Brave New Effort – ‘Epic Anthology’
-Dr Rama Rao Vadapalli V.B.
Of late there has been an un-orchestrated demur at Indian English poetry that it is hegemonised by desi poets and that the publishers too followed suit. Desi is no un-complementary word or deprecation. Desi ghee is supposed the best by all. How can one stem the so called hegemonists except by bringing out a sumptuous book of poems from the huge fraternity of poets native as well as Diaspora. Editor Vivekanand Jha and the Canadian publisher Hidden Brook Press, designed and displayed a voluminous anthology of one hundred and fifty of multitudinous cadres, professions, age-groups among both the sexes. There was Palgrave who brought out a golden treasury several decades ago. In this millennium Vivekanand Jha spent two years to bring out this anthology printed in our country.
Dr Debjani Chatterjee wrote in her foreword to this book: “…Another egalitarian feature of the anthology is the platform that it offers its contributors; well-known or neglected names.” (Emphasis mine) The editor rightly called the book an epoch anthology. Only a very few poems can be presented in this review as any review does.
Abhay. K’s ‘Qutub Minar’ is a brief and enchanting poem.
Soaring
poetry in the sky
unrivalled flight
or a feast
a toast to time
a tower of victory
or a calligraphic feat (p.6)
‘Kamathipura’ tells us of the location of a red light area in realistic terms with a conclusion of heart rending actuality:
‘….
The room smells of stale perfume,
Of sperm, of sweat of healthy thighs
… … ..
While pulling out and pushing in
He notices the mark that mother gave her
Last time he had ever seen
His seven year old sister, lost for
Fifteen years.
His pleasures became his instant fears
And knowing not what to do further,
He stays still, not knowing how to move any more. (p.7-8)
Ambika Ananth’s ‘When in Love..’ makes the reader think of alluring passion:
Like water with no colour of its own
Looks blue under the blue sky,
I feel lovely
Assuming the beauty of your love’s passion… (p.31)
Anita Nair’s short poem ‘Whisky Whispers’ is safe for it makes us think without inebriating us: uninteresting:
In the night
the undersides that strange light?
Is it the pale fist of the wandering moon?
Or the street lamp with its steadfast beam?(p.48)
Bibhu Padhi’s poem ‘A Sign of Winter’ makes the thoughtful reader look inwards and enjoy a new sensation of either flowering or blight;
‘In the old time, the new year.
Small promises rise up.
… … …
Promises. Will the hear
know which ones to choose
in an act of delicate gathering at all?(p.91)
Almost every penman or poet has his or her own perception of the ars poetica. Here is Bipin Patsani’s imagination:
The voyage
More exciting
Than the destination,
Making a poem itself, in itself,
Is a wonderful experience
As intimate and intense
As love making. (p.97)
C.D.Norman thinks deeper about the pre-making pangs in ‘The Unborn Poem’
‘Nothing spills out
but a few halting phrases
assembled limb by limb
to please the prying eyes
which quizzically enquire
can science give birth to poetry? (p.112)
The Himalayan poet D.C.Chambial wrote ‘Om’ which illustrates his devout temperament:
Ran
Like a horse
Amuck.
… … …
Over a stone
broken heard the sound
Om1 Om! Om!(p120)
Debjani Chatterjee wrote about Angulimala the dreaded finger cutter who turned Buddha’s devotee:
‘… … …
How many children whimper through the night,
chased by the finger-monster,
till theyturn around and don his snarling mask?
How many Angulimalas still stalk the earth?
Are any fingers safe?(p.123)
Geetashree Chatterjee descrbies autumn while trees shed leaves and cold winds blow:
Frozen leaves hold their breath
Footfalls are silenced to death
Autumn is yet to recede
But the painter’s brush has a wintry edge
As He hurries a stroke in watery hues… (p.141)
Gopal Lahiri paints a picture of the quality of serious minds:
In a quiet room with no window
Exploring the forms of life in darkness,
A search for strange and unknown depth,
We move to our dreams and destinations.
We fall for the inner mysteries and shadows….(p.146)
The tree is a wonderful trope with many an exposition by imaginative minds. Harish Kumar Thakur pays this tribute in his poem ‘A Lovely Poem is Like a Tree’:
A lovely poem is like a tree
But greens of leaves and strength of stem
In a poem shall we ever see?
