SURFACES Poetry Reading & Chapbook Launch

Below are some of the poems I read on Aug 9, at Sarai Cafe, CSDS, Delhi, for the SURFACES Poetry Reading with Three English and Three Hindi Poets & Chapbook Launch (moderated and curated by Vivek Narayanan).

Apart from the couple that have been published, the rest have been written during my Associate Fellowship at Sarai-CSDS, 2010. The residency spanned July-August. The poem "AHALYA'S WISH" is included in the SURFACES chapbook, a handmade art collection boasting the work of co-fellows of mine.

**

Tea with Reza

By Nabina Das

Little glasses warmed by steam

Posing ballerinas pirouetting in silver holders

Glassy eyes too from steaming tears in

Tea-colored eyes

The kettle whistled Reza said, like

The train whizzing past his little

Iranian township that sang

Khoshbakhtam, khoshbakhtam!

Where poplars grew tall, very tall

Reza’s arms ceramic and

Bent bow-like from his time in jail

In a dark cell where he wasn’t given

Books to read or

Newspapers but just lashes and blows

Now and then for reading Marx

At the university

His tealeaf eyelids brimming up

With that memory …

He handed us glasses on silver holders

Held them tender, candles during prayer

The Revolution was not for my

Heart and soul, Reza cried

O my dear comrades, O my friends…

I came to be with you for freedom

And manifestos and democracy

Talks showering morning’s calm

On poplars I loved, my friends loved

Friends who were lost and gone

For singing The Internationale

Their arms bent too, cracked ceramic

Backs scarred, resting in unknown graves

Sometimes letters from prison came

Once a year, till they stopped, mentioning

The smell of tea freshly brewed

Just like this, verses of aroma

Coiling over us during our tea

With Reza one nineties evening…

He still waits in exile.

First published in Mad Swirl

**

Waiting on the News

By Nabina Das

Come Aitaa

we must discuss before time if we want radishes in this year’s garden

green gourds climbing a common fence, sure, you can have some

also coriander to sprinkle on the pitika for a late afternoon meal

bhoot-jolokia that no one will eat, the army fancies it now we know

the newspapers have it all, the tea shops get their fortune told

Come Aitaa

Let’s talk about the one-legged pigs and calves born this year

the ducks that won’t stop chasing the hens even if you yelled,

about the corner-shop Bipin I’m not sure, his ma died crying

for he was gone in the forest, they say, to become an insurgent,

but the mother said… to find the old dog Gela of the mangy coat--

to those stories Aitaa, my answers are slippery feet on oil

Come Aitaa

Let’s walk down the paddy lanes just till the town bus stand

While you wait for aunt Moromi; I’ll tell you why Aslam won’t sell

His fish cheap even if you swear on the hungry-mouthed floods

forsaken huts and the fungal pots pans we won’t ever throw away

but if you wonder why the one-eyed Harekrishna didn’t return

from the big market of Ganeshguri, no ID, no whereabouts

Aitaa, I swear on my loveless luck I’d have to invent a new fairytale.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

**

The Woman from Both Sides

By Nabina Das

When they came home they praised

Her for her naked room, the swiped floor

Kantha-stitched cushion covers and a neat

Tulsi plant doing a dhamail in the breeze

When they arrived at the garden gate they

Marveled at the roses she grew after meals

The verandah with old cane stools dozing

Before evening gods would arrive for alms

When they were asked to say a few words

They saw her brass urns glint on shelves

Filled with partition stories, re-invented,

Re-told with new metaphors washed clean

With her starched chemise in this side’s sun

They wept to see her calmer than usual

So, they sat down by her body’s silence

When they looked at her all wrapped in white

Sandal scents holding on tight to a gray lock

Tucked behind the right ear, they also saw

Her fingers soiled from that side, maps of tales.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

**

After the Show

By Nabina Das

We were on the paddies

we walked gingerly

toes to toes to heels

against toes

they said someone

might be following us

We were on

the rails of words

we spoke less

just squeezed

proverbs like stress balls

or mother’s hand

We were inside night’s

armory where

owls sharpened our

verbs of anxiety

skunks clawed at rising

codas of our breaths

We were sweaty

after our show

each one of us done

with our roles

entering a new theater

with the summer mist

where our faces

were terracotta

against the thuds

of rifle butts someone

said would follow us

till the journey’s end

We were deep

inside a language

whose dialogues

rang in a darkness

bright as the ancient

demon’s teeth

its beastly innocence

shone through our flak

There were flowers

red and green

there were the gods

fallen face down

songs about how

they all became

absent mannequins

also songs the grain-

thrashers sang

in the split of

old war stories

then we rehearsed

another new scene.

