Meditations on life

Two collections that explore the kaleidoscopic experience of life.

May 02, 2015 03:12 pm | Updated 03:12 pm IST

Tell me, Neruda; Gopikrishnan Kottoor, Authorpress, Rs.150.

Tell me, Neruda; Gopikrishnan Kottoor, Authorpress, Rs.150.

Here are two notable collections by two acclaimed Indian-English poets —Vijay Nambisan and Gopakrishnan Kottoor are careful craftsmen of the poetic form; they attempt new poetic experiments, marked by different degrees of success and savoir-faire.

The collections explore the kaleidoscopic experience of life; each book capturing a distinct mood and topography of the soul. In the Preface to Nambisan’s book, veteran poet Adil Jussawalla declares that ‘hell features in Nambisan’s poetic underworld, deep, intricate and enticing.’ He keeps ‘attendant evils’ at bay by ‘a certain wit’ and ‘muscularity of mind.’ Jussawalla is partly right, like Philip Larkin; Nambisan’s verses often break through self-chosen cynicism to the realm of possibilities.

In his ‘foreword’, Nambisan explains that ‘ailments of the mind’ are ‘sources of unreason’. The persona refuses to be captive to unreason, even as one is ‘disastrously adrift in the galactic constellations.’ Moods vary and come with their own unmediated logic. ‘Dirge’ expresses wistful nostalgia for the now ‘fettered words’ and deals with the rise and fall of poetic reputations. Image of doom, decay and death punctuates the cityscape: dark and lugubrious. A reflection on ‘ducks’ at the approach of nightfall, captures the haunting image of ducks in their ‘blue cages’, their noise incessant like ‘frogs or crickets’. In ‘Kalki’ the persona is shown to suffer,’ ignored in hourly agonies’.

‘Millennium’ evokes the familiar poem of Jayanta Mahapatra. An act of imposition is described with self-loathing detachment: The ‘stairs were dark and smelled of anger’ and ‘heaps of straw’ were ‘soaked in blood.’ The line: ‘there was no light in the world when we did our deed’ is an effective commentary on the act of violation. ‘Snow’, on the other hand, celebrates a childlike innocence;

Several poems deal with the act of composition. What happens when ‘suddenly the poems die’ and ‘when the poem lies bereft of striving’? Perhaps only a sense of despair can ensue. ‘Grown-up’ contrasts the romance of childhood with sterile conjugality, a mandatory ritual: ‘my wife/ and I exchange good-nights, then fall asleep’. Similarly, ‘Pills’ is about the familiar world of make-believe. Like bitter pills, we ‘learn to sugarcoat ourselves like the rest.’ And finally, ‘the corporate poet’ is an amusing take on the place of the poet in the corporate world. ‘Quoting from Foucault, he will demonstrate / how poetry may prosper on Government funds / and uphold the example of the Soviet State…’

If ‘First Infinities’ captures quintessentially a dystopian vision, then ‘Tell Me, Neruda’, proclaims that romance is not dead; indeed, romanticism must be our badge of honour. ‘Woman wading into the sea’ is a love lyric with voyeuristic undertones. The imagery of ‘blood’ proliferates: ‘The orange sun’ turns ‘the evening to bloody waters’. Likewise, ‘Tonight at love’ brings in the modern-day epiphany: ‘time will be set to rhyme/with your familiar laughter’. Nostalgia for the past is expressed through youthful exuberance: ‘Once you know my heart/the way I knew the streets to your home./every street lamp burning,/was lit in your name. Remember?’

Other creations bring in the sense of loss and unrequited love. In ‘Town’ the persona exults at the sight of ‘colored bangles everywhere’, and yet must fatally encounter ‘closed doors’, just as ‘River’ signals intimacy lost by the passage in time. Despite the oscillation, the clamour for love is insistent: ‘Give me one reason why my birds/sing in the blue boughs in your eyes.’

The worlds the two collections uphold eschew easy binaries: hell or heaven, love or loss, sacred or profane. They are meditations on the essential paradox of life. While each of the two books has its share of the avoidable commonplace, on the whole the two confirm that poetry is indeed an act of grace!

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