Crossword, Or Ode To A Man’s Identity
by Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan
In Crossword, Or Ode To A Man’s Identity, Saheed Sunday explores the weight of identity on the neck wearing it; a name is a way of tying us to something, and that’s exactly what he enabled us to see through this poem. To have us get immersed into the poem, the writer entered the poem and wrote from a first-person perspective, giving us the readers a chance to receive and feel the poem through his eyes as though, we are the ones who experienced the scenario first-hand. Of course, all of us in one way or another wear the weight of our identity.
In the poem, the writer first identifies as a Muslim, while at the same time taking us with him to feel the weight such identity places on him. It’s very common to associate Muslims with terrorism because several bloodletting terrorist gangs have in the past linked their course to Jihad. The writer being a Muslim pictured how easily it is for people around, especially the non-Muslims to box him into being a terrorist just by his identity.
Again, the writer further explores his racial identity as a black man and the heaviness that comes with defending such identity, in the face of a society that could pronounce one less because of their skin colour. We can agree that most people easily perceive you for what they see and not necessarily what you are, and that’s what the writer tries to picture in this poem.
Diving deeper, we could see through the poem that in virtually every identity a man bears, there’s a heaviness that comes with it; some sort of a robe the society see when they look at him. Just as the poet rightly stated in the poem, being queer, human or anything at all a man is named after, is capable of placing baggage on him; something he would have to carry for the rest of his life. The question that begs for an answer is: ‘Why not see man for what he truly is and not the identity he wears?’ We all must learn to do better and stop boxing anyone into a corner just to satisfy a certain stereotype we hold of them.
Through the poem, the writer deployed a judicious use of personification to drive home his narrative, and this enabled us to experience the subject matter of the poem in a more concrete and vivid imagery. Another thing that further contributed to the smooth delivery of this piece, is the simplicity of the language with which it is written; this made it so accessible for the readers in a way that we not only get immersed into the feeling of the poet but also, experienced it with him. Overall, the poem treats a topical issue that concerns all of us, because even by virtue of our names, and our nature as humans, we are all tied to something; an identity we all bear.