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

**

Ahalya’s Wish

By Nabina Das

Her visit made everyone run

fetch her special seat, water glass

a separate special plate, later scoured

separate, after her after-work snack

We kids ran in a tumult to see if

her teeth were different in number

than the last time, slurpy betel

juice soaked, scary monster-red

Mother made chitchat, served her

coconut candies in summer

black sesame sweets in winter

with jaggery or handmade bread

Aunts poured her water slowly

careful not to spill, not to mop

once she cleaned the outhouse

a relic from an unknown rural life

Once she cut the shrubs, weeded, threw

the dead skunk in a ditch and cleaned

up, we kids asked her to pick a name that

she’d like to be in her dreams so she

could be allowed to play with us

make us clay dolls of earthly shapes

Her dark forehead gleamed, no sindoor

the sari-end bunched at her sagging breasts.

Her instant candor still rings in my head:

“I’d like to be made flesh, don’t know the name,”

she said. “Feet first, I will touch everything.”

This work is supported by Sarai-CSDS, Delhi, under an Associate Fellowship

**

Indian Love Story poems 3,5,6

These are poems no. 3, 5 and 6 under my INDIAN LOVE STORY poems series:

(Okay, I repeat, I've never celebrated Valentine's Day, never really figured out what's there in succumbing to the commercial pressures of buying and receiving flowers, dinners, gifts... unless of course we want to stimulate the flagging economy in these trying times. I don't even have money for that! But the month of February, for very special reasons that are personal, makes me think about love and romance. Also, I start sniffing Spring already):

3. Around The Champaka Tree
(dancing around the tree being pretty much a Bollywood staple!)

Oh this was her arm, smooth as silk
Not a pashmina branch of wild fragrance
So I came to her hovering
Over the blossoms and fallen
Pollen
Fallen on her cheeks left and right
Making her hair nightly bright
With Aguru
From old movie frames
Where lovely black-and-white heroines
Like her
Smile with ivory finesse
While we go around
The Champaka tree
In our dance of love
In a trance, half-true
Singing:
Take me my love, take me!

5. Smoking Hearts

Was it Amrita Pritam
Who had reached out for the still-live
cigarette butt-end
Left on the expectant ashtray,
the smitten one,

By that Urdu poet of lilting
lines and starry fantasies?
She was a heart of feathers and
I am too, fluttering as
Your half half-smoked cigarette
Calls me with its coiling capers

I too can pick it up, touch it to my lips
And inhale your breath, phlegm, desire
In and out
Before someone’s footfalls
come running
In scrutiny
Of what’s smoking

Between hearts and long days
of wildfire imagination
But I can I can!

6. Jhumkas
(Written after an Urdu poem, remembered vaguely)

Because he had said they’re his teardrops
Taken them out of his coat pocket
He had said
They’re my unruly locks over your cheeks

My arms happy and lax
When they embrace too much
Wear them my beloved
Jhumkas for your bamboo-silk earlobes

Jhum jhum, they tinkle
Bloom by my cheeks
With dreams they mingle
Jhumkas I forget in the bathroom
To scurry, fetch and drop


Hide in my dupatta folds and wear
Only when I stop and step
Out of home
To hear them sing

Tingly like teardrops on the neck
Tangled in my locks
Because these are jhumkas that spin and dance,
At last weary running amok --
Because he never came back.

(I don't exactly remember the Urdu shayari here, it went something like this "jhumke naa pehno jaan jhumke/jhumke chum lenge jhumke"... lovely play on the words as you notice)

My poetry commentary in Kritya

Kritya poetry journal (www.kritya.in) has published my poetry commentary in its current issue. Not meant to be any erudite analysis, the writeup touches on my take on poetry emanating from simple observations. Also, my notes on Tagore and Ryan is purely incidental. There is so much more -- and so many more poets -- I could perhaps come back and talk about on this theme alone... For those who might want to read it right here, the article is pasted below:

Poetry As Observation: From Notes to Lyrical Creation(http://kritya.in/0408/En/name_of_poetry.html)

It is tough writing about poetry. Our understanding about poetry is diverse and always evolving. From ancient theories of Bhartrihari’s “Sabdatattva” to Derrida’s “différance” in spoken and inscribed language, poetry has shown possibilities that we are still exploring. As our observations about the world around us gets stratified, condensed and co-opted, our poetry grows like vines over old or new structures, whether as part of our conscious landscaping or willful neglect.

