My Blogger Friends' Haikus from 2008

Last year, not too long ago, I was dabbling in Haikus, that poetic form much tossed around in elite poetic circles! The responses I received absolutely overwhelmed me with their beautiful thoughts and humor. So, 2009, in my opinion, should see these poetic gifts that 2008 got... Here they are:

Rhett said...
Winds wail high and low
It rains like no tomorrow
Nature puts such a show!

Ritu said...
Yeah she's in love with me
Now she is, Now she isn't
Adolescent Romance!!!!

tikulicious said...
crows they fly in the sky
like pieces of black charred paper
drifting from a fire

Too much to lose said...
The spring came,
Colors so bright.
A mortal's end.

tanuj solanki said...
Hot and humid weather
makes you sweat and me sweat
And a picture melts

Mys Lyke Meeh said...
red petals fallen
and the wind whistles.
It landed in my garden.

anu said... trickling words
gnawing at worlds morning
birdsong for all or just me

Note: "Roger's haikus" are already in a separate post I had put up earlier.

Tikuli Dogra's Blog: Intimate Betrayal...

It's a pleasure starting my cross-posting venture with Tikuli Dogra's blogpost "Intimate Betrayal... The Untold Trauma"
(http://tikulicious.wordpress.com/2008/11/18/intimate-betrayal-…the-untold-trauma/?the-untold-trauma/). The topic of marital rape is relevant for all times and all places, and gets little attention though.

She writes: "I had wanted to take up the issue of Marital rape for a long time now .The movie DAMAN by Kalpana Lajmi where Raveena Tondon plays the role of a marital rape victim, made me write about this heinous crime against women."

Read more by clicking on the post title or the link above.

Tikuli blogs at http://tikulicious.wordpress.com/ as tikulicious. Do check out her poems and other articles.

Cross-posts from Blogger Friends

I have earlier cross-posted poet Joy Leftow's work on my blog (and would love to do some more...). Now, apart from poetry, quite a few of my blogger friends write wonderful commentaries, essays, stories and memoir pieces. So I thought of doing this exciting thing in 2009 -- post my friends' blogs, anything they consider important or special, on my blog with a link to Facebook (for those of you who are on my Facebook contacts list). I'll be starting with Tikuli Dogra who writes poems, stories, and articles on parenting/travel/nature/social issues. Monday evening, Eastern Time, Tikuli's post will be there to read. I am excited. Aren't you all? See ya Monday then!

The Presidential Poet

Yale professor Elizabeth Alexander became the fourth poet ever to be commissioned to write and recite a poem for the American Presidential inauguration on January 20, 2009, when Barack Hussein Obama was sworn in. New York Times has this:

The following is a transcript of the inaugural poem recited by Elizabeth Alexander, as provided by CQ transcriptions.

"Praise song for the day"

Each day we go about our business, walking past each other, catching each others' eyes or not, about to speak or speaking. All about us is noise. All about us is noise and bramble, thorn and din, each one of our ancestors on our tongues. Someone is stitching up a hem, darning a hole in a uniform, patching a tire, repairing the things in need of repair.
Someone is trying to make music somewhere with a pair of wooden spoons on an oil drum with cello, boom box, harmonica, voice.
A woman and her son wait for the bus.
A farmer considers the changing sky; A teacher says, "Take out your pencils. Begin."
We encounter each other in words, words spiny or smooth, whispered or declaimed; words to consider, reconsider.
We cross dirt roads and highways that mark the will of someone and then others who said, "I need to see what's on the other side; I know there's something better down the road."
We need to find a place where we are safe; We walk into that which we cannot yet see.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
Praise song for struggle; praise song for the day. Praise song for every hand-lettered sign; The figuring it out at kitchen tables.
Some live by "Love thy neighbor as thy self."
Others by first do no harm, or take no more than you need.
What if the mightiest word is love, love beyond marital, filial, national. Love that casts a widening pool of light. Love with no need to preempt grievance.
In today's sharp sparkle, this winter air, anything can be made, any sentence begun.
On the brink, on the brim, on the cusp -- praise song for walking forward in that light.

