Tag: analysis

….For the love of a book

It’s been a hectic month so far! Lots have been happening…. I had been sitting on my third book for the last (which I must say has been topsy turvy!) year. I don’t want to go into details but safe to say that I have not stayed at home for a month at a stretch. Either I have been traveling to other cities or the hospital!

Well, I decided enough is enough and proceeded with my publisher to publish the book. “Weave Some More” my latest novel, has literally woven webs of confusion, distractions, and plenty of new learnings.

I learned how important it was to advertise the book, I also learned that I need to join like-minded groups, and also to keep my ear to the ground to hear the rumblings about the book.

Though I have used Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn to let the world know about the birth of my books, I have not used it methodically (So my publisher says). So I put myself into their expert hands to do the serious work and continued my amateur bumbling on Social Media!

I was soon flooded with a lot of requests from many groups who wanted to follow me or talk about my book or my writing process. It was flattering, to say the least, but it was a lot of work, nevertheless. One more pleasant surprise was how many of them wrote their own interpretations of the book and posted them on different platforms. I am grateful.

Facebook was filled with congratulatory messages from many of my friends and relatives. But I wonder how many of them did read the book. The best compliment a writer ever gets is when he realizes that his book has been read and critiqued (even if it is a bad one!) I am extremely grateful to the handful who made it a point to message me with their thoughts or wrote reviews on various platforms.

I do realize that in this day of the internet and video world, very few have the interest or the inclination to actually read a three-hundred-page book. Being a book lover I do not understand this trend, but then each to his own.

A book is like a living creature. Every time you read it, it throws out new ideas, nuances, and visions. A couple of people argue that what do we need with them? After all the internet is teeming with ideas and entertainment; why go through the pain of reading, exploring, and using your “noodle” to wallow in the pleasure of reading, processing, and creating your own world?

I have no arguments for or against the above theories. Only a book lover can really ‘feel’ the pleasure that seeps through him when he uses a writer’s words to create and travel through a world. The underlined word is ‘create’. It is true that the writer has created a world with his words but your vision of it is your own creation and thus you own it.

Whoever has the time to read this, please do answer the question, “which other entertainment path allows you to create and find fulfillment and gives you ownership of your reactions and emotions?

Of Poets and Poetry

The Oak Tree Speaks

Do you know how many ways there are to die in this city?

1. Speeding taxicab.

2. Open manhole cover.

3. The man breathing so heavy at the bus stop.

When I was a teenager, the boy I loved would pay a homeless

guy ten bucks to buy him the cheapest bottle in the liquor store. 

My love sucked the glass ‘til his teeth were marbles. Rolled

himself down the subway stairs, hopped into the tracks. Waited.

4. Jealous wife.

5. Brooklyn Bridge.

6. Fire escape.

Only once, he let it get so close I screamed. I had never made

that kind of sound before. He turned, his face a prayer wheel

atop his neck, a smile so foreign I could not speak its language.

Like water running in reverse, he spilled himself up to safety.

When the train hurricaned past, the fist of air rattled my branches.

7. Rooftops, all of them.

8. The barroom brawl.

9. The West Side Highway.

10. The wrong street corner.

In New York, when a tree dies, nobody mourns that

it was cut down in its prime. Nobody counts the rings,

notifies the loved ones. There are other trees.

We can always squeeze in one more. Mind the tourists.

It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t wanna live there.

11. Disgruntled coworker.

12. Central Park after dark.

13.  Backpack through the metal detector.

14.  

15.  

16.  

For years, we wouldn’t watch movies where they destroyed

New York. The aliens never take Kansas, we joked. They go straight

for the heart. Poor Kansas. All corn fields and skyworks. All apple

pie.  Nobody to notice if it’s missing. Just all that open space to grow

in.

Sarah Kay

I read this poem, first, on a torn piece of newspaper which was used to wrap flowers. The title had been torn off! So, my introduction was “Do you know how many ways there are to die in this city?” I read on thinking it was a statistical analysis of causes of death.

As I read through it, I realized it was far from that, intrigued I googled it and found this wonderful young poet. Having studied the classical and the neo classics during my college days, I had long since stopped being excited about modern poetry. I felt that the modern poet was turning into an exhibitionist. (The world now was fawning on the loud and show stopper kind of literature) the soul was missing! It did not make me sit up and want to know more.

I was actually introduced to Sarah by my daughter’s enthusiasm for her poems. I first heard her on You Tube and literally sat up to listen to her. But this was not a poem I had heard before.

The personification of the oak tree is what strikes you through the poem. The poem first talks of this boy “she loved” (the poet or the oak tree?) as the number of causes of death continues we are exposed to this boy who is trying to get himself killed, or is he just a tease? The calmness (his face a prayer wheel atop his neck) tells us, he is tempting fate.

I did not start writing this to give a critical analysis of this poem by a great young poet! What I am trying to say that poetry is not dead; it is not limited to the rap lyrics sung by wannabies. What I love about this poet is how she breathes life into her narrative rhythms. I love reading poetry aloud and I do so when I am alone at home. The harmony and peace that it gets me cannot be got by reading the motivational speeches that the market abounds in.

The starkness of her words, bereft of even a semblance of ornament, catches your gut; wrings it to dryness and then lets the phrases explode in your brain with multi-dimensional layers of meanings. The pleasure that it imparts to my parched soul is like water on the desert sand – it is never enough but it continually quenches the inner being.

I bring before you a poem I wrote when I was very young maybe eighteen or so. I wonder now what made me think of such things? Was it the adolescent mind with its chemical battles that make you look at things so deeply? Or is it just a tentative foray into the beautiful world of words and rhythm? Whatever it is, it gives you an insight into not only the poet’s mind but the universal truth that it encompasses. I wish we could go back to the times when reading poetry was a part and parcel of every get together not the incessant playing of Antakshari ( A game where Hindi film songs are sung beginning with the last sound of the song sung before) Poetry which touches your core with the least words and the strongest implications.

Destination

Dull throbbing of muted silence,

Opened up

Myriad options…

The mind took off on a flight to,

Unknown destination.

Multiple possibilities…

Body tittered, laughing anticipation,

Closed and shut

Various limits…

Omnipotent soul hesitated on the brink

Longing, desiring.

So many cycles to go…

Before the ultimate END.

Benita Patnaik