What can we do in the name of poetry? Very simple things, almost un-esoteric and rather commonplace until it turns into a rhythm guiding us deeper inside our own selves and making us see the external world as a magnanimous companion to our variegated existence. Here’s a list I once made about what we could or I could do in the name of poetry:

Sing a song/Recite a verse/ Chant a mantra/Do a jig/Wield a pen/Raise a slogan/Stretch a hand/Draw a line/Demolish a wall/Ask a question/Name an object …

All this is certainly poetry, because these actions arise out of observations and commentaries on life surrounding us. Happiness, sorrow, protests, challenges and doubts work as incentives. For me they do as strongly as hills and dales and flowers and moonlight.

Not going into any erudite discussion, something elemental comes to my mind as my own experience of poetry as observation. The short poems of Rabindranath Tagore, said to be influenced by the Haiku style during his stay in Japan, are memorable in their recordings of observations and the mystical shapes they took in the poet’s mind:

Stray birds of summer come to my window
to sing and fly away.
And yellow leaves of autumn,
which have no songs,
flutter and fall there with a sigh.
**
Tagore’s stray birds and yellow leaves of autumn, the animate and the inanimate, both flutter with a melody of resignation that the season bears. When he says:


I sit at my window this morning
where the world like a passer-by stops for a moment,
nods to me and goes.



He has brought poetry into the realms of his daily occupation. The cosmic scope of these words delights us, literally, with his observation of life and its simple pace.
**
In the poem below:



The light that plays, like a naked child,
among the green leaves happily knows not
that man can lie.


Here words and objects the verses relate to have played with the external world and turned shapes and meanings to reinvent another life for themselves. The observation about “light” imagined as an animate shape broadens the scope of such imagination in our minds. Linguistically and otherwise, the poet’s observation here has taken a leap towards the metaphysical from being compared to a physical human child. We look at the poem like an object under the focus of a stage light, an observation bright and beauteous.

Anyway, observation leading to poetic creation is perhaps well-known from eras bygone. The Vedic people had created poetry seeking safety for their livestock, strength to counter invaders, more rain and food, and in awe of nature. The essence of the verses have lived on and adapted to changing history and time.

Of late, reading Kay Ryan, the current US poet laureate, was a great insight into a very 'tongue-in-cheek' and angular quality one rarely finds in poems that are also highly lyrical. Her poems – observations about words, categories, objects and nature – open up amazing sounds in their twists and turns, indignantly flavorsome phrases and a fable-like prophetic capability, a condensed recollection of quaintly impressionistic images presented in compact little forms glittering like fine Persian jewelry! Consider:


AMONG ENGLISH VERBS

Among English verbs
to die is oddest in its
eagerness to be dead,
immodest in its
haste to be told --
a verb alchemical
in the head:
one speck of its gold
and a whole life's lead.



For me, Ryan's etching of just one "verb" sums up her prophecy about all other verbs -- "to die is oddest in its/eagerness to be dead" is the unpredictable element and resplendent in poetic beauty. This is a spectrum within which she speaks of all other actionable acts that life may hold. And yes, that verb is alchemical. It literally and physically is in a haste to be dead, to be over with, to be told. At the same time it sums up a life and the material and moral quests that accompany it.



GREEN HILLS



Their green flanks
and swells are not
flesh in any sense
matching ours,
we tell ourselves.
Nor their green
breast nor their
green shoulder nor
the languor of their
rolling over.



The reader can see here how Ryan's topography, is a continuous changing, rolling, engulfing entity quite akin to the anatomical flexing of human or rather, animate forms. Ryan nature, as well as any other topography she considers, is a thoughtful, sometimes erratic, actionable entity that competes with her own declared sense of compactness and prophetic conclusions (fable). In THE LIGHT OF INTERIORS, this relationality comes alive when she writes:



... But, in
any case, the light,
once in, bounces
toward the interior,
glancing off glassy
enamels and polishes,
softened by the scuffed
and often-handled, muffled
in carpet and toweling,
buffeted down hallways,
baffled in equally
by the scatter and order
of love and failure
to an ideal and now
sourceless texture which,
when mixed with silence,
makes of a simple
table with flowers
an island.



I'll not point to the lovely and obvious alliterative craft at work in this part of the poem. What strikes me is the kinetic force of her words embodied by the description of 'light' that lights up her topography almost meandering and running through a clutter of objects, finally to rest upon the final poetic imagery of a "table with flowers/an island", so Vermeer-like, a static image throbbing with calm energy. Such is Ryan’s observation, where notes turn into lyrical creations.