A poem is a song, a prayer, a psalm
That tells us to pray and sing of god
But a tree sings of god while raising its arms. .. (p161)
Clouds make us all thoughtful and for poets they give an impetus to imagine high. Poet Raghupathi says this:
I am drunk with the dribbling manna of their joyous spirit
as I sit in the lap of soaked hills
and heat their feeble but penetrating voice calling me
to wake up and race with them to the heavenly heights. (p197)
Karan Singh once the real king and later the learned parliamentarian sings of the Supreme Being in his poem ‘To Lord Siva’:
I am Your play thing.
You can breathe into me
the fire of eternal life
and make me immortal;
or You can scatter my atoms
to the far off corners of the universe
so that I disappear for ever
… … ..
I am Your plaything
the choice is Yours. (p203)
The writer of the poem ‘Evolution in Reverse’ is a microbiologist:
‘I am
an amoeba
one-celled
fluid and shapeless
moving in response
to simple stimuli.
… ….. …
Tell me,
In all these many millions of years
What have we achieved by evolution?
Were we not
immortal
long before we knew it? (p231)
M.V. Satyanarayana mulls over things after life in “Graveyard’;
…..
At last, they found their real home here;
safe and snug in good neighbourhood and scorpions
of vultures, serpents and scorpions
having well escaped from vile human jungle.
This is the grand grave yard
Of life after life
Where every human is dreaded to tread
but ultimately reached when dead. (p.235)
Mani Rao has written this classic poem ‘Classic’:
If everything is impermanent why do you want it
I don’t want anything forever
You will disappoint everyone
Then you will be free. (p.241)
In an age of gadgets, electronic devices and computers and information technology things are imagined accordingly. Nikesh Murali writes ‘The Web-Cam Suicide’:
Death in 1’s and 0’s
The binary expression of muted cries,
The digital murmur of a broken heart.
Tears don’t follow hypertext protocals,
The soul is not coded to turn a blind eye. (p.275)
Nuggehalli Pankaja writes a long poem ‘Ripples of Emotion’ in seventeen ripples and here are a few of them:
III.
Old Age
Shrivelled flowers
Women haggard,
Eye,
each other
with thoughts unspoken
V
Glory
Stars twinkle
with mockery
over our short-lived glories.
XIV
Ains
Like so many daggers
At throat
Sins cut our soul. (pp 278-81)
Male behavioural quality has two hands which are shown by P.K.Joy in his ‘Two Hands of a Man’:
In the crowded bus
he slowly looks around
And stealthily stretches
his craving right hand
To touch the young lady
standing by his side
While with the left he protects
his own wife in the crowd…. (p.290)
Here is a mother’s thought in Poornima Laxmeswar’s poem ‘A Letter’:
My dear unborn-
While you silently rest in the warmth of my womb
With those sensitive eyes which cannot even descry
Here I am –
Already knitting you’re your perfect
Diamond like dreams
Unpredictable, yet wished for. (300)
Prabhanjan K.Mishra’s ‘The Dung Woman’ has humane sensibility and a deep apathy for the poor woman, poor in many ways:
The sickly, woman draped in a white sari
Turning gray by overuse and
For want of soap, collects dung
In a basket carried on her head.
… …. …
She takes a greying thread
from the hem of her threadbare sari
and wraps it around the sacred Banyan:
“May the memory and sweetness
of our union flower and bear fruit
in my womb. Oh Lord, don’t let
the little angel turn into a mean pig
like his chameleon father.” (p.303)
Raja Nand Jha looks deep into his heart when he writes ‘Poetic Homage’ marked (for my wife) underneath:
1.
I wouldn’t let you die
Till ink’s left in the pen
I vow to write on thee,
Please grant it fulfilment.
6
Spring of life
With whom I spent
I, an umbrella,
And she, its frame. (343-45)
Ramendra Kumar’s Adultery’ looks into the aetiology of the ailment:
More often,
It is not
The body
But the mind
Which commits
Adultery…. (.350)
‘Freezing Fantasy ‘ is a poem by Semma Aarella expressing the speaker’s heartthrob;
Time slowed the growing chill
Froze its tireless hands as the
Frost crept to every corner and
Settled immaculately on the wall clock.