Read her bio and a few poems at http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/245

and a Q&A with her at Inauguration Poet, Elizabeth Alexander - TIME

Narcissism, Blogging and a (not-fainthearted) Resolution for 09

What have I been writing in this blog mainly? Pretty self-centric stuff, I admit. Then, what's wrong in that? Nothing. But it's true, I also wanted to write more about other issues than my own life and writing, and post more of other's works of which I've done just a little bit. Okay, no handwringing though. 2008 is over and 2009 marches on breathlessly. And I'm not the one to wallow in self-pity or whatever. I am angry about the Mumbai terror attacks, the bomb blasts in my homestate of Assam in northeastern India, and also about the reckless plundering of the Palestinian territory by Israel (the "only democracy in the middle east"? Ha!). I am worried about my parents' failing health, about getting jobs for us whether in the US or in India (need money to eat, right?), about whether Obama as the new US President will become a magic wand at all for the world's agonies, about the environment, hunger and other age-old stuff like the blunders of Capitalism that don't go away unless we work in an organized manner to keep these at bay.

I am also happy. I made new friends who give me courage; around me I have motivated people of all ages who motivate me no end, and the world is still a lovely place with its offer of love (platonic or otherwise!), trust and bonding. On a narcissistic note, I've been published in quite a few North American and Indian journals -- more poetry, a bit of fiction. This gives hope that I can get what I want. So, it might interest my blog readers to recap that:

• SHEHER anthology (Frog Books, India) is featuring my poetry, alongwith names like Meena Alexander and Imtiaz Dharker.
• I have a short fiction forthcoming in Mirage Books anthology (India).
• Poems forthcoming in The Liberated Muse anthology (Washington DC).
• Poems in The Toronto Quarterly in spring 09.
• Quay Journal of Arts and Poetry (Texas) will also publish my poetry this spring.
• Poems in Lit Up Magazine: http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com/poetry/nabina-das/
• Poems in Kritya: http://www.kritya.in/0404/En/poetry_at_our_time.html
• Poems in Muse India: http://www.museindia.com/showfeature12.asp?id=1141
• Poems in The Cartier Street Review (The Ink Blot poetry forum): http://modernpoet.proboards98.com/index.cgi(also click "page 2" above for more)
• and a poetry commentary on Kritya: http://www.kritya.in/0408/En/name_of_poetry.html
  

In 2008 I have read my poetry at CSMA gallery, Ithaca, with former Tompkins County poet laureate Katharyn Machan. Probably I'll read again on January 24. I have been featured on the sites "And So I Sing: Poems and Assorted Flotsam: http://eileenmoeller.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-poem-vertical-footholds.html", "Poets who blog: http://poetswhoblog.blogspot.com/", "Birthdays of Poets: http://birthdaysofpoets.blogspot.com/" http://www.blogger.com/www.sulekha.com, and "Joy's Poetry Blog: http://joyleftowsblog.blogspot.com/" and my credits have appeared on Flor Del Concreto: http://flordelconcreto.blogspot.com/". Search by my name. Ooh, so much for self-love!

I have to thank some special people for all the help and encouragement they have lent me, sometime even without their own knowing: Joy Leftow, DubbleX, Roxanne Hoffman, Bernard Alain, Debra Castillo, Ted Wheeler, Rati Saxena, Eileen Moeller, Abhinav Maurya, John Burroughs, Farahdeen Khan, Roger DuPuis II, Tikuli Dogra, Ritu Lalit, Meena Kandasamy, Tanuj Solanki, Rhett, TMTL, Arvind Joshi, Gulnaz Sheikh, Mukti Lakhi, Aniket Alam, Sunita Bhadauria, Andrew Christ, Katharyn Machan, Anu Pujar, Parsa Venkateshwara Rao Jr, Don Coorough, Sara Marie, Subir Ghosh, Mary Gilliland, Laurie Stone, Sunil Poolani, Priti Aisola, Visi Tilak, Poonam Tanmayo, and of course my family.

Coming back to the world around, my resolution this year is to listen more, understand better and celebrate creativity from all quarters. Also, blog more meaningfully, an old promise. If I've forgotten someone or something, please remind me, please.

MUSE INDIA's DIASPORA poems

MUSE INDIA journal is a great reading for poetry, fiction and commentary from writers living in India and elsewhere. Reading it for some time now, I was glad to be finally a part of this excellent lit zine published from Hyderabad. In fact, when GSP Surya Rao solicited contribution for the Diaspora section of Muse India, I was absolutely delighted!