Joy&DubbleX Fan Club

For anyone who likes the poetry, music & arts produced by Joy&DubbleX.Joy has been on the NYC poetry scene since the early 90's. Back then she hosted an entertainment show for Cable Access called "Inner Joy" & also was an editor for the New Press Literary Quarterly in addition to hosting a reading for them. Her book, A Spot of Bleach & Other Poems and Prose was published by Big Foot Press in 2006. Joy runs a yearly poetry music event for the Wahi (Washington heights & Inwood) Art Stroll. Her other publication credits are too numerous to list here. She currently does editing & writing for Augustus Publishing.DubbleX has been writing his entire life and playing music. His artistry helps keep him sane. DubbleX teaches in public schools.

Check out (clicking on the post title will also take you there): http://violetwrites.googlepages.com/dubblex&joyleftow

After I befriended Joy on Facebook, oh yes, that much talked about (no skepticism now!!) networking site, my poetry got referred to several good places and was even picked up for publication in quite a few journals and zines. Also, Joy is a fantastic person for feedback and advice, a kind heart who reaches out to help even if you never ask her. Dx's poetry rocks with a natural rhythm and is a constant source of inspiration.

I do have one poem of Joy Leftow posted on my site: TUPELO HONEY. Do check that out too! New Year cheers to all!

Vote for my poems on bookhabit.com!

Two of my poems are currently in a competition on bookhabit.com, sponsored by the New Zealand Poetry Society. It'd be great to have my readers and friends go to http://www.bookhabit.com/competition/ and register for FREE in order to vote for my poems. (clicking on the post title will also take you there...)

Once registered, the site's users get to award points to the poems currently in the race. My entries are:

1. HULLABALOO BY THE LAKESIDE

and

2. MY FIRST DYING MAN

An advantage with bookhabit.com is that you can upload your own book or poetic work and wait for excellent peer review. Besides, there are a lot of other cool things you can do by connecting with writers and poets on that web site.

So please vote! Cannot post the poems here now because rules forbid me.

TUPELO HONEY-- a poem by JOY LEFTOW

This is one of my favorite poems by Joy Leftow. Read more at http://joyleftowsblog.blogspot.com/ (clicking on the title too will take you to her blog)

JoAnne is one tough broad,

Italian Irish descent

from the Northeast Bronx

Through sacrifice and dedication

JoAnne is now a nurse at

Presbyterian Medical Center

***

This is her story

bout a methadone baby

born addicted

on JoAnne’s ward

This boy had tupelo

honey colored skin,

and hazel brown,

almond eyes

Birth mama’s blond and curly haired

A blue eyed Nuyorican

Daddy is a dark skinned African

***

Mama named the baby Shonequon

The nurses called him “Sweet”

Sweet’s a boarder baby who

lived on the ward

for 2 and a half months

BCW tryin to decide

what to do with that tiny

methadone addicted baby

***

Now me amiga esta sin ninos

she has no children

e quiere uno mucho

she wants one very badly

so she fell in love with Sweet

talked about him constantly

***

JoAnne said,

Sweet is cryin all the time

He holds his body rigid

his cryin is so fitful

Kindled by the pain

cause Sweet’s addicted to meth

and this is how he sounds

eeehhhhhh

eeeehhhhhh

eeeehhhhhh

eeehhhhhh

***

Sweet’s tiny fists

are always clenched

his spindly arms crossing

his scrawny chest

This baby can’t relax!

He’s got a monkey on his back

Sweet’s addicted to meth

***

The Doctor confides

he wishes he could

keep Sweet tranquilized

cause he’s screamin so fretfully

eeehhhhhh

eeehhhhhh

eeehhhhhh

***

JoAnne loves to nurture Sweet

She embraces him reverently

comforts him with the rhythm of her heart

she whispers soothing sounds

cajolingly,

***

her voice falls like soft waves

caresses tender hollows

of his frail anatomy

her soft warm breath

glides down his velvet neck

Sweet responds with purring sounds

***

JoAnne’s gentle devotions

linger on

like a mango blossom’s scent

fragrant on a breeze

Sweet watches her giddily

clinging with his

tightly gripped fists

***

Yesterday Sweet smiled for the

very first time

JoAnne bragged

as though he were her own

Sweet, my boarder baby

is delayed in his response

and yesterday was the

first time

God graced me with his smile

***

Her eyes rimmed with blurring droplets

Dewdrops silhouette

I love him, she said

I want him to be mine

***

Even though he’s HIV

and surely won’t survive

I want him to be mine

***

Child Welfare lets his Mama visit

she hardly came at all

Daddy was there

mostly every day

but he was always drunk

***

Today they let her come and

take my Sweet away

Honey, JoAnne said,

This baby’s in a lot of pain

he suffers from anxiety

***

You don’t have to hold him

24 and 7,

but you need to let him

see your face

smiling, talking

into his

***

Sweet’s Mama answered

I know mucho more than you do

let me tell you somethin’

