Saturday, September 14, 2013

When Silent days Communicate

SILENT DAYS REVIEW
by Prof. Dr. Sunil Sharma
 
Silent Days. Jaydeep Sarangi. Allahabad: Cyberwit.Net. 2013.
ISBN: 978-81-8253-396-7. Pp68. Price: Rs. 200/-. Print.
There are times when days fall silent and they speak through a vibrating silence − like a cell-phone kept on silent mode but vibrating at the incoming calls. It is up to the receiver to accept the call/s or reject them, depending on the context and the caller ID. In case of a poet − especially versatile Jaydeep sarangi with increasing global visibility and credibility as a thinker-poet and critic − the temptation to let go by such silent alerts is difficult and despite being busy with a thousand of mundane jobs that we all are condemned to execute Sisyphus-like in our post-modern, one-dimensional, everyday existence on a degrading planet, we latch on to such fleeting moments and snatches of conversations.

Jaydeep Sarangi  − JS to close friends − does that precisely. Working multiple roles as an essayist, critic, editor, traveler, writer, poet, reviewer, interviewer, teacher, mentor and friend, the man from
Dublong to Beas does another literary feat at a high-altitude and conducts us to a rarefied field − perhaps at 50,000-feet above earth-level where sound-barriers are breached by a soaring mind of a poet in a trance and entering a different realm visited by the early Greeks and Shakespeare, among a notable number of astral visitors from the terra firma − of communing with life! His slim collection called teasingly Silent days captures the days falling silent and interacting with a hungry poetic soul in a gentle absence − the verbal lack. The clarifying non-verbal spaces were/ are glimpsed by the meditating monks. He plumbs and probes those inner depths of everyday realities, the angst of our middle-class urban existence, the value of non-verbal communication, delight of pursuing arts and the overall meaning of being alive in a stressful moment of history searching for ideals, and brings up pearls from such expeditions to those dim regions.
His messianic role of a reader/poet is summed up in these elegant lines:
My Dream
It is my dream,
My hungry heart can swallow
The whole world
Of poems and rhymes.
I can arrange the dreams
Of Indian youth
In indigenous ink,
A narrative that lay bare to readers,
I do not know how what you feel
And what makes you weep.
I only reconstruct your stories
And flimsy history. (P. 18)
Here you can hear a post-colonial critic of repute translating the dynamics of that complex of ideas into a flow simple, yet powerful, like the waves of the Beas. The role of a poet is also carefully undermined by claiming the inability/unwillingness to know the reasons for the alienation of Indian youth and a claim to represent their pain/angst/anger causing tears from a cultivated distance through re-constructions of flimsy history. The coinage of the term indigenous ink is striking − IWE (Indian Writing in English) − is doing that only: Crafting, re-creating, re-imagining/re-presenting Indian experience in an alien medium, a colonial language lovingly preserved and promoted in a big way in a free country, as a heirloom. This kind of subtle de-construction and critique can come from a powerful mind engaged with theory at the highest plane only and you get reminded of Eliot as a poet-critic.
Look at these lines:
I Am
It is the old attire, I touch with a pen.
Sweet song enthralls
My flesh.
And the seed speaks through the iron gates. (P. 19)
Here, the native/alien binary is hinted and re-formulated expertly in a new combination, recalling the famous Barthesian assertion that all writing ultimately becomes a rich tissue of quotations, a thing that refers back to others in a kind of intertextuality, in an age of intersecting intellectual grids and borderless conversations and exchange of trans-national ideas. Writing in another language is an eclectic act in itself and very delicate one. Native experiences and heritage get expressed in anther idiom and JS, an expert craftsman, does that act with the élan of a connoisseur.
This poignant line from Silent Days again mirrors the mood of the poet in a poise of mental alertness, trying to catch the weightless atoms/impressions falling on his lyrical Richter scale and the writer faithfully recording them for posterity: 
‘You are passing through a phase; silent days.’ (P. 26)
While reading these poems, I felt like travelling back to a country road that I often take to my office in suburban Mumbai. It is a long winding road nestling among trees and cutting through a small river gurgling its way to sea. It lies stretched between two national highways and is a short-cut. While travelling through this green zone I understand the meaning of inner/outer solitude for a fevered urban mind. For the ‘natives’ living there in the little villages in the shadows of hills, it is a natural state of being. For an ‘alien/outsider’, it is a transient state of rare silence that soothes so much − like the aanchal of an old mother.  JS is successful in re-creating that elusive mood, that mysterious moment, that strange tranquility you feel while going on a country road or watching a sun-up or a Gauguin, up close. He catches the strains that can be heard only when days suddenly become quiet and one goes inside one’s personality to fathom the inner riches stored for us all. His poems inaugurate a New Movement in IWE.
A major poet is born!
Silent Days vociferously proclaim the arrival of a genius!
 
