The poetry book The Face of Poverty Is Black & Other Poems is described on the blurb as cosmically living words painted with the zeal of color and effervescence and the poems, electric. The Face of Poverty Is Black & Other Poems is a script on the modern statusquo of dependency.

The poet thinks the ethnic cultures of Africa are depreciating with every new trend popularized by American pop culture. Under the most threat is oral tradition. In the “internet age”, parents don’t talk to their children as much (and as well) as they used to. This is having serious consequences in Africa as oral tradition and ethnic histories are being watered down and social identities are being reconstructed by western standards.

Because of the decline in oral tradition, a growing number children don’t learn the language of their hometowns or know the histories of their ethnicities etc. African cultures are slowly creeping towards a dangerous detrition. It is with this passion, having noticed that Africans are becoming more Americanized by the day, than Africanized that led the poet to capture this in his poetry book, The Face of Poverty Is Black & Other Poems available on Amazon as paperback or kindle : https://amzn.to/2Xod1Kk

The poetry captures the popularization of American pop culture to every nook and cranny of the world and its corresponding decline of local African ethnic identities. Have you ever pondered that the culture of your small ethnic group is gradually being chipped away but you are more interested in foreign trends? Yes, even traditional Masaai boys wear fancy shoes during their ritual coming of age ceremonies nowadays.

The Face of Poverty Is Black & Other Poems, written by Gabriel Opare further encompasses a range of other subjects from betrayal to love and romance, history and even ironically, poetry itself. The poet, Gabriel Opare’s bio on Amazon declares he is unsatisfied with the current evolution of poetry and prefers the classics to more instagram-ish poetry. He is 21year old poet from Ghana and The Face of Poverty Is Black & Other Poems is his first poetry book. Here is an excerpt from the book

Shrouded by the veil of obscurity

But still uncovered and plundered

By a ruthless foreign culture

America

America chases the villagers in wild visions

Of those who possess sufficient courage to dream

Where the villagers reside

Is no longer sweet and chaste

It is bound by irons

Ravished by judgment

Detained by the standards

My beautiful village

Is haunted by the scourge of death

And the supremacy of American ways

But my beautiful village

Didn’t cause the heating of the earth

Or raise the ocean tides

OF THE DISAPPEARING FROGS

It is a cheery little biota

That imbues color in my day

When I can see the grass and air and earth

Contorted in a spry array

The fairies of nature float on every air

Bathing between the lime grasses

Bleaching the earth an ebullient fair

But every scrawny pretty specie

In such a sluggish manner

Is slew by a mean plague

Climate change

So there’s nary one left to play

Dancing with me in the flora

The golden frogs have gone away

And el valle is in the nude

What may die from there next

The air, the earth and grass?

That carols to my soul alas