You don’t know what I been through

All my kids are born on meth

and that’s the way it’s always been

***

The baby started fussin’ then

his spindly arms

clenched across

his scrawny chest

eeehhhhhh

eeehhhhh

eeehhhhhh

***

Sweet opened up his eyes

and focused on JoAnne

reaching out his scrawny arms

***

But Mama reached the baby first

and took him from his crib

Esta te quieto, nino

she said as she rocked him

dispiritedly

to her methadone beat

Esta te quieto, nino

***

It’s gonna be okay Mama said

Grandma said she’s gonna help,

She’s carin’ for my other five

My oldest girl’s gonna be there too

And like I told ya,

All my kids are born on meth

And that’s the way it’s always been,

but we know how to get by.

***

"Floodlight Reflection" and "Autumn Breezes" are among the other poems that I like on Joy's blog, also "Mimicking Marguerite Duras: A Tribute ". So, go there, and imerse yourselves, dear readers.

Post-Harvest- A Poem

The CSMA Gallery reading on Sept. 27 had very few participants, sigh, perhaps owing to the fact that the Apple Harvest Festival was in full swing outdoors and people preferred being out especially after the nagging rain throughout that morning had finally stopped.

The good thing is that apart from poetry we also talked about different ways of getting folks to read and appreciate poetry and making it a part of an oncoming CSMA project called Arts Marathon where, with a meager donation of $2.62 from individuals, there'd be a workshop on writing 26.2 line poems, etc. etc. It's still in the process of being finalized. More later.

The theme was "apples", the meaning extended. Katharyn Howd Machan, first Poet Laureate of Tompkins County, read several lovely poems from her book Redwing as well as from a chapbook and her little hand-written diary. Mary Beth O'Connor too read some of her very interesting compositions including a great pantoum. Both Katharyn and Mary Beth teach writing up at Ithaca College.

The other participant, Ruth (I missed her last name), read only one, but it kept ringing in our minds. Some other people came and went in between. Later Anu, my scientist-poet friend came in, but she just heard the others (I really hope she reads next time...). Mo was there, naturally, to keep me company! My reading was pretty well-received in that small group. Anyway, one of those, APPLE PIE, is already on Sulekha.com and this other, I'm posting here. Suggestions are welcome, as this happens to be the second or third draft (I have a habit of going through several drafts):

POST-HARVEST

Japanese lanterns or food for thoughts?
Reared and harvested by hands or hoes
Apples – they hang over homely farms
In orchards from Freeville to Candor
Topped in barrels, baked in
Subcutaneous oven stores.
We mix honey and ginger
Proven wonders
Raised from other gardens of calm
Along warm shores
Just so the shades mingle easily with textures
On our tongues and embalm
A toasted taste for which
They please
Our knack for orbs and oblong treats.

My bushel is never full because
I tend to stare more than use my hands
And when it’s over
Others noisily sip coffee they dislike
After the rain leaves splashing on the window of
Little barns where apples clutter
Like dreamy heads.

Meanwhile, the orchard sings alone
Only leaves play with memories.

Katharyn asked me to repeat the two ending lines and said she liked the mood of forlorn. Mary Beth said she liked "Our knack for orbs and oblong treats", which I thought, was a bit heavy-handed.

(I decided not to post the other two because of magazine submission regulations.)

Poetry Reading at CSMA Gallery, Saturday, Sept. 27

My first poetry reading in Ithaca, NY, will be this Saturday, Sept. 27. I have read earlier at my university -- JNU, New Delhi -- in the hoary past where doing theater workshops and reading others' and my own poetry minus any intention for publication or exposure used to be our pastime!

The theme of this reading is "apples" widely interpreted and coinciding with the annual Apple Harvest Festival downtown.

Details:

"Ithaca Community Poets and Writers Read"

The Community School of Music and Arts, CSMA Gallery

Coordinated by Katharyn Howd Machan (former Tompkins County Poet Laureate), who will also read from her work.

3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.
330 E State Street

Ithaca, NY

I have heard Katharyn recite and perform before. It's an absolute delight. Although my voice is under attack from a bad cold, I hope to engage. It's not singing, after all! So, welcome everyone.

