The Word Café Podcast with Amax

S4 Ep. 254 How a Poem Becomes a Movement and Shapes History

• Amachree Isoboye Afanyaa • Season 4 • Episode 254

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A single line can tilt a life—or a nation. We dive into the power of poetry as a force for creation, persuasion, and cultural memory, tracing how short, vivid phrases turn into mottos, manifestos, and movements that outlast their makers. From love words that soften the room to village proverbs that personify healing, we unpack why rhythm, image, and cadence bypass resistance and pull us toward action.

We follow the arc from poiesis—the Greek root for “making”—to modern history, exploring how early poetic currents in Karl Marx’s writing primed a worldview that matured into social and economic ideology. Then we track the countercurrent in the American shift from E pluribus unum to In God We Trust, showing how a motto is more than branding; it’s a compass for identity, policy, and belief. Along the way, we celebrate the living poetry of dialects, the wit of pidgin, and the way grandparents’ phrases become blueprints for how we move through the world.

This conversation blends cultural storytelling with practical takeaways for creators, leaders, and listeners who care about words that work: how to craft lines that travel, audit the phrases that shape your days, and practice ethical oratory that builds futures worth entering. If you’ve ever felt a sentence lift your heart—or steer a crowd—you’ll find tools here to create with care and listen with wisdom. Subscribe, share this with a friend who loves language, and leave a review telling us the one line that changed how you see the world.

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SPEAKER_01:

