing and amusing at the same time; even when they capture moments of loss in the tennis game. Gabriel Awuah Mainoo’s 60 Aces of Haiku is most definitely the kind of book I want to be caught reading everyday over a hot cup of coffee!
© Ubaji Isiaka Abubakar Eazy 2019