SHEHER -- the Tentative Cover

Guest-edited by Meena Kandasamy, the anthology of "urban" poems by Indian women writers has this tentative cover. Haven't heard if they were re-working it. Encore shameless plug: my poem will be there humbly nestled, hopefully by the scintillating Kamala Das (same last names, you see!).

Basically, these were my comments on the cover:

*the vertical view conveys strength and direct approach of the woman’s position

*that she is holding together what represents the cities symbolic ‘mammoth’ bridges, pillars/monuments/edifice… she is like the female Krishna who held the mount govardhana (was it?) to shelter the cattle from rains… (aw I forgot my mythology!)

* that her back is turned towards us. We don't need to see her face always, a face that has been over-abused in movies, calendars, posters, matrimonial (shaadi.com?) ads… et al. hence we don't need to know if she is good/bad looking, dark or light, shy or angry… whatever

* that the image also conveys a sense of control in the way she holds the city’s edifice and looks upon the spread before her. She surmises it, it’s her say on the city.

* her hands holding together or apart of the monument and bridge is very emergetic. She has the capability to change, that comes out well.

What I didn't like is:

*that she looks very ‘rural’ in the way she has been dressed. per se there is nothing wrong with ‘rural looks’, but here, perhaps a more “straight” form would look better than a swingy, ghaghra-wearing sort of form. Perhaps the artist can rework on relaxing this formative structure of the woman’s image.

*I love B&W but there is just too much black there. and the spotlight kind of treatment doesn't make it less imposing. Could a border around the etching work to keep the image in its lightedness?

* The title font (I don't think it is spooky at all) seems to jar a bit with the slug/sub-hed below.

Also, friend and poet Anuradha Pujar's work will be there. Two writers from Ithaca in the same anthology, ain't that cool?

THREE POEMS IN KRITYA

The September issue of KRITYA poetry journal is out. Three of my poems are featured in the section "Poetry In Our Times". Follow the link: http://www.kritya.in/0404/En/poetry_at_our_time.html to read the first one titled "Lost Landscape" and then click on "More poems by Nabina Das" to read the rest -- "Buddha's Children" and "Dialogues With Dilli" (you can click on the title of this post too, it'll take you to the relevant page of Kritya).

A very close friend asked me why I chose these three poems, and if there was any link among them at all. At a first glance, the three poems are geographically located in three different places -- Assam, my birthplace; Tawang monastery in Arunachal Pradesh, where I did my field-work for a Masters dissertation in Linguistics, and Delhi, where I lived for a decade or so studying first at Jawaharlal Nehru University and then working as a journalist for several years at several places before marrying a 'Delhiite'. The poet's voice, if there is something like that, is personal in "landscape" and "Dilli". When I shared these poems in an informal forum, I was told how the 'pain' of the first got re-generated in the third, in an altered form. The normative gesture of missing a lost landscape (birthplace) and another landscape (home away from home) where I lived for a considerable length of time, is iconized, according to my commentators. A few identified readily with "Dilli" because it is iconic of anybody's uprooting -- if roots are the only 'imagined' links -- from a place of utter familiarity. Nice supposition. But all the while, I contended that Delhi as a city had not enhanced my so-called rootlessness. What it had done is cast my own beliefs and fears into a complex relationship of unfamiliarity that I was ready to understand and to some extent, absorb. Hence, the question: "Dilli do you love me?" And this love is a new love, a grown-up love, somewhat carnal in flavor, as opposed to the sense of love's loss in "Lost Landscape" -- a love that is a child's attachment with her pleasurable as well as reviled things from the past (flute, Borgeets, bloodshed, death); a love that is now anecdotal in her contemporary memory; a love that she doesn't sanctify but showcases for sure. When finally my readers mentioned the words 'love' and 'roots', it was interesting to see the kind of symbiosis the words formed in the context of these two poems.

As for "Buddha's Children", the poetic voice there I think is pretty much a 'fly on the wall'. It's a documentary poem. Perhaps it should have spoken about the beauty of Tawang, the golden monastery, the breathtaking mountains all around, etc., if the poem were to follow a traditional descriptive route. But I'm glad it speaks about the people, the villagers, who make up the spirit of Tawang -- every morning as they trot up in a file along the precarious mountain roads to find work and come back exactly the same way. It's almost a set routine. What is not is the lavish monastery, the cheerful monks and their larder full of grains and food. The latter, therefore, never interested me. The villagers did, while they carried on building roads, scrubbing the Tawang courtyard spanking golden, minding their mules and children, chewing on their paltry meal and waiting patiently for the divine blessing to come.

