Twenty Notes on Love: Lessons from A Cult of Fireflies
A Review By Izang Alexander Haruna
In The Forty Rules of Love, the two parallel stories intersect through the transformative power of love and self-discovery. If Elif Shafak used Rumi and Tabriz to give us forty rules of Love, Naimah Sabo and Iliya Dennis join force to give us what I'd describe as 20 Notes on Love. In twenty poems, almost all brief and precise yet no less potent, we see what the poets want us to think of Love.
Beginning with "The way home" we are to note that Love is a path, a journey of hope as expressed in one of the couplets making the piece: "...is the path festooned with/ the freshly bloomed lily of your presence." Here love becomes also a conductor to that destination the heart desires, but it is a destination in itself as we'd see in the second note. That love is a safe place, a place of healing remedies, being an "asylum of broken bodies", for "mediation for damned souls"; even the one giving love looks inward to see and acknowledge that "i’m damped in love’s pit," then it asks, "do you mediate for souls damned by love?" A possible answer is found in the third note: That love is an endless longing, stubborn optimism, and willed anticipation...unending desire; the lover's desire is summed in the title of the piece: "I look forward." This could account for it being damned. Damned it is if it fails to live up to this desire.
In what is the fourth note, Love is a cyclical treasure hunt, essentially so because the lover says to the beloved: "I Will Find You"; and being a treasure is not merely a hide and seek but something of lost and found, the persona in the piece expresses it thus: "And when I can’t find you,/ then it’s my turn to be found." Either way, whether one finds or is found, the end result is simply same; we see this in the fifth note: That love is an arrival, it is home (for where is home but where the heart is at ease?). A beautiful portion from the piece titled 'Homecoming' reads: it’s your remnant/ in the tide/ that leads me home.
In the sixth to tenth poems, we find the following notes: That love is beyond transaction, a paradoxical alliance of equals and unequals at once. That Love is intentionality and prudence - in this case synonym for sacrifice, responsibility; love is to sell oneself to buy the other. This alone can cure the unpredictability that comes with love. That Love is a profound vow, a sacred promise - it is a plunging into the eternal, an attempt of temporal immortality... Because forever can also spell the number of perfection. That Love is fun and adventure...like stamped feet in flakes, it is a conjuring of memories. That Love is exciting... Down to its origin, it is nothing of the distortions that its abusers have made of it. It is something of Truth. In the tenth piece we see the climaxing lines: "True love is worth the hype, the wait, the appraisals as butterfly in the tummy and a cult of fireflies in the heart." From here we get the title of the collection.
As note eleven, Love is - in its basic form - a joining together, a mutual union, a unity. It is everything but division. And if communion, then a food for its own journey. Love is a gift of the most memorable memories comes as twelfth note, see what the poet recalling such memory says: "...But he was the first to never give up,/ and would grant me wings to fly/ and a nest to couch." In the thirteenth note, Love is a reason, a cause, a factor; love has this question to ask: what wakes you up? In the next note we see that Love is a rite (even if also a right); yet never a bland monotony, a reenactment of that which seems the same yet is never the same. A constant that is ever dynamic. This we see in the poem itself: "i’ve wondered why catholics/ keep repeating the same ritual—/ taking holy communion everyday./ then i found you—/ an emblem of love, and like holy communion, i keep returning to you." The fifteenth note aligns, that Love forgives, it is renewal; it is reparation - atoning for even that which one did not commit for the sake of the one the heart loves.
What do these poets want us to think about Love? Five more key notes: Love comes with fears, it is dreadful as it is beautiful, a mix of pessimism and optimism. Love is light, it is an illuminator, call falling in love as joining illuminati, the cult of light, whatever the ray maybe. Love is introspection, it is a seeing of oneself in another and if seeing another in oneself. It is containment. Love is revival, a rising from the ashes like a phoenix. It is mystical. Love is an immersion, a soaking of oneself into a watery body (this watery body is colourless, odourless, tasteless) it takes whatever colour, shape, taste and odour we make of it. Love is a universal solvent. It is something of biochemistry.
At the end you'd agree that love can be summarised as the cult of fireflies; a cult because it is characterized by excessive devotion to a person, idea, or belief system, where rituals and expectations around love dictate personal identity and fulfilment. Fireflies, to borrow from Adunni in Abi Dare's The Girl With the Louding Voice, because lovers use their glow for communication and mating, with each person having unique flashing patterns. Their glowing light represents the spark of romance, reminiscent of the fluttering feelings in relationships. Within context, a lover symbolises good messages to the beloved; each represent the "eyes of angels" to the other.
Izang Alexander Haruna is a poet, critic, researcher and freelancer. Also, a missionary given to Campus Missions. He has passion for literature and education. As an avid reader, he advocates for reading through his Facebook page. Enjoys variety of genres especially the categories of poetry, histories, biographies and memoirs, African fiction, Philosophy and Theology.