A READER-RESPONSE JOURNAL: Bola Essien-Nelson

What She Told God...And His Response

"She told God she wanted to fly. To escape every limitation placed on her from birth. To soar to places unimagineable to her ancestors. To reach for the stars and land on her dreams. She told God she wanted to create. To build legacy and transform everything she touched. To inspire generations to come and to nurture the visions of prophets yet to be born. To generate change with her mere words. She told God she wanted to love and trust unconditionally. To be the answer to every prayer he had ever prayed and the manifestation of every fantasy he had convinced himself would never come to pass. To be the breath of fresh air he had never sat still long enough to take in. And God told her that eyes had not seen nor ears heard what was to come for her."

- Rahiel Tesfamariam.

The Book: "Preserve My Saltiness"

"In Preserve My Saltiness Jennifer addresses life's everyday experiences to our world's trends and shared challenges of the 21st century. Every poem embodies piercing insight and breathless passion. This is the work of a career poet." Jess Rimington, Spoken Word artist & Executive Director of One World Youth Project, USA Also available on Amazon.co.uk and a Bookstore near you: • Naija-Sistas Book-stop, Henry Nelson Consulting26 Festival Road off Adetokunbo Ademola Street. Victoria Island, Lagos. • Terra Kulture (Bookshop), Plot 1376 Tiamiyu Savage Street, Victoria Island Lagos. • Florence & Lambard Publisher and Booksellers, 202-204 Ikorodu road, Palm Grove, Lagos. • Latter Rain Assembly Bookstore, Plot 4 Akilo road Ogba, Off Oba Akran Avenue Ikeja, Lagos.

A review of "In Days To Come"

Jennifer is a remarkable young lady. Living in a country that she truly loves, yet recognizing the many problems as well. From her young mind she reaches out through her poetry hoping that her messages will reach out to educate, but even more so, to offer hope.

Jennifer does not write in rhyming verse or strict form, preferring the freedom to express her innermost thoughts without restriction. Yet poetry it undoubtedly is.

Many have struggled to define poetry, in the same way that many struggle to define art. Poetry paints with words and expressions and as such can be both art and craft.

I believe that if Jennifer’s words move you, then she has expressed both her art and her craft.

Finally, we have tried to avoid making changes to her writing, except perhaps for a few proof reading corrections. We hope by this you will capture not only the words, but (also) the essence of Jennifer’s culture that shines through her poetry.

Philip G. Bell

Editor,

Young Poet Society

I SURRENDER

show me a way
a channel, a route
through which I could reachout to this hurting world
and wipe out that tears rolling down her cheeks

I know, I know
I must tread only on that path I know well
else I cramp my style with stinking gibberish

My wallet is flat tonight
please don't count on that
Still this urge to belong
an undiluted desire to serve
yearns so loudly I can hold back no more

I surrender
in total submission my heart cry
Here I am, use me lover of my soul
to be a helping hand in my society
to learn to give without asking for a refund
to able to influence others into aiming for the best
never to try playing god over my peers
to you my king I obediently surrender.

(c)Jennifer Ehidiamen

Words are golden

Words are the only Jewel I posses
Words are the only clothes I wear
Words are the only food that sustains my life
Words are the only wealth I distribute among people says Tuha,
Witness the word; He is God. I worship Him with words.
.................................
Learn to take your own decisions; Irrespective of whether they turn out to be right or wrong.A wrong decision does not mean failing,A wrong decision is the first step to knowing what a right decision is.So, let the first time come because what would then follow would be right.You never know - You might just get lucky and be right the first time! (Arti Honrao)

Plagiarism means presenting someone else's work as your own. If you present the words or ideas of an author without acknowledging the source, you could be accused of plagiarism. Whenever you use a quotation from a book or reproduce an author's ideas (even in your own words), you should indicate the source. -(Now I can't remember the source of this info...lol)

QUOTES ABOUT READING AND BOOKS:

Ernest Hemingway said "All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you feel that it all happened to you and after which it all belongs to you."

"Books are the most mannerly of companions, accessible at all times, in all moods, frankly declaring the author's mind, without offense." says Amos Bronson Alcott.

"Everyone who knows how to read has it in their power to magnify themselves, to multiply the ways in which they exist, to make their life full, significant, and interesting." says Aldous Huxley.

"If a book is worth reading at all, it is worth reading more than once. Suspense is the lowest of excitants, designed to take your breath away when the brain and heart crave to linger in nobler enjoyment. Suspense drags you on; appreciation causes you to linger." - William Gerhardie.

"If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write things worth reading or do things worth writing." -Benjamin Fraklin.

"Nothing links man to man like the frequent passage from hand to hand of a good book." -Walter Sickert.

"Neither is a dictionary a bad book to read. There is no cant in it, no excess of explanation, and it is full of suggestions, the raw material of possible poems and histories." Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"The delight of opening a new pursuit, or a new course of reading, imparts the vivacity and novelty of youth even to old age." Benjamin Disraeli.

"The fact of knowing how to read is nothing, the whole point is knowing what to read." Jacques Ellul

"What is reading but silent conversation?" Walter Savage Landor.

"Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A (best-seller) is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness." Daniel J. Boorstin

"Reading after a certain (time) diverts the mind too much from its creative pursuits. Any man who reads too much and uses his own brain too little falls into lazy habits of thinking." Albert Einstein.

"The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book." Northrop Frye.

"Literature is news that stays news." Ezra Pound.

"Master books, but do not let them master you. Read to live, not live to read." Edwad Bulwer-Lytton.

"Never lend books - nobody ever returns them; the only books I have in my library are those which people have lent me." Anatole France.

"Book lovers never go to bed alone." Anonymous

"Tis the good reader that makes the good book." Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Books think for me." Charles Lamb

"The true university of these days is a collection of books." Thomas Carlyle

"If a book is worth reading, it is worth buying." John Ruskin

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." Mark Twain

"Reading, like prayer, remains one of our few private acts." William Jovanovich

"A book is like a garden carried in the pocket." Chinese Proverb.

A READER-RESPONSE JOURNAL

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Saturday, May 14, 2011

The Diary of a Desperate Naija Woman in the year 20-Ten by Bola Essien-Nelson

Linking life and litrature.

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