In the same section of Kritya (second from the bottom), do read the wonderful poems of Vera Zubarev. Also, in the section "In the Name of Poetry", see Eileen Moeller's work. Absolutely refreshing.

Reading Robert Hass and Kay Ryan

Two different names, two different expressions. Robert Hass (above, left) and Kay Ryan. Hass won the Pulitzer this year in poetry (shared it with Philip Schultz's "Failure") for his collection "Time and Materials". I started reading Hass even before the Pulitzer was announced, from a review of his aforementioned book in Boston Review. It serves little to say that Hass' work enthused my own imagination a lot. It also put me to think about the way poets in the Indian subcontinent have been writing since ages, combining their respective contemporaneity with epical, classical, mythological allusions. That Hass was doing precisely that all throughout his work has been pointed out by some (American) critics as an "educated" approach to writing verse. I think educated is a snobbish word, at least for our own "Western-educated" sensibilities and there's no denying that we tend to use it as a tool for either conscious rejection of others or a vague alignment with other 'educated' milieu about which we have little or no idea. Therefore to me, reading Hass seemed less of an educated act, more of a reconciliation with the motions of history. The way it does reading any poet from the classical ages to the present times in the Indian subcontinent. Is it because Hass was influenced early on by Hinduism and Buddhism? Not sure yet, I've just discovered him!
Before I pen my thoughts further, I must say this is no scholarly article. Really, these are just my inner ramblings, my vagrant thoughts. So read it that way!

I reproduce one of my favorite Hass poems:

THAT MUSIC

The creek's silver in the sun of almost August,
And bright dry air, and last runnels of snowmelt,
Percolating through the roots of mountain grasses
Vinegar weed, golden smoke, or meadow rust,
Do they confer, do the lovers' bodies
In the summer dusk, his breath, her sleeping face,
Confer --, does the slow breeze in the pines?
If you were the interpreter, if that were your task.


So this is where Robert Hass is a poet of interaction, in the last line. And this is where my interest gets aroused and I read the poem backwards again and again. He leaves it to the reader, the 'interpreter' to say and see what the poem and its idea does. Here I remember that Hass is a naturalist with passion for environmental concerns and hence, the topography is alive with descriptions of the sky, creek, air, grasses, trees, "almost August" being the hallmark of his nature iconography. But wait, you may say, every poet evokes descriptions of nature. I do too! But this is Hass' California/West Coast nature and like it or not, last runnels of snowmelt, vinegar weed etc. (real or not), are pretty much his poetic decoration of that nature.

Now that as readers we already know the poem is about "that music", the notational relationship between the items of nature, the lovers ("his breath, her sleeping face"), the slow breeze etc. is highlighted by his leitmotif of interrogation (sounds really bad, this word): "Do they confer". The verb conferring immediately determines the indeterminate act of hearing, playing, feeling 'that music'. I cannot analyse this any more, because as the 'interpreter', my task was only to say how much I am in tune (pun intended!) with this little poem.

Another poem that I will not reproduce here in its entirety is FUTURES IN LILACS. Just consider the opening lines:

"Tender little Buddha," she said
Of my least Buddha-like member.
She was probably quoting Allen Ginsberg,
Who was probably paraphrasing Walt Whitman.


Here, I was ready to notice some mock-scornful tone about the lady -- she -- in question, who would, with all seriousness, quote an erudite source, to the extent of risking bathos! And even when in the heat of seduction

She was taking off a blouse,
Almost transparent, the color of a silky tangerine.

the sound of the syllables here and the tangerine texture evokes the tenderness that 'she' refers to in the beginning, but I thought by this time Hass' tone was far gone meandering into the parables of American history (not so much in the lady who is romantically engaged with the poet), where Walt Whitman's romance with a "trolley conductor" is recalled almost casually and dismissively:

He was in love with a trolley conductor
In the summer of -- what was it? -- 1867? 1868?

I'm still pondering about the title. Hence, no comment on that.

Now the last poem by Hass I'll refer to here is ENVY OF OTHER PEOPLE'S POEMS. The very first line tells of a story displaced temporally and historically:

In one version of the legend the sirens couldn't sing.

Okay, I am game for the other version! And Hass doesn't disappoint.

It was only a sailor's story that they could.

The layering of the 'non-story' on the 'story' itself is the marvellous craft of this poem. It's worth reading this poem again and again to see language create a quasi-logic of reasoning. So, yes, read it on your own. As for envy? Yes, I have so much of that for Hass' work!

My other favorites are HEROIC SIMILE (more about this superb poem later), BETWEEN THE WARS and AFTER GOETHE.

You may find his poems online at http://www.poetryfoundation.org/.