When Silent days Communicate
by Prof. Dr. Sunil Sharma Bookmark and Share   Silent Days. Jaydeep Sarangi. Allahabad: Cyberwit.Net. 2013.
ISBN: 978-81-8253-396-7. Pp68. Price: Rs. 200/-. Print.

There are times when days fall silent and they speak through a vibrating silence − like a cell-phone kept on silent mode but vibrating at the incoming calls. It is up to the receiver to accept the call/s or reject them, depending on the context and the caller ID. In case of a poet − especially versatile Jaydeep sarangi with increasing global visibility and credibility as a thinker-poet and critic − the temptation to let go by such silent alerts is difficult and despite being busy with a thousand of mundane jobs that we all are condemned to execute Sisyphus-like in our post-modern, one-dimensional, everyday existence on a degrading planet, we latch on to such fleeting moments and snatches of conversations.

Jaydeep Sarangi  − JS to close friends − does that precisely. Working multiple roles as an essayist, critic, editor, traveler, writer, poet, reviewer, interviewer, teacher, mentor and friend, the man from Dublong to Beas does another literary feat at a high-altitude and conducts us to a rarefied field − perhaps at 50,000-feet above earth-level where sound-barriers are breached by a soaring mind of a poet in a trance and entering a different realm visited by the early Greeks and Shakespeare, among a notable number of astral visitors from the terra firma − of communing with life! His slim collection called teasingly Silent days captures the days falling silent and interacting with a hungry poetic soul in a gentle absence − the verbal lack. The clarifying non-verbal spaces were/ are glimpsed by the meditating monks. He plumbs and probes those inner depths of everyday realities, the angst of our middle-class urban existence, the value of non-verbal communication, delight of pursuing arts and the overall meaning of being alive in a stressful moment of history searching for ideals, and brings up pearls from such expeditions to those dim regions.

His messianic role of a reader/poet is summed up in these elegant lines:
My Dream
It is my dream,
My hungry heart can swallow
The whole world
Of poems and rhymes.
I can arrange the dreams
Of Indian youth
In indigenous ink,
A narrative that lay bare to readers,
I do not know how what you feel
And what makes you weep.
I only reconstruct your stories
And flimsy history.
(P. 18)

Here you can hear a post-colonial critic of repute translating the dynamics of that complex of ideas into a flow simple, yet powerful, like the waves of the Beas. The role of a poet is also carefully undermined by claiming the inability/unwillingness to know the reasons for the alienation of Indian youth and a claim to represent their pain/angst/anger causing tears from a cultivated distance through re-constructions of flimsy history. The coinage of the term indigenous ink is striking − IWE (Indian Writing in English) − is doing that only: Crafting, re-creating, re-imagining/re-presenting Indian experience in an alien medium, a colonial language lovingly preserved and promoted in a big way in a free country, as a heirloom. This kind of subtle de-construction and critique can come from a powerful mind engaged with theory at the highest plane only and you get reminded of Eliot as a poet-critic.
Look at these lines:
I Am
It is the old attire, I touch with a pen.
Sweet song enthralls
My flesh.
And the seed speaks through the iron gates.
(P. 19)

Here, the native/alien binary is hinted and re-formulated expertly in a new combination, recalling the famous Barthesian assertion that all writing ultimately becomes a rich tissue of quotations, a thing that refers back to others in a kind of intertextuality, in an age of intersecting intellectual grids and borderless conversations and exchange of trans-national ideas. Writing in another language is an eclectic act in itself and very delicate one. Native experiences and heritage get expressed in anther idiom and JS, an expert craftsman, does that act with the élan of a connoisseur.
This poignant line from Silent Days again mirrors the mood of the poet in a poise of mental alertness, trying to catch the weightless atoms/impressions falling on his lyrical Richter scale and the writer faithfully recording them for posterity: 
‘You are passing through a phase; silent days.’ (P. 26)
While reading these poems, I felt like travelling back to a country road that I often take to my office in suburban Mumbai. It is a long winding road nestling among trees and cutting through a small river gurgling its way to sea. It lies stretched between two national highways and is a short-cut. While travelling through this green zone I understand the meaning of inner/outer solitude for a fevered urban mind. For the ‘natives’ living there in the little villages in the shadows of hills, it is a natural state of being. For an ‘alien/outsider’, it is a transient state of rare silence that soothes so much − like the aanchal of an old mother.  JS is successful in re-creating that elusive mood, that mysterious moment, that strange tranquility you feel while going on a country road or watching a sun-up or a Gauguin, up close. He catches the strains that can be heard only when days suddenly become quiet and one goes inside one’s personality to fathom the inner riches stored for us all. His poems inaugurate a New Movement in IWE.
A major poet is born!
Silent Days vociferously proclaim the arrival of a genius!
 