The tempt (sic) of nature mounted outside
With congeniality to my thoughts
And the poet within was just about to
Transcend the physical and live greater ecstasies
But you vengefully rose from the seat,
Drew toy curtains over the window
And killed a beautiful evening
With the attribute of a jealous lover. (p.374)
Sneha Subrahmanyan Kanta’s poem ‘Death, A Prelude’ holds the mirror up to the busy modern traffic. Hearts of people briskly rushing forward on the road are mostly not in the right place:
She winced in pain
not a soul stooped by
passed away
at an unearthly hour
with silent deep sighs
The moon glazed her
motionless body
which became cold
as hours flitted by
Morning shadows arrived soon
To beckoned closed eyes. (410)
‘Keeping Count of Things I Need’ is Sreelatha Chakravarthy’s poem about the speaker’s wish, desire and hope:
…. …. …
two eyes that twinkle,
twenty reasons to smile,
I peek for such pretty images
In the mirror for a while;
One word of kindness,
hundred different trends
I search for romance of that kind
from a human being I call friend. (p.423)
Stephen Gill’s ‘The World of Poetry’ is about poetry and it concludes thus:
The soul of poetry
can be reflected but partially
through the earthly mirror of symbols. (p.431)
Tej Deep Kaur Menon’s ‘Charcoal’ is the expression of a horrifying hurt with scalding burns in a woman’s heart:
Charcoal on a white hospital bed.
Who will keep the flies away?
The maggots of dowry that
poach the veins should burn
till no more.
I burn with a mugful of
kerosene kept aside
every time you doused me,
charged with sparks,
when you hit me. (p.449)
Usha Akella also wrote a poem about poetry in ‘Tomorrow’s Poem’:
I want to begin a poem
Without saying ‘I want’,
Wait like a page or
Undone button in the dust,
A poem that comes like
a blighted ovum,
fading as a body fades into a shroud. … (p.453)
Vandana Kumari Jena’s poem ‘Angst’ is a realization.
It took me
thirty minutes
to pour out
the pain of
forty years of my existence
all my suppressed desires
and silent screams
withered hopes and
clipped ambitions
into twenty lines
of poetry
How empty
my life
must have been. (p.463)
Vibha Batra’s poem ‘Happy Birthdays’ is about the speaker’s coming to a conclusion:
It’s my birthday
While some people exult and go ‘yay’
All I can do is grimace
And count the lines on my face
… … …
I just wish I could be free from birthdays
And they could go away
On a well-deserved holiday. (p.470)\\
Vivek Narayanan’s ‘Wind’ reveals intense cerebration’
If there are others on this page with just,
they are marked by a tapering mound of thatch,
or the yellow shrapnel of a shrine.
Wind is the hint of what could happen. (p.483)
‘Elegy to Animal’, is the poem by Vivekanand Jha, the editor of this anthology which reveals his deep thinking and attitude towards life:
Time turns turtle on tip toes.
Now roaming and bruised souls
of your slayed comrades
wavering over their heads
like rage on the mind of insanity.
They are now parched
For want of each other’s blood.
Soon you’d witness them chewing,
devouring flesh of each other
like a horde of hyenas. (p.489)
All the five hundred and odd poems in the anthology are valuable and each reader has his own taste and ability to rank or grade each poem or poet. The hard reality of life is that nearly all girls get married no matter their pulchritude. Beauty is in the eyes of the one who sees. To talk in terms of percentages – of the very great, pleasant, worthy, absolutely unworthy – is passing value judgements not necessary in literary criticism and still less in reviewing. I remember Sisson’s phrase ‘fishing in a barrel’. This book can be marked AAA – acclaimed with alacrity and aplomb.
The Dance of the Peacock, An Anthology of English Poetry from India, Ed. Vivekanand Jha, Hidden Brook Press, (Canada) 2013 ISBN 978-1-927522, pbk,
pages 518, Price 26.95 USA$
Posted by Nuggehalli Pankaja on March 3, 2015 at 05:58
Thanks for mentioning my poemlets