Hello there. Welcome to the World Cafe Podcast. This podcast has been designed with created content that centers on the power of words. Can we really do anything without speaking? Can we really do anything without the agency of words? Yes, that is what this podcast is all about. And I am your host, a Macri Iswe, your neighborhood word trader. I believe in the power of words, for it is the unit of creation. I trade in words to profit my world in my space. Yep, back into that space. What space? I'll tell you when I return. Ah, okay. Yes. I will begin with that. I know you are saying coffee again. Well, you can't get it wrong with a good cup of coffee. Yep. Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Good everything. Welcome to the World Cafe Aha Live Show. You know how we say it. This is the space where we come in to lean on one another's experience to forge a positive path. It's a safe space. And each time I come into it, super excited, I must tell you. Yep. So what are we going to be doing today? Ah, I will begin with this. I hope I don't bore you. But in any case, if you're bored, it will stare you on the inside to do something. My elder brother reached out to me, I think, a month ago or so. Yes, I have an elder brother for the information. Yeah. And he was just sharing some thoughts with me, and I laughed because each line he was giving out were things I had heard in a movie or come across. I'll share them with you. History has never been kind to any man who pleased God. The function of man is to live not to exist. He who makes a beast of himself loses the pain of being a man. If you've watched the 007 series, Jim Bond, yes, uh, you you must have heard all of this, but that's not where I'm going. Today I want to focus on what I call the power of poetry. Yes. We're big on words here, the word cafe, so we take our time to look at certain things, and I love observing. And when I start observing, I ask questions. Speaking is a good thing because we're speaking beings, as in human beings, we're speaking spirits. But there's something about poetry that commands the attention of everybody. Somehow, be it in English, if you're in an English speaker, a non-English speaker, your native language, your dialect, when things are said poetically, they kind of hold you, you know, in this frame, and you tend to respond in a certain way. And I kept asking myself why. Why? So I did a little uh digging just to like understand why it will amaze you what I came upon, and that's what I want to share with you. First of all, what is poetry? I said definitions and limitations. The minute you define a thing, you have put kind of a limitation to it, so from there you begin to build, it's like from known to unknown, you know, mathematically speaking. So I discover the word poetry comes from the ancient Greek word poesis, and what is the meaning? The act of creation, you see, or making from also as an act of creation, gotten from the verb polio, poelio, which means I create, even as you open scriptures, the Bible, Genesis chapter one, the way it flows, very poetic. It points to this factor, the power of poetry, or what poetry is all about, creation. The minute anybody wants to create something, he or she puts down a thought poetically, like your manifesto, and those words, the way they flow, they may not necessarily follow the grammar frame, but somehow it elicits an emotion to the hearer. I'll give you an example of one. For if you're an Italian speaker, you know, if you hear an Italian express love to her beloved or his beloved, you hear things like amore me. Amore, my love me. Now look, look, flip it, amore mi, amor is love, me. That's my love. So it goes the other way around if you look, if you try to translate it in English and all of that, but hearing it alone, it evokes this thing in you tiamo, amore mi, amo remi, miyamo. These are all expressions of love, but poetic in its essence. So when you look at it carefully, you come to see that there's something about poetry that commands attention. So, why did I bring this? I'll tell you why I brought this with a story of a man. Every political idea stems from a poetic verse. Every poet, I mean, political idea, economic idea stems from a poetic verse. One man proved it, and somehow his poetic writings and authorances took hold of the world in such a way that he's long gone, but his ideology is still being propagated across different timelines. Karl Marx, the father of communism. So when you study, look at the life of Karl Marx, he did not begin his economic ideology and political ideology on the strength of male words, it came from a poetic verse. Yes, he started writing poetry, his anger. So, from what I gathered, Karl Marx was a German Jew, if you the Austria-Hungarian uh kingdom and all of that, he said. I don't want to bore you with all the uh nitty-gritty details, but that's where he came from, you know. And his father was a Christian, a believer, but somehow Karl Max went away from his father's uh what I say belief system, and he decided like to start his own. Now the story has it that he started believing in certain things like chaos, and his main influence was the German folklore, you know, the German folklore. There's this folklore in Germany. If you if you read about it very well, you come to see that uh they believe in it so much. A personality called Mephistophelis. Mephistophelis is a demonic entity, so he started listening to so such folklores, and Mephistolis has understood the background has it that he is a spirit of disorder, anti-order, and if you look at the background of communism, that's where it came from. So he started writing, first of all, you know, he started writing, write, and write and poetic verses, and the early uh the way the story has it, the early experience of Karl Marx, when you read his write-ups were disorderly write-ups, challenging the order, which built gradually and snowballed into an economic, would I say, principle. And there's one thing you have to understand: every message that does not carry a commercial viability, supported by a theological mindset, dies over time. But Karl Marx built on these principles, a message that has a commercial value, that is to say, it can hold the economy, then the belief system of the people, theology, fusing all together, that riding on the platform of poetry, you write a verse, and this poetic verses can be turned into plagues, and that's how we began, and gradually the communal communism ideology swept across Europe, it was deadly because by the time minds like uh Lernin, Stalin, uh the Italian Mussolini, and the rest of them jumped on this ideology. History has it, Hitler, even, yeah, socialism and all the rest of them. Now, this is this is what I came to share with us on the show today, like the power of poetry, the power of words, weaving it in a poetic sense, like I just explained earlier. It's about creating, poetry creates, like Shakespearean theories, Shakespearean verses, when you read them and listen to them, it's like there is this ideology that is being created, and it takes you lands away, and you your imagination travels the way the words interplay of words, you know, and all of a sudden it is built up. But you know what? There was a counter to his ideology, also, yeah, which was also the poetic verse. So when he was building all of this and uh trying to get a movement, which he did, like the critical mass, which he did, and people followed, and what have you, they ran along with him and all that. Somewhere in the in the west of the US, there was a counter to it. So earlier in my life growing up, these words rang a bell. In God we trust, you know, a lot of us see it on yes, the American is it their currency. We really don't know the origin, poetic origin. So before now, the Americans had on their on their dollar bill it was not in God we trust. Yeah, in God we trust, it wasn't it, but they had to come up with this because the ideology propagated by Karl Marx using the power of poetry was anti-God, it was Mephistophilus influenced. So the Americans who came, who were America legs, the story of America largely when you look at it was built by the Puritans. Let's not go into the other dark side, that these are Christians, and they were like, No, we need to fight back, and how did they fight back to propagate a poet, a poetic verse, which is in God we trust, and that was the what I say, birthing of capitalism. So you see, communism is a political, social, economic, politically motivated ideology, so is capitalism. But when you look at the driving force, the poetic force behind these two, one is dark, or one is of the dark, the other is of the light. So that's how Americans came upon with that. You know, in God with trust. But I want to show you something, I want to show you something, something amazing, something I would uh make you like see in God with trust, you know, is the official model of the United States as well as the motto of the you know, blah blah blah, along with the nation of blah blah blah. It was adopted by the US Congress in 1956, replacing so they had something before replacing this a pluribus unum. Yeah, it sounds poetic, doesn't it? That's Latin. So this is the meaning of that. The American Congress or the American Society had this before a pluribus unum, it simply means out of one or out of many one. You get out of many one. That used to be the motto of the United States of America, you know, which had been the de facto motto since the initial design of the great seal of the United States, but to counter the ideology of Leninism and all of that, better by Karl Marx, as in communism, I beg your pardon. In God we trust, and the United States of America, the Congress passed it in 1956 and they embraced it in God we trust. That is a poetic verse, powerful poetic verse. So you come to see that most of the things we do in our communities, in our societies, are as a result of the hook poetry has over us. Yeah, that's the truth. Now, let us look at this closely. I'm going to go into our nativity in your dialect. Those of us who grew up in the village or we grew up with grandparents and all of that, excuse me. Now, I'm from Calabary in River State, and I'm going to give you some lines for those of you who are from that part of the world. You will understand what I mean deep. Now, I grew up hearing my grandparents, my mom say things like this. When somebody is sick and they want to respond in terms of treatment and go get this, go get that. There's this particular word they use when they want to point you to go get a particular ointment and all that. They call it Obi Foomba. I will translate. So Obi means sickness. Yeah. Remember those lines your grandparents used to use, and you will laugh. Like, why does grandma or grandpa sound like this? It stares you, Obi Fomba. That is, go get me that oil mint that kills sickness. So can you kill sickness? Poetically, you can. So they are like given a persona to that what I always say uh ailment, and also given a higher persona to what will cure it. So they go ahead and go get me. That's so poetic. Now there's this other one she uses that describes when you want to do things quickly in a hurry and get it done. Offer, so will be so offering so obisop. Offer means heart. You heard me say obi a while ago, sickness. So you want to do the things quickly. Like I wanted to go quickly, so offering so obis so quickly. Very poetic in its essence. Now you come to see our politicians when they come to sweet talk us, they rise on the strength of poetry, they play with words, interchange, they rasmatase and mesmerise. That's the power of poetry. The power of oration is strengthened by poetry. Because when you speak, you create. When you get into that poetic element, what you're doing, you're creating, you're creating a future, you're creating an atmosphere, you're creating a destination, and in the minds of the people, they are excited. Like, wow, this guy can speak so well. Beyond the speaking, he's creating an image for us to walk into.