My poems "WASAFIRI", "TWO GARDENS IN TWO HEMISPHERES", "ALL SOULS SAVED", and "ANOTHER EVENING" are featured in the Issue 23, Jan-Feb 2009 edition of Muse India. Read them at: http://www.museindia.com/showfeature12.asp?id=1141 or Das, Nabina

Diaspora section editor Usha Akella writes: "I am hugely delighted to share with you the poems of Ravi Shankar, Reetika Vazirani, Ralph Nazareth, Pramila Venkateswaran, Soham Patel, Saleem Peeradina, Pireeni Sundaralingam, Meena Alexander, Goutam Datta, Kazim Ali, Ro Gunetilleke , Nabina Das and Rajarshi Singh. (For various reasons, I was unable to include the work of Vijay Seshadri, Prageeta Sharma, Sana Mulji Dutt, Amitava Kumar and Agha Shahid Ali which to me would have rendered this issue 'complete.')" Read the full editorial at http://www.museindia.com/showfeature12.asp?id=1137 or Editorial Comment: Usha Akella.

Also, my friend Priti Aisola's fiction can be read at Aisola, Priti. Priti's fiction is an excerpt from her to-be-published novel by Penguin some time this year.

London-based Biman Mullick's graphic art from his “Ragamala” series depicting Indian musicians and musical instruments, rendered by him over a span of 4 decades, adorns several pages of this issue's Muse India. Check this issue out!

Photo from Internet (I chose Manhattan because my poem "Wasafiri" refers to that place...)

Being featured in The CSR's poetry forum with The Ink Blot

My poem "in Perspective" is in the spotlight on The Cartier Street Review's poetry forum with The Ink Blot.

Editor Bernard Alain writes: "The latest edition of the review is out, features Nabina Das in the spotlight. The review has merged with The Ink Blot poetry forum to create a more dynamic element to the site. Please check it out here.

Also, click on top left hand corner under the CSR logo "page 2" where two more of my poems "A Town in Catskills Summer" and "Essence of Exhibits" are featured alongside two of my favorite poets Dubblex and Joy Leftow. Scroll down for Editor Bernard Alain's poem, it's a lovely one (http://thecartierstreetreview.blogspot.com/2009/01/january-2009-page-2_02.html).

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!

My dad's latest blogpost: IN THE SHADOW OF FAMINE

It holds a special meaning for me to read my father's blogposts, however infrequent these may be. Not because he has been a column writer and commentator in local newspapers and other publications from a long time. Mainly because, for a person aged 70-odd, using the Internet happens to be a completely new and unrelatable skill for all his years of job, writing, activism and knowledge gathering. Now he uses the e-mail, speaks to us across seas using Skype and blogs now and then.


This account below is not just deeply touching but it also happens to be a slice of history. His repository of commentaries is an oral history that I have always found to be of utmost relevance -- something that should be recorded in some manner.


Go to his blog Old Man River or the specific link to read: http://pbdasmailing.blogspot.com/2008/12/in-shadow-of-famine.html

Serendipity, Allow Me a Dream

Wrote this poem at some one's request on the theme of "weaving dreams"... As the year closes on, probably dream weaving is something I will indeed try do in earnest! This one is a rather melancholy poem although the given topic is supposed to generate hope, also a little lost and deeply coiled within, like a lot of my obscure thoughts. Nevertheless, for my friends:

I do this often, immerse my face in
The drifting melody of speed,
Throbbing, expecting
Pushing towards a pool of unknownness that sails slowly
Like a lost boat come home after tidal winds are dead.

Leaf falls and yesteryears do
Make up some of its urgency,
Nagging, irritating fly
That snaps its sticky wings and revisits doorsteps of a house
Called memory, its driveway almost always messy.