Reading Kay Ryan (above, right), the current US poet laureate, was like looking into a mirror where an infinitely magnificent me stared back at this pathetic 'me'. Uh, oh, it sounds narcissistic again, my "mood favori"! No, but really yes, Kay Ryan's poems are something that should have been written by me, not her. The very 'tongue-in-cheek' and angular quality of her poems I find is amazing and strangely 'alter-egoistic'. But to say that, is to make a pedestrian comment about Ryan's work. Her poems open up to me amazing sounds in their twists and turns, indignantly flavorsome phrases and a fable-like prophetic capability, a cool recollection of quaintly impressionistic images presented in compact little forms glittering like fine Persian jewelry! I read this poem (bold mine) and was stoned, literally:

AMONG ENGLISH VERBS

Among English verbs
to die is oddest in its
eagerness to be dead,
immodest in its
haste to be told --
a verb alchemical
in the head:
one speck of its gold
and a whole life's lead.

Tell me what is unpredictable here...

For me, Ryan's etching of just one "verb" sums up her prophecy about all other verbs -- "to die is oddest in its/eagerness to be dead". This is a spectrum within which she speaks of all other actionable acts that life may hold. And yes, that verb is alchemical. It literally and physically is in a haste to be dead, to be over with, to be told. at the same time it sums up a life and the material and moral quests that accompany it.
Now:

GREEN HILLS

Their green flanks
and swells are not
flesh in any sense
matching ours,
we tell ourselves.
Nor their green
breast nor their
green shoulder nor
the langour of their
rolling over.

The reader can see how Ryan's topography, as compared to Hass' topography, is a continuous changing, rolling, engulfing entity quite akin to the anatomical flexing of human or rather, animate forms. For Hass, the icons of nature are signposts of a mood, time (history) and things that constitute the specific moment for his poetry (is this why the title Time and Materials?). Ryan nature, as well as any other topography she considers, is a thoughtful, even erratic, actionable entity that competes with her own declared sense of compactness and prophetic conclusions (fable). In THE LIGHT OF INTERIORS, this relationality comes alive when she writes:

... But, in
any case, the light,
once in, bounces
toward the interior,
glancing off glassy
enamels and polishes,
softened by the scuffed
and often-handled, muffled
in carpet and toweling,
buffeted down hallways,
baffled in equally
by the scatter and order
of love and failure
to an ideal and now
sourceless texture which,
when mixed with silence,
makes of a simple
table with flowers
an island.

I'll not point to the lovely and obvious alliterative craft at work in this part of the poem. What strikes me is the kinetic force of her words embodied by the description of 'light' that lights up her topography almost meandering and running through a clutter of objects, finally to rest upon the final poetic imagery of a "table with flowers/an island", so Vermeer-like, a static image throbbing with calm energy. Again you may find Ryan's poems listed on http://www.poetryfoundation.org/. Do let me know how you find these two poets if you read them.

Blogging on Sulekha.com

I've been blogging on Sulekha.com for a while now. It's been okay, I'm probably not a prolific blogger, given I have other writings to do. And Sulekha is really huge and it's darn tough to find an author who can be a good read. Well, I don't mean, good writers are too few there, just that the overwhelming number of bloggers make it a huge task finding them. All of us love to think we write well, yes I do, but the truth is, not everybody can engage. Some day I will engage, a vast audience!

Also, it scares me to see the amount of rightwing blogging going on in Sulekha. Some are guarded and covert, but quite a few ones (some among them "longtime" and "prominent" bloggers) are rabid, odious and dangerous.

So did I not find any satisfaction while blogging on Sulekha? No, that's not why I'm writing this post. Quite a good number of people have befriended me on Sulekha, so I am convinced this is a pretty well-connected blogging community. Of all the 10 blogs I've written so far, a few that are worth any remote literary value have been liked by readers.

Three of my poems (actually five in all because one title contains three poems) have been read, commented upon, recommended. Even temporarily featured on the respective blog home pages. Not bad, huh? Although, this doesn't bring my work closer to publishing again. I need to wait, be patient, sharpen my skill and breathe deeply.

So, those Sulekha pages where my work is featured, are:

http://nabina.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/07/a-few-things-of-remembrance-a-poem-i-have-yet-to.htm

and

http://nabina.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/07/whispers-in-the-attic-a-memoir-poem.htm

and (the three-poem set)

http://nabina.sulekha.com/blog/post/2008/06/three-food-poems-a-taste-of-nations.htm

Now if you cannot see the pages, it's not my fault. Login to www.sulekha.com and you can probably see them.