SPEAKER_00:

But more often than not, we come to realize most of them were just lying to us.

SPEAKER_01:

So, guys, when you listen to anybody playing with your intelligence with words, this is the reason, or this is one of the reasons, the power of poetry, the power, you know. I say it all the time. I believe in the power of words. Why? Because it is the unit of creation. I trade in words to profit my word. So you see why? I didn't know it from the very beginning, but researching, staying, building, I now know why. So in your local dialect, poetry controls. Like when you come to Nigeria, when you listen to the people from the Delta, which we we call them Wari, the Wari people. When you stay with the Wari people, the way they speak, even in the pidgin English, you just laugh. Poetry. They play with words, the metaphor they use, the synonyms, the the antonym, just name it. Parts of speech that they play around with. How they give non-living things life, how they give animals human forms, that's the power of poetry. So every society, egalitarian or not, rides on poetry. Even the arts, the artists, those who paint poetry, they are created. That is the power. That's what I came to do on the show today. So if you are a native speaker of your language, you can tell, you can relate all those poetic verses that your grandfathers, ancestors have used that stuck with you growing up. It became the basis of your creativity, it became the basis of your philosophy, it became the basis of your economic principles. That's the power of poetry. You know, you would say to yourself, he has come again. Well, I'm still on the way. Thank you. I I am excited each time I come into this space to to share moments like this with you. It means a lot to me. It does.

SPEAKER_00:

Alright, guys.

SPEAKER_01:

Yep. Before I go, I'll tell you this. I'll say this. We are available. Yep, our social media handles. You have them. We're on TikTok. Where are we again? Facebook. Where are we again? Instagram, where are we again? LinkedIn. Yes. And we have a channel, a YouTube channel where we put up amazing content. You've been following, I know. So go ahead, subscribe, hit that notification button, and wait for amazing poetic verses to hit you like a tornado. Well, I gotta go now. It is always exciting to come into this space and share with you. You're waiting for me to say that, right?

SPEAKER_00:

Did I come your way again?

SPEAKER_01:

Bye for now. Awesome time it has been with you on the World Cafe Podcast today. Thank you for being there. You can catch me up on my social media handles: Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, all at Amakri Easterwood. Also, you can get copies of my books at Cocktail of Words, The Color of Words, by HRO Notebook, and Hoker's Focus on God on Amazon and Rovinheid Online bookstores. You can also subscribe to my YouTube channel at the same address at Amakri Easterway. I'd love to hear from you and how this podcast has impacted you. You can leave me a message at my email address at MacriGaribaldi at gmail.com. That is A-M-A-C-H R E G A R O I B A L D I. Yeah. Till I come your way again. Bye for now.