My dream hovers above meandering
Pessimism, a mountain,
Like an elephant gone to die
In peace and relative grandeur where motions kneel down
Aware that the wind takes scraps away to its bare-wall den

I wonder if then you hear songs
With birds sitting on thorns,
Bloodied to their core,
And while caravans lose paths in the swirling sea-sands
Nights pass taking stones with names inscribed and hewn

Tell me then why we need to belt
And buckle to our seats
For a fur-flung destiny
And hold our hands when verses wither off like ink or seeds
No raccoon would eat, only this planet would dream in bits

I sieve those dreams when everything’s
Gone to a dusk of rest
Beyond a highway run
Where your guns and sheep come bleating for a final kill.
I’m someone with a question still slung on her breast

Perhaps there’s a new sea rising
Over your brazen hand
I see its dazzle at night
Serendipity, let me weave a dream that creates boats and homes –
A web of hopefulness we wake up to in blossom-smelling lands.

Photo from Internet

One Place To Go

There was no place to go

When winter dimmed

There was this all that came to light

When sacred fires skimmed our faces over fences of memory

I waited for the unfed Santa-man on my school's sidewalk

He didn't give, but begged for coins

For him there was no sweet crumbs baking

Warm dishes squealing in the little arc of holiday lights

Also there was this fat nun-teacher in our section who did a jig for us

She tall and big, sang throaty carols in the name of deserts, donkey and a child

We saw that kid everyday near the pale woman by the shops

She wore rags like royal attire and a smile to light the brightest

Candles lit by my Catholic neighbor that competed

With my grandma's heathen oil lamp flames chasing the Sun-god

Running askew at solstice behind the sky

To flicker till the rays fell straighter on her dew-soaked Tulsi

Grandma would scatter puja grains and chant her Uttarayana mantras

And tell me about a path that leads to a garden

Of ceremonies where we apparently could share

Sugardrop laughs with my classmate Maria Joseph -- also Humeira and Maya

There, where incense sticks burned around ravishing firepits,

There was no place for lines or walls

There was no place to go other than

Longings for prim days that opened their doors wearing festive shades.

Picture from Internet: Surya, the sun-god

(This poem has been written for this holiday season on a special prompt by the very helpful blogspot poetswhoblog's "Twelve Days of Poetry")

Pop Goes Delhi!

South Asia Curator of Cornell University, Bronwen Bledsoe, a very funky and friendly personality, is coming to town. That is Delhi. Where I am these days. She I came to know recently through Prof. Debra Castillo of Cornell in Ithaca. Debbie, the lovely angelic soul that she is, had very kindly suggested my name to Bronwen as one of the people to meet up, for planning a Bollywood series in collaboration with Cornell Cinema. Later about that.

Now Bronwen is touring South Asia and China regarding her own work and researching on Subcontinental pop culture (she is a historian, and in her words, everything is "pop to a medievalist" like her!!). I'm damn glad I have a chance to meet her again. Hopefully at least a couple of times we will have delightful discussions on Bollywood, food and neo-urban customs.

That brings me to think: what is pop culture in Delhi without a Big Fat Punjabi wedding anyway? Something in the style of "Monsoon Wedding"! In fact, I just came through one in the family, my sister-in-law's wedding, held pretty true to medium-budget (ha!) Bollywood flicks. Every ritual seemed important as well as mindless at times and yet we enjoyed so much! Now IF I can take Bronwen to a loud, pompous, alcohol-infused, raucous DJ-music-ridden, obscenely intricate crystal-and-gold lehenga-carpet-curtain-cover-draped farmhouse or clubhouse wedding, I'd say both of us will instantly know more about pop culture than any astute researcher poring over books or a computer screen.

Or, we can take it easy and just eat and drink and laze about in Dilli Haat or Crafts Bazaar in Pragati Maidan or scrounge around in Janpath. Also visit my alma mater JNU.

If my readers have any suggestions, kindly write in about what to do in the name of pop culture in Delhi.

Photo (from Internet): Diwali decorations on sale

Usha Akella's editorial in the forthcoming issue of Muse India

I shall be posting the 2009 January Muse India link when it goes live. In the meanwhile, here is an e-mail and a sneak peek of the editorial by this Diaspora issue's guest editor Usha Akella. I'm pretty excited that my poem appears with hers in the urban poetry anthology SHEHER (Frog Books). Parts of the editorial that I have vested interest in, have been boldfaced...

"Dear Friends:

While sharing with you, the contributors, the editorial to the January 2009 http://www.museindia.com/ that includes your work, I'd like to say a heartfelt thank you for submitting in time and being part of this exciting project. I am truly grateful for the opportunity to connect and savor your work. Please do not forget to check out the website in January.