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Thursday, September 5, 2013


Poet/critic Jaydeep Sarangi's SILENT DAYS :Reviewed by Atreya Sarma:






Jaydeep Sarangi
Silent Days
Collection of Poetry
Allahabad: Cyberwit.net. 2013
ISBN: 978-81-8253-396-7
Pages 68. Price Rs 200 / US $ 15


Sweet notes from the Bard of Dulong
My language is a free flow of the soul
When my heart is lit up
With bustles of anxiety...
I write in a language that you can understand,
My community and dear ones can relate with.
It's a cultural language for global readers.
English is my sword, my refuge
When Bengali is the language of my soul
~ (Bilingual Bard)
With the poetic method, raison d'�tre and testament spelt out so by Jaydeep Sarangi, the reader's foray into this poetry and "home of thoughts" (p 13) facilitates him to place and appreciate the various facets of the locales, icons and symbols presented with a nostalgia that is a mix of wistfulness and hopefulness.

Though settled for good in the behemoth metropolis of Kolkata for a long time, the poet's "longing for the red soil" in his native village of Jhargram in the Dulong valley of West Medinipur district is irresistible so much so he is drawn there on and off to relive the frolicking "hunting-freak tribal children" (The Red Soil Allure).

In the spirit of Sir Walter Scott's song "Breathes there the man with soul so dead / Who never to himself hath said, / This is my own, my native land!" � Jaydeep Sarangi has a frequent and intense tryst with the colour and fragrance, sound and light, soul and ethos of his native terrain and its people. So he sings�
My soul is ever restless
To reach out to my dear ones.
It longs to embrace small but scenic rivers
Flowing gently
In remote native links of this incredible country
~ (Small Rivers of the Mind)
It's heartening that the poet sees himself as a part of the whole in a harmonious spirit. However one can't help noticing in the works of some others a striking intellectual paradox that is quick to sing paeans to distinct ethnic identities and micro-nationalism but revels in deriding macro-nationalism as jingoism.

"Punctuated within my native own" (Growing Old with Time) and "my native and loving own" (Silent Days), the poet identifies himself with the tribals of his native Dulong valley�
People call you "aborigines"
We call you the saviours of history
I build up my hut near your train line!
~ (In a Home Away From Home)
The very thoughts about the tribal life and culture and the lungful of the sylvan breeze he takes in energize the poet and reinforce his nostalgic fascination for the tribal traditions and way of life.
The small river
Flowing near the tribal village is your energy;
It twitters your oral history,
Unfurls memory from the windy past.
Rains remind me your folk dance, tuned in wild fabrics
I breathe my full heart.
~ (I'm on Your Side)
Jaydeep's love of the marginalized is a constant refrain in his poems�
Torch of expression blazes bright
In every Dalit's wordy pool
~ (The Torch)
Here he celebrates their new-found expression from their self-awakening after centuries of stifling.

The pull of 'history' is compelling on the mind of the poet, and its constantly renewed consciousness renders the present more entrenched and meaningful for him.
The sap of history of the land is a long pedigree...
Where I sit and whisper in history forgotten
Like long barren trees in late autumn
Calm as history books
Where dry hard facts are written in black ink
~ (My Family Tree)
His invocation of history fills across his poems (I'm on Your Side/ We are Connected! / In a Home Away From Home/ Homeless in My Land/ Small Rivers of the Mind/ The Torch/ Cricket Australia). And it goes on�
A poetess is hanged for her words of protest
Against the history of discrimination of caste and creed
~ (Bilingual Bard)
It will be disconcerting to note that even after 66 years of Independence powered by an egalitarian Constitution and regularly renewed affirmative action that seems to be interminable, we still hear aggressively discordant notes thanks to a socio-political milieu that has not yet wholesomely readjusted itself what with the vested interests across the board obviously bent on re-stratifying the same maligned caste system but under a new and convenient garb � often resulting even in sustained reverse discrimination and virulent condemnation of a major national culture in the name of 'Brahminical order,' ever refusing to give any credit it to it. Thus our centrifugal and recrudescent proclivities continue to be rampant with no objective and holistic lesson learned from our earlier societal imbalances plus centuries of alien enslavement. This is my nagging personal angst though at the risk of sounding politically incorrect.

