POETRY
Three journeys
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SUDEEP SEN looks at some recently published poetry collections.
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MEENA ALEXANDER brings to her work a varied range of landscapes — India, Sudan, England, America — as well as a strong sense of being a woman, and of the issues that arise from being a minority/ black poet in a primarily white American community. Her first book, Stone Roots, appeared as early as in 1980. She has since then published a book of criticism, a novel, and a memoir; and her two most recent books of poetry are Illiterate Heart and Raw Silk.
The two pamphlets — "The Storm" and "Night Scene: The Garden" — work as companion long poems. The first relates to the tearing down of her father's house (to be replaced by a new one), and the second is about her mother's home. Both these houses are located only twelve miles from each other in the landscape of her childhood in Kerala. Alexander's poems tend to have a languorous feel about them. She uses the sequence-form to build scene after scene, weaving characters with feelings that gradually heighten the further you travel with her. Myth, language, conflict, all collide, "And in the empty hold of air / whispers of children born into this garden" closes the Night Scene.
Spare language
In these books, her language has become sparer and there is a strong sense of her own positioning vis-à-vis society, transnationalism, multiculturalism, womanhood, the mother tongue, and the English language.
Further, there is a significant shift towards the use of American poetic syntax and cadence, and an acceptance of New York City as her permanent home which lends her the most immediate identity. More so than what one had seen in her earlier work, in these two recent books she is on an intensely interior journey, a journey of nostalgia, memory, and politics as it affects personal life and living. "Indigo" from Illiterate Heart reveals some aspects of all that — "Already it's summer / a scrap of silk floats // by a vat of indigo. / Ai, that monsoon wind! // Each shadow has its muse. / No one can read your handwriting. // I almost wanted it that way / then came memory— // knee back, tiny toe, / thighbone brushed in blood. // Each shadow makes a ruse. / My script hovers // at the edge of the legible. / O muse of migrancy // black rose / of the southern shore! // Already it's summer, / Clouds float in silk, // I search for my self / in the map of indigo."
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BIBHU PADHI uses language with strength and originality. His first book, Going to the Temple, revealed his poetic talent amply. His second and third books, Lines from a Legend and A Wound Elsewhere, appearing back-to-back, further confirmed his strengths. Padhi's concerns range from the local Cuttack winter to America, and from peculiarities of power-cuts in the summer to a dead sparrow.
His next book, Painting the House, is a powerfully quiet piece of work, one that sets up what follows in his two new books. It has all the hallmarks of his previously published poetry — the use of the small town moffussil atmosphere of India; his deep affinity with Oriyan cultural rhythms; his stripped use of language; and his love of modern American poetry and the influence it has had on him. Some of his best poems are ones where he uses the couplet form, as in `Now', `Something Else', `Crossing Over', `A Sense of Place', `Today', and `The Farther Shore'. The last poem in particular has a considered, evocative, and haunting ambience from the very outset. Here is the opening:
It takes a long time before
the eye reaches there.
A lone tree waiting, without
shadow or purpose;
a figure moving along its luminous borders,
undisturbed by what happens here.
The world ends there, and what
lies beyond is only what the mind
so competently conceives
during hours of pain and pleasure.
In this new volume, we see Padhi also exploring new areas of psychological insight — the lows, the pain, and their ultimate revelations. In fact it is an aspect that is so important that the poet chooses to place a poem like "The Bed" as the opening poem of the volume — "Every turn in sleep folds into / the inert raw lines of a deep deep black." This must be a significant and conscious act, an act that reveals that the narrator is finally at peace with his ghosts and shadows, and comfortable enough to use it for poetic grist.
Games the Heart Must Play is a trilogy of love poems, and Living with Lorenzo is a series of poems on D.H. Lawrence. In both these new books, Padhi does what he does best — explore an interior landscape, a landscape of intimacy, pain and love; and he does all that in a language that is spare and free.
In Games the Heart Must Play, the three chapter heads — "Dream-Children", "Today", "Daughter" — contain long sequences, each containing 33 parts (the last one, i.e. the 99th, being embedded into the 98th one). The poems are set up in an epistolary style and this enables both a sense of familial and familiarity on the part of the poet and reader.
The 14-poem sequence that forms Living with Lorenzo is one of my favourites among Padhi's more recent work. These poems are stunning, and they are admirable for their wise simplicity and depth.
Philosophy, religion, form and structure are aspects that Padhi revels in, and therefore it is not surprising to learn that his next volume, tentatively titled Meditations on Being, is a series of poems each of which is based on a single Upanishadic sloka. Padhi's personal signature, his deft handling of language and his quiet sensibility, all add up to form an individual and distinctive voice.
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M. MOHANKUMAR has published Pearl Diver, Half Opened Door, Night and Daydreams, before bringing out his fourth and most recent The Moon Has Two Faces. The jacket text of the book extols his poetry to such giddying heights that it is hard to swallow its publicity contents. What is shocking, (i.e. upon reading his poems), is the fact that his poetry not only falls far short of the hype, but is truly prosaic and banal. I tried to salvage some good out of the book but failed in spite of my best democratic intentions.
The title poem, "The Moon Has Two Faces" opens the volume in a statemental, prose-like fashion. The poet is in awe of the moon, and uses child-like diction to describe his raw feelings about the orb — "bewitching", "poetical" and "vaporous"; one that is full of "ecstasy" and "communion"; ultimately leaving him as a "celebrant".
Common malaise
Most of his poems are composed of prose sentences broken up randomly to look like poetry. There is no value or gravity for the "line", let alone line-breaks, rhythm and syntax. This is a common malaise of English poetry in India of a particular generation. One really wonders as to how grammar can be so flawed, poetry so prosaic, and ideas so occluded in a poet who (according to his jacket biography) is a literature graduate and long serving retired senior bureaucrat.
Mohankumar's best efforts however are when he uses very simple uncomplicated structure and phrases, such as in the poem "Transparency". In this poem, he uses the couplet form effectively where a person addresses another in precise short phrases. The images used here are relatively clear, assuming a tone that seems to be inspired by classical Tamil poetry. Even though that tone or precision might be missing in Mohankumar's poem, his heart is in the right place. And this is generally true for poems in this entire collection.
Raw Silk, Meena Alexander, Triquarterly Books, p.106, $15.95.
Illiterate Heart, Meena Alexander, Triquarterly Books, p.96, $13.95.
Games the Heart Must Play, Bibhu Padhi, Pen & Ink, p.89, Rs.150.
Living with Lorenzo, Bibhu Padhi, Peacock Books, p.28, Rs. 40.
The Moon Has Two Faces, M. Mohankumar, Konark, p.86, Rs. 200.
Sudeep Sen's new book-length poem, Distracted Geographies, was recently published by Indialog.
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