The submission period and editing is closed as of today and henceforth direct any queries/needs/requirements you might have to GSP Surya Rao, the manager of museindia.com at gsprao2003@yahoo.co.in. My participation in the project ends today but I hope that this is the beginning of new friendships, projects and shared kinship between us. For me, poetry has always been about the connections and friends it brings.

I'd love your feedback to the editorial. I sincerely intended to pay tribute to all of you and to the poetry we write so I hope it does you justice.

Warmly,

Usha Akella"


Dense with words, a homecoming
Diaspora poets, USA
By Usha Akella

When G.S.P. Surya Rao invited me to edit this issue, I had an opportunity to connect with the unseen community I belong to- the US Diasporic poets. On reading the poems sent to me there was an instant familiarity- the gnawing, simultaneous claiming and disclaiming within our sensibilities, and the passionate ownership of words to heal/acknowledge/define/transcend that fluidity. I felt I had just entered the country I truly belonged to- a country with many post offices. To quote Rajarshi Singh, 'For it is not simply a tale of one promised land.'

I am hugely delighted to share with you the poems of Ravi Shankar, Reetika Vazirani, Ralph Nazareth, Pramila Venkateswaran, Soham Patel, Saleem Peeradina, Pireeni Sundaralingam, Meena Alexander, Goutam Datta, Kazim Ali, Ro Gunetilleke , Nabina Das and Rajarshi Singh. (For various reasons, I was unable to include the work of Vijay Seshadri, Prageeta Sharma, Sana Mulji Dutt, Amitava Kumar and Agha Shahid Ali which to me would have rendered this issue 'complete.')

I delivered an impromptu speech at the Calicut International Book Fair, Kerala, October 2007 somewhat bewildered by the decades old, and to me, passé debate if Indian poets writing in English are authentic enough:

I am glad for this opportunity to finally confront my own personal history. I write in English. I dream in English. I blunder in English. I know no other way. This was circumstantial, and we must not be guilty of our circumstances or our personal and national histories. I accessed my Indian culture in English as a child. And my culture accesses me via my English poetry today… When English is unceasingly and scathingly targeted as foreign, I wonder why do we not ask the same question of Urdu? After all this language too is the language that emerged as a result of invasion and occupation. We have allowed time for a process of assimilation for this language and accept it as intrinsic to the land. Where is the spirit of generosity, absorption and inclusiveness that to me is the quintessence of India. Do we ask the question, are Punjabis Indian? Are Tamils Indian? Are Muslims. Indian? Are Christians Indian? What is pure Indian? Is this an answerable question?

English is here to stay because English more than any other Indian language has evidenced the spirit of adaptability and absorption. How many kinds of English exist within India alone! Like a river taking on the characteristic of the land it flows through, English has the incredible flexibility to morph according to the mother language of the speaker. English is the only language that is able to access an Indian sensibility not just a regional sensibility- and thankfully! In some sense, this issue being debated in English is like a brain observing itself.

I now have a golden chance to tear down a few walls. Pireeni Sundaralingam enquired if she was eligible for the issue, given that she is not Indian. "I was born in Sri Lanka and lived in both Europe and the US but, sadly, not India." She was welcomed with Ro Gunetilleke, and on reading their work we will be glad of the hospitality extended. I'd like to think India softened its borders in this issue.

I am glad to honor the poetry of late Reetika Vazirani who seemed slated for a great poetic career Her exquisite poetry evokes jazz, chant, lamentation and celebration. I thought it appropriate to include two prose pieces in this issue- an interview with Ram Devineni, the founder of Rattapallax and a staunch promoter of poetry; and poet Goutam Datta's foreword to the anthology A mingling of waters. Goutam and Ram collaborate to bring American poets to Kolkata. (Check out Goutam's new online Literary journal, http://www.urhalpool.com/, a contemporary Bengali-English bilingual webzine. The next issue of Rattapallax is devoted to Bengali poetry)

I felt that this is an editorial that should be heard from the poet's mouth- what it is to be bracketed by twin realities. I asked the poets to provide an artist statement and the fascinating array evidenced an acute awareness of identity, poetics and displacement. Poets by definition are natural immigrants 'comfortable' in exile- both inner and outer.