At the same time, the poet doesn't shut out the other facets of life and he certainly expresses himself and makes his observations on some of them.

The busy Kolkata metro life with its "crowded bus" compulsions and "Tollygunj auto line" results in a situation where�
Promises hide their faces
Amidst crowds of everyday duties
~ (Missed Calls)
In today's fast-paced globalized world, man has become as mobile as a mobile phone. Like a rolling stone that gathers no moss, the man who is obliged to be on the move for ever � like Jaydeep himself whose family from Orissa had settled in the Dulong valley about 345 years ago - uprooting himself and transplanting him elsewhere, is apt to feel with him like an eternal refugee�
I was born as a home-bound
Carried on
Became a home-bound refugee in all stations
Like a flying fish
Between home and away
~ (Refugee)
Whether such a refugee takes it as a curse or blessing depends on one's force of character, and the poet says�
To pen my unfinished poem
About all those marooned faces
After a decade of absence
~ (Ibid)
The poet has his share of angst for the position of the fair sex in our country which is still delicate and precarious for umpteen reasons. Says he�
Blue wings of my imagination
Run wild among my ruined terrace
Of sad history of women in our country
~ (A Rose is a Rose)
The poet who has a poem for his little playful daughter (For Titas) is conscious that she is a part of the same fair and vulnerable sex. So he is apprehensive�
I am a man too
I too have a darling daughter
And I fear, the world where she is a flower
~ (A Rose is a Rose)
Jaydeep records his tribute and homage to a couple of persons whom he admires. He would like to join the "brave battle" waged by Arjun Dangle, the Dalit writer and activist from Maharashtra, for which "My silent pen becomes my sword" (Homeless in My Land). Likewise, haunted by the "Tiger and Other Poems" written by Niranjan Mohanty (who prematurely died in 2008 when he was just 55 years old) Jaydeep goes into an elegiac mode�
I register my random thoughts
In my urn of tears
~ (Friendship)
The poet goes into raptures once he is alfresco under the cerulean ceiling�
If,     with humble joys
I adorn this simple life
Will it make you fume?

If,     gazing at the sky
I spend my lazy day
Will you ignore me?
~ (Humble Joys)
Jaydeep Sarangi's pantheon of icons includes rivers/rivulets like Ganges, Beas and Dulong, and divinities like Shiva, Parvati, Kanaka Durga, Lakshmi and Saraswati; whereas his thematic diversity comprises the game of the willow for "Cricket connects continents" (Cricket Australia) and (Out Swinger); the art and purpose of writing, mysteries of life, and even the graying phase of human life.

In 'The Act of Writing' he interprets writing�
To write
Is to engage with conversation
Promotes readers to reflect beyond
The self
In the 'Mystery of Life' see how pregnant his observation is �
A clock ticks somewhere
In the blanket of silence
While speaking of himself as "growing sweetly old," see how he seals the process with a cute metaphor�
There is always a process to be old
To hold the handle of the chair tight
~ (My Other)
The poems in Silent Days have their sprinkling of gentle, subtle and evocative imagery. Here is an example�
The holy palace gleams like a gem
And I go with hands folded
Mind as focused as an arrow,
My faith enlivens metals and bricks
~ (Going to a Holy Place)
A few poems stand out where they begin or end with a fragmented statement in the nature of an epiphanic flash of observation, message or inference from a self-sensitized and aesthetic mind, where it looks as if seemingly unrelated things are conjoined with a connective that is apparently obscure.

The concluding line "Fireworks everywhere" (Our journey) and "My silent pen becomes my sword" (Homeless in My Mind) stand out from the rest of the poem, with a sort of aposiopetic effect. Similarly, consider the following lines in the poem (Why This Neglect?), where the opening line causes a similar effect.
She counts darkness
Dalit
Writes
Some claim, "We are not Dalits"
"We are Socialists"
None has read
Their tales of pain
The above lines are also probably indicative of a welcome intellectual heterogeneity in a people increasingly exposed to the academic portals.

