[Poets
are invited to participate in this series of snapshots of poets’ reading
habits. For information, go HERE.]
What are you reading now? As well,
what is in your To-Read-Soon stack? Please share comments about your readings:
The Policeman by Arun Kolatkar (A
Wordless Play in Thirteen Scenes) [First published in 1969, Lost and Found in 2005 by Pras
Prakashan, India Rs.495 / L25/ $40]
This is
the first book of wordless poetry from modern India. Viparita Alankaram, the
ornamentation of extremes, is at work.
‘A Wordless Play’ = ‘A Wordless Play’
The book
comes with a jacket including a drawing and words. The hard cover inside the jacket contains
nothing but the single drawing from the front cover. I’ll present excerpts from section 3 of this
book:
The drawing on pg.26 shows a single snail approaching in the direction of the policeman.
“SNAIL”
The
drawing on pg.27 shows passage of time in animation; snails multiply.
transforming
the word in this representation of its plurality.
SNAILSNAILSNAILSNAILSNAIL
Arun Kolatkar STANDS with his
STANDPOINT on God.
*
Ramachandran
Ramachandran?
I asked.
Ramachandran,
he said.
Which Ramachandran?
I didn’t ask,
he didn’t say.
“Ramachandran’
(translation mine) from Nakulan’s ‘Selected
Poems’ published in Tamil original in 2012 as Therndeduttha kavidhaigal by Kalachuvadu publications, Nagecoil,
Tamil Nadu (India) which I purchased
on Infibeam for Rs.66/- after discount.
Nakulan also
wrote in English in his real name, T.K.Doraisamy.
What I
liked about this poem is the eeriness of communication. In the conversation
above, the talk that seems to happen between two parties is apparently NOT an
intended communication. A dual of this is cross-talk: a third party
interference, unintentional in the main conversation, which is noise, may at
times add value to the conversation. In Tamil Vaishnavite tradition, Yadava
Prakasha returned to Ramanuja based on his mother’s interpretation of a
conversation happening between two other people in the Kanchi Varadan temple.
This kind of information exchange is given a specific name in Sanskrit grammar which
I am unable to recall now, but it is not eavesdropping
in English.
*
Translations Without Originals by
Julio Marzan, 1986, I.Reed Books, USA purchased from Select Book House for a price I can’t remember.
Translations
Without
Originals
is a
signal I could pick at the first glance from the cover as it is. The book opens
with the poem, “The Pure Preposition”
“Poetry’s Caliban, nigger
minus image or color”
…………………
“Minding us our labor is a product of small parts:
With, by, for, in, on, against”
Poetry
of the everyday, of ordinary people and experiences, irony, humor:
Yes, play with the root canal.
Save the tooth!
I need it for smiling.
(from Emergency)
The book
is replete with poems like “The Desert Walker”, “The Ringmaster”, “The
Tightrope Walker”, “The Carousel Boy”, “Friday Evening”, “Sunday Morning in Old
San Juan” and so on.
*
Letters on Poetry, Literature and
Art, Sri Aurobindo, Sri Aurobindo Ashram, Pondicherry, (First issued in 1972; Fourth
edition, 2002), Rs.90/-
Sameness and Variety in Poetry (pg.31)
Ordinary poems (and novels) always write about love and
similar things. Is it one point against ordinary (non-spiritual) poetry? If
there is sameness of expression in spiritual poems, it is due either to the
poet’s binding himself by the tradition of a fixed set of symbols (e.g.
Vaishnava poets, Vedic poets) or to his having only a limited field of
expression or imagination or to his deliberately limiting himself to certain
experiences or customs that are dear to him. To readers who feel these it does
not appear monotonous. Those who listen to Mirabai’s songs don’t get tired of
them nor do I get tired of reading the Upanishads. The Greeks did not tire of
reading Anacreon’s poems though he always wrote of wine and beautiful boys (an
example of sameness in unspiritual poetry). The Vedic and Vaishnava poets
remain immoral in spite of their sameness which is in another way like that of
the poetry of the troubadours in mediaeval Europe, deliberately chosen.
Variety, vaicitra, is all very well,
but it is the power of the poetry that really matters. After all every poet
writes always in the same style, repeats the same vision of things in
“different garbs”
25.5.1938
Obviously, it is not desirable to repeat oneself …………….. The
only recipe I know is to widen oneself (or one’s receptivity) always. Or else
wait in the eternal quietude for the new “white word” to “break” it- if it does
not come, telephone
30.8.1937
*
The Yearning of Seeds by Kynpham
Sing Nongkynrih, Harpercollins
India, Rs.200/- , 2011
*****
TO READ LIST:
Collected Poems by I K Sharma, Book
Enclave, Rs.750/- (I think I purchased it for Rs.540 on infibeam.com)
I.K
Sharma is a familiar name in the Indian small press. I came to know of his work
through The Journal of Indian Writing in
English edited and published by G.S.Balarama Gupta from Gulbarga,
Karnataka; “Bombay” appeared in one of its issues in the early 2000’s and I
liked it. ‘
“In
today’s literary circles, when poetasters and single-text writers indulge in
all kinds of gyrations for self-publicity, Sharma’s five and a half decades of
literary ‘Sadhana’ or journey towards self-realization, is eloquent about his
caliber and his achievement.”
The
cover contains the picture of Hawa Mahal and declares “a perfect poem in pink”.
The blurb and the allusion to perfection in the front cover are
misleading. (‘poet among poetasters = one-eyed man among the blind?) Of
interest is GS Balarama Gupta’s anthology on neglected voices in Indian prose
which he edited: “Bright Candles in Dark Lanterns”. Five generations down the
line, I am more interested in knowing about the literary climate that
marginalized these voices. I would have
loved it if our small press poets shone at least like electric bulbs in hurricane
if not as stars. Sharma has an instantaneous sense of humor (Ezekiel on my Scooter) and irony that
attract me to his work.
One of
the advantages of living in nanoyuga is that I can order books online. This is
how I got to own two of Gopi Krishnan Kottoor’s books which I wouldn’t have
found anywhere in bookshops. Poetry in our age is easily accessible.
Victoria Terminus (Poems: Selected
and New) , 2010, Authors Press
Vrindavan Rs.295/-, 2012, Authors
Press
Landis Everson’s “Everything Preserved”,
$15, Graywolf Press, 2006
Ben Mazer’s “Tales of the Bukman
Tavern”, Rs.200/- 2012, Poetrywala.
Watch
out Srinjay Chakravarti! “Occam’s Razor”
(1994) and “Appolo’s Breath”(2009),
both published by Writers Workshop, Kolkatta have just arrived.