Saleem Peeradina states this suspension with a lucid image in 'Song of the Makeover':

Where travelers reaching their destination
Discover they are lost. An error of navigation,

A trick of perception, crunches two realities
Into a single space

Ironically, the parenthesis itself becomes the figure for Diaspora - the release from India and an unceasing unfoldment from her. A poetry, this complex, can never be wholly contained by geographical extremities or even psychological ones, and is constantly re-imaging and imagining itself beyond its own scope.

Perhaps, in the land of language, India is Kazim Ali's vowel and America his consonant. Both are needed to speak, and to contain, to find the silence from which words must come.

Ralph Nazareth's poems froth in a furious awareness of fragmentation. 'Try to take India away from me, and I'm like my dog, fierce in defense of his bone.' This could be called a poetry from a borderland fully lucid of its sleep walking. Perhaps, there is no better way to portray it than Pramila Venkateswaran. She writes poems 'Early in the morning in the silent hour between sleep and waking.' In contrast, for Soham Patel, India is the noise and music, the magic that keeps her rhythm. Ravi Shankar poems whirl delighted in the substance of words, spiraling within the contours of language to find their center. Like Nabina Das, if only we could perceive our world as an amble in two gardens savoring two different bouquets. For Meena Alexander poetry is an expanse in which Meera meets Ginsberg. Poetry can ask for no more!

In conclusion, I say to Pireeni and the company I am in, let's "find each other in foreign lands."

Usha Akella

My Poems in Lit Up Magazine

Got word recently from editor Mike Covey that two of my new poems are published in Lit Up Magazine. Follow the link http://litupmagazine.wordpress.com/new/. Lit Up Magazine is a cool journal of poetry, fiction and art. Check it out.

For all those lazy people out there :-), I am pasting the poems below:

Othello’s Path
Butterflies dropped dead from branches

Where they never grew

Dewdrops of nights that stifled dawns

Lay on your path
Or were they tiny handkerchiefs

Outlining a long sorrowful track?

White of course

Black with guile
Wordsmiths called

It green, envy

But when the foliage died

No one was left to pry
So, don’t walk that path dear Othello

Don’t wipe your eyes with

Those thunderstruck fingers, they’ll teach

You rage and us a loss forever to linger.

**
Bouquets
In very hot weather

Flowers wilt like bouquets

As do kneeling gardeners

But no one hears them.
It is fashionable for us to

Take bouquets - not words -

To happy or sad rituals where

No one deciphers the flowers.
We can shade the buds

But that may deter buzzing bees

Heavy with the delusion of summer

And the ensuing calm.

Roger's Haikus

My esteemed former colleague from The Ithaca Journal, Roger DuPuis II, now an editor working from Scranton, has a beautiful way with Haikus. His comment was so arresting that I decided to put it up as a separate post. He blogs at arespectablesecond. Read on:


Nabina,

I was delighted to receive your request for haiku. I think a started working with the form out of a wry desire to use it as a filter with which to distill my own sardonic angst into little pools of pure, shimmering bile! Albeit drinkable bile ...

Rather than fall into the appalling Western tendency to caricature the form (see above; and I agree) I wanted to capture moments, people and ideas which were ordinary, yet sublime -- and sometimes really rather jarring -- and which had nothing to do with leaves or ducks or lily ponds.

The 5-7-5 pattern required me to work in a controlled fashion which prohibited my charateristic verbosity, to which you are right now being subjected! That said, here are a few untitled selections from recent months:

"Seated down the train:
Proud sister, your poise and grace
Somehow make me smile."
**

That ode was to an unidentified woman on a Philadelphia elevated train, whom I gazed upon bleary-eyed the morning after a particularly nasty row with my best friend. April 14, 2008. Happily we've moved on... But also from that day:

"E-mail is evil.
For it never quite conveys,
What you meant to say."
**

Unrelated from the next day, after I had my income taxes done:

"Well, that was painless!
Sometimes it's worth it to pay
Someone else to think."
**
Haiku about income taxes! How very bourgeois --not a lotus flower in sight!