There are quite a few apothegmatic lines that testify to the artistic touch of the poet's pen�
Life tracks are parallel
Side-by-side
~ (For Titas)
Fancies and arguments die hard
On a placid rock
~ (Flow of the Soul)
On the whole, the slim volume of Silent Days with its 50 poems by the 'Bard on the Banks of Dulong' offers a pleasant and tranquil reading, even as being socially thought-provoking. Now let's end on a positive note with an apt quote�
The dove of peace will flutter
From jungles to hilly heights
~ (The Baul Call)

Jayanta Mahapatra: In a chat with Jaydeep Sarangi


Jayanta Mahapatra with Jaydeep Sarangi




"To Orissa, to this land in which my roots lie and lies my past
and in which lies my beginning and my end..."
In Award-receiving speech at the SahityaAkademi, New Delhi (1981).
Padma Shri Jayanta Mahapatra (born 1928) occupies a very special place in the canon of Indian poetry in English. If not the 'Father of Indian English poetry', he is one of those early signal poets with whom Indian English poetry got an international face. He is a longstanding contemporary bilingual poet whose books have attracted widespread acclaim. From Close the Sky Ten by Ten (1971, Calcutta, Dialogue Publications) to Land (2013, New Delhi, Authorspress), Jayanta Mahapatra has authored twenty books of English poems. His books in Odia include: Bali (The Victim), Kahibe Gotiye Katha (I'll Tell A Story), Baya Raja (The Mad Emperor), Tikie Chhayee (A Little Shadow), Chali (Walking), Jadiba Gapatie (Even If It's A Story), Smruti Pari Kichhiti (A Small Memory). He holds the distinction of being the first Indian English poet to have received the SahityaAkademi Award in 1981. He has translated Oriya poems into English and has also edited Chandrabhaga,a literary magazine of high esteem. Mahapatra's prose is an engaging discourse. He has three major prose works: The Green Gardener, short stories, Door of Paper: Essay and Memoirs, BhorMoitraKanaphula (in Odiya). Philip Saloma, contemporary Australian poet in a poem for Jayanta Mahapatra's 80th birthday (published in Southerly, Vol 70, Nov. 2010) writes "Your poems have called up Wordsworth in the readers." Mahapatra stands tall in Indian writing in English as William Wordsworth to English literature in England ushering fresh zest for loving and joy of living. Here in a conversation with Jaydeep Sarangi, he goes back to his early years of writing.
Jaydeep Sarangi: How important was your trip to the University of Iowa in the year 1976? Did your first foreign visit contribute a lot to your poetic skills?
JayantaMahapatra:
I cannot deny that my six-month long visit to Iowa city in the fall and winter of 1976 was a sort of turning point for my poetry. As you are aware, I began writing poetry late, quite late, when I was in my late thirties. Something my friends saw as a fitful diversion, and not the calling which I took poetry to be. So there I was, at forty, trying earnestly to be a "poet," having abandoned my research in Physics�in quantum mechanics to be precise�and my pursuits at photography. My first two books had been received poorly by critics in Bombay and Delhi, and this was in 1971. I was not thinking of poetry as a luxury; in fact I devoted myself fully to writing during the years 1972 to 1975 with a passion that amazed me, and my poems started appearing in distinguished periodicals such as Critical Quarterly, The TimesLiterary Supplement in Britain, Chicago Review, Poetry (Chicago), The New Republic, and The Sewanee Review in the USA. Professor C B Cox wrote to me in 1974 saying that it was the first time in the existence of the CQ that Prof Tony Dyson and he had ever accepted anything from India. Well, that was something which did make me proud. And in 1975, eleven of my poems appeared in the distinguished poetry magazine, Poetry, which was perhaps a sort of achievement in my work as a poet, and which went on to bring me the Jacob Glatstein Poetry Award for 1975.

These publications were noticed by Paul Engle, poet and Director of the International Writing Program in Iowa, and he invited me to be the participating poet from India for 1976. It was a memorable time for me, 1975�1976, because it coincided with the publication of my collection of poetry, A Rain of Rites, from the University of Georgia Press, Athens, USA. And my manuscript was chosen from among the many poetry manuscripts submitted to the University by the final reader and editor, George Core, who is ,and has been the Editor of the oldest literary quarterly, The Sewanee Review, for forty years.

