Samuel Mann

Aging Towards My Freedom: A Collection of Poems Samuel Mann

Aging Towards My Freedom is a collection of poems uniquely capturing the process of growing old from within the spectrum of four main themes: Aging with Freedom, The Art of Love, Eros and Acts of Defiance. As a departure from the Sartrean existential concept that all men are condemned by their freedom at birth the poet predicates his incremental freedom on the loss of it through the institutionalisation of society from childhood until he reaches the age of seniority. As a man becomes older he begins to regain that lost sense of total freedom and to instinctively defy traditional customs. This experiential awakening is heralded by the opening poem of the same title and strongly articulated later on by others such as Vulgar Man, Despicable Me, In no mood to be arsed, The Birthing of the Older Man Inside, Apologies Regretted and The Man who pretended to be a Goat. The Art of Love, which follows as the second theme in the collection, combines the poet's own personal early skills as a visual artist with his gradual progression into the more fluid literary sphere. Notably, this marriage of the two mediums can be easily deciphered in The Portrait and Tubes of Colors as well as The Word which plays upon the mythology of creation. The poems that specifically relate to love, What if I told you and Saying Goodbye to the Rain, are imbued with euphoria, sometimes wildly so, but at the same time pragmatically circumspect and remorseful with age. Eros is where the poet takes off the glove of prudence and boldly confronts the sexual longings of the older man, exemplifying his uncontrolled feelings and insatiable desire to be explosively young again with My Epiphanous One and to demonstrate his wiliness with I'm not sexy and Too Many Etceteras. Finally, the rebellious dimension underscoring the more radical and enlightened reaction of the older person is post modernist and openly critical of the-establishment by Breaking all the Rules and shouting Rebel! Rebel! And eventually Reversing to be hit by a Truck. In many respects, the process of growing old is similar to the rites of passage of a younger man except that it is paradoxically unfolding in the reverse direction much like the curious case of a Benjamin Button.