Then there was this, written privately to a family member in July:

"All the little lies
Told so we can smooth the way ...
Deals with the Devil."
**
Such is life.-- R.

Today is the Trans Day of Remembrance

"The Trans Day of Remembrance is about protecting the dead from oblivion, true, but their memory has another hold on the living. They remind us that we can’t barter away their lives."

I am cross-posting the post Full Spectrum from Feministe. You may also follow the link : http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2008/11/20/full-spectrum/ or click on the title of this post. Leave a comment, in appreciation or dissent, if you wish. Have a day of thoughtfulness.

Let's HAIKU!

I am going to be a copycat for some time and try write a reflecting haiku in English for each of these masterly compositions below but without the traditional trappings and the mandatory seasonal reference. My samples will be quite contradictory to the lilting idea of a haiku.


Possibly the best known Japanese haiku is Bashō's "old pond" haiku.

Roughly translated:


"old pond
a frog jumps
the sound of water "

**
My sample:



murky snow
million footprints
searching paths
**


Another example by Matsuo Bashō:


"the wind of Mt. Fuji
I've brought on my fan!
a gift from Edo"

**
My sample:


the cry for freedom

scattered morsels
whither justice?

**

And yet another Bashō classic:

"the first cold shower
even the monkey seems to want
a little coat of straw"



**
My sample:



the last chance
a woman's voice
silence is death
**



Now, perhaps my compositions are really not haikus. But hopefully some of my readers will write a few for me to show me how to practise this beautiful craft.

DEAD COUSIN

This is a very personal poem... I feel infinitely better having it posted for my blog readers. Death, dying, decay etc. have occupied a portion of my mind lately. Hope to derive strength from my readers' supportive reading, so please do comment:

You shirt flutters in the afternoon air
On a clothesline in the yard, sweat evaporating as
You sit under the toiling rotating fan under a humid roof
In your undershirt, smiling.
From you boots (Ma allowed you to keep them on) drop
Dust and grey grass, scatter in the musty breeze
On our living room rug.
Ma couldn't stop exclaiming: boots in this heat, you must be crazy!

You must be crazy, I reflect now,
To take your own life.

We are your little cousins who stare in bubbling adoration
As you tap your boots and strum a lonely guitar
Sing with eyes eying the wooden beams above that define
Our human menagerie, outline the ceiling.

Similar wooden beams where
One day you would sling your shirt in a loop.

Or was it the bright scarf you wore one placid winter
Working on tomatoes in your precious patch?
We giggled around ecstatic in touching the red round forms
And squished ourselves with blood of fruits while you sung.
The tunes stutter in my ears
As though they were butterfly wings broken and stuck
Still throbbing with the music of life that wished to live.
So young, yet you sing of pain! Ma had exclaimed.

You must have been pained
To die while we still hummed your song.

You let me play the strings once
You let me touch your colors that kept you busy through night
I marveled at your sculptures so lifelike
Perhaps life was elsewhere for you, I think.

Love is everything, it’s all up there, you had said winking
Before you were gone that summer day, waving at us kids,
Shirt back on. We practiced the springy steps you taught
And howled to see you go, Hawaiian guitar and all.

‘It’s all up there’ meant nothing to us then
Until we heard you were dead, my dead cousin.

They had brought your body down, flower dangling from a twig
Laid you beside your friendless guitar
Ma told us after many years the meaning of your songs –
He was a child of another world, she said, shy and alone.

THE WEATHER IN MY TOWN

I finally, admit it. But don't hate me for thinking this way, please! I have been slow in putting up poems on my blog because I didn't feel very comfortable about it always. Perhaps because I am technically a new blogger. It's not just random people picking up my random thoughts and lines that I am scared of, but it's also something to do with my allegiance to the paper form of my writing, an old habit nurtured too long. Anyway, I'll try to be more forthcoming as time passes. Now, I wrote this poem up realizing I sorely miss the warm and humid weather of India -- the years I spent in Delhi, and before that my hometown Guwahati. Both the places I'll see soon. Ithaca has summers like Delhi autumns and winters like the North Pole...!! Hence this musing about the weather!

It’s musty in my town --
Not frosty
It’s a bit hasty
Like here it is gusty
It tweaks open buds early morning
Makes my shingled heart tremble
With it’s rippled caress every dawn.
It can be dry as rolled oats
With sand flowing under the nails
After rivers go for a sleep-full rest
Never to come back again

Like lost pets.
**
It’s musty
And not frosty
It rains as if the sky had forgotten
Something stirred its tears
Kicking up spiral mud where
Our ankles twist and slip playfully
And our guard drops like water
That wipes our dusty faces
Tired from running life’s errands –

Same jokes, same wasted tests.
**
It’s musty
Not frosty at all
Although winter can hoodwink
You into bundling up in
Hats socks and scarves entwining
As though we were trapped inside
Thermal rainbows, fuzzy and bright
Watching the mist roll up its
Car windows, slowly passing by –

A short-term guest.
**
It certainly is musty
Never frosty there
A bit lusty with bodies shining
In sweat and warm diurnal light
Gliding through the sun and moon’s
Humid corridors to where
The town heaves everyday

Without repose or rest.

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.

Writing Ruba'i

Of late I've been reading and practising writing "rubaiyat" (plural), an adapted form of the classical Persian quatrain, each derivative quatrain or four-lined verse called a "ruba'i". In Persian I'm told, the ruba'i is only 2 lines long...

The most famous example of the adapted rubaiyat form in English is Edward FitzGerald's 1859 translation of The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Another very popular form of this Persian quatrain is found in Robert Frost's 1922 poem "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening". We've all read it, haven't we? Still one of my favorite poems.

Now each ruba'i that I've written below are only evolving ones, because I'm constantly changing them and re-working them. It is not as easy as it seems, but definitely fun, especially when the rhyme scheme has to contain a pithy idea. Here I use the AABA rhyme scheme:

Brutus Sings A Ruba'i

From behind O Caesar, when I saw your trusting head
I imagined homeless folks, kids hungry in bed
Democracy raped, chasms deep all around
That noble moment let my hand, remorseless, strike you dead.

Shakuntala Sings A Ruba'i

If a ring were everything, a face, an identity
I should call my luck all but serendipity!
Thus I too have learnt to take a passing fancy
At faces like talismans. There’re too many, O king, in your city!

(I don't like putting footnotes, so I'll let readers find out on their own about Shakuntala's story and the reference here...)

Mobocracy – a Ruba’i

This is where you took home millions
And nurtured your unworthy scions
Those that hardly cared for a ballot to come clean

Or reach out to lambs eaten by lions!

(Persian literature in translation has engaged me ever since I was a child. For more information we can go to A Brief History of Persian Literature, by the Iran Chamber Society. Feel free to add more ruba'i on the Comments section or on your respective blogs. Will be fun!)

CHANGE

I extend my newfound
hand to the clouds
I spread out my hair like the
light of the night
I step on a graveled
path that blooms

I give myself a name
That discounts all we knew so far in the name of peace and war

And the firmament splits

I am a tree, a border, a language

I take sides
I change.
This is called change.

Proposition 8 ruins my election fun

Yes, we are all happy that Barack Hussein Obama became the 44th President of the United States of America. Such a day should come everywhere in the world, in every country where the marginalized are able to to find their rightful voice. This win is not a magic wand, but without it, America would truly be sorry.

Now I hate to be a party-pooper, but this morning I read the news item "California voters approve Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriages - Los Angeles Times" and was sorely disappointed.

Gay-rights advocates, after this debacle (52% yay-48% nay), filed a legal challenge in California Supreme Court to Proposition 8. The supporters of gay-marriage ban call it an attempt to "subvert the will of voters".

According to LA Times, lawyers for same-sex couples said they will argue that the anti-gay-marriage measure was an illegal constitutional revision -- not a more limited amendment.

Guess, there is still a steep hill to climb then, as Obama (watch video) said in his thank you speech.

Incidentally, I noted that Proposition 8 was the "most expensive proposition on any ballot in the nation this year, with more than $74 million spent by both sides." Talk about fervor and nastiness.

VOTE baby VOTE!

Er, I stole this from the political blog Crooked Timber that I follow:


A committee setting exam papers, a long time ago.


Paper: Public Choice Theory


Draft question: “When is it rational to vote?”


Economist, with raised eyebrow, looking political scientist in the eye: “On election day?”



Hope we know what America did by midnight...