So, 1976 found me at Iowa city, with twenty other writers from different countries. For someone who had spent his entire life in a remote corner of India, it was a challenge for me, both for living and writing. I'd left the warm comforts of home, where I'd been looked after by Runu, my wife; and was transported suddenly into an environment which was so very disparate from my own. The writers, mostly from European countries were living in a different era; their attitudes and values stunned me. Iowa, the living there, in the US, was painful in that it enveloped me with a loneliness that I couldn't cope with. But, it was a lesson in living, and I was a prisoner who turned toward the wall of his cell for most of the time I was there.

However, the writing part of my life was exciting. Besides coming in contact with American poets like Robert Bly who visited us, and Stephen Spender from the UK, living and interacting with these writers was exciting. It gave me the unique opportunity to place and judge my own writing with the work of others�there was Otto Orban, the well-known poet from Hungary, Kazuko Shiraishi from Japan, Dario from Colombia, Nazli Eray from Turkey, Danorto from Indonesia, and Fred Viebahn from Germany, to name a few. And it wasn't only that comparisons of work were possible; the act of living together added a new dimension to the whole program. May be we were a little like survivors thrown together on a desert island, I couldn't say! But the outcome of it all was that I could, subsequently, grow out of my own poetry, of myself; and build other influences into mine�again a difficult thing to do, because one has to limit these outside influences when one is writing one's own. In that way one doesn't know whether one is successful or not�I mean improving on one's work from imbibing the poetry of others. The main outcome of such visits is, that one learns a lot from interactions and discussions with other poets. But how far does all this go into the making of one's own poetry is difficult to say.

JS: Would you please share with us your experiences when you gave readings at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 1978?

JM:
My participation at the Adelaide festival of Arts in 1978 could be thought of as a kind of extension to the Iowa Writing Programme. But the two countries, on first feel, were so different! Maybe because I was a guest of the Australian Government, a Cultural Award visitor, alongwith two other Asian writers, that made the one-month visit to Australia a memorable one! But I am digressing.We were programmed into two sessions at Adelaide, my Asian visitor friends, the poet Sapardi Djoko Damono from Indonesia and Celso Carunungan from the Philippines�so it was more of a formal event---but I read my poetry alongside Margaret Atwood of Canada, Galway Kinnell of the United States, to name two poets. The Adelaide festival is a grand happening, there are participants from almost everywhere, so the formal ambience somehow pushes you aside. And poetry readings are just one of the things that make up the Festival. But all the same it's a matter of feeling the poetry and writing of people from other countries. And of oneself. Because, once again, you kind of measure, consciously or subconsciously, the writing-processes of various people.This is significant. You realise you don't live in a vacuum. And ultimately you have to look into yourself and your own poetry. To improve your own.

JS: Who are the Australian writers you met there?

JM:
Well, the Adelaide festival got over in four days and the Australian itinerary was so perfectly arranged that it gave me time and opportunities to stay at four cities�besides Adelaide, there was Melbourne, Sydney and Perth; where I spent almost a week  each. I've left out Canberra; and that was an unforgettable time for me, because I could meet and talk with A D Hope, the doyen of Australian poets. I'll speak about this later.

I was scheduled to give readings of my poetry at the PEN. Centres in Melbourne and Sydney. Then, too, in Perth. Both, discovering the vast unending Australian outback, and feeling the genuine affection and humanness of poets like Alec Hope are moments in my life that sustain me still.

I remember my meetings with poets like Syd Harrex, Phil Salom and Brian Turner�and these developed into friendships that obviously still matter in my life. Phil Salom recently published a poem in the Southerly, which he had so kindly written for my 80th birt day. Touching indeed, quite touching. Being with other poets is a refreshing experience, and I am so glad I could. You learn a lot by being with them. It was kind of my hosts to take me over to meet a few aborigine writers; I distinctly remember the aborigine poet Jack Davis's handshake, warm and brave, exuding the smells of ferns and wombats. And of the far reaching Australian earth.

But I can go on talking about these writers I met, and remember even today .Nostalgic, very much.

JS: Any significant event that you still remember when you visited Australia in the late 1970s?
JM: Meeting with A D Hope, especially in his warm home in Canberra, and with his charming wife, Penelope, is an unforgettable happening in my life. The man's humility was amazing, it humbled me. It was a lesson. I wrote a sort of editorial piece on him in the magazine I was editing�Chandrabhaga, and I'dlike you to read what I had said. This appeared in the journal in 1979.

And then, you should remember that you are able to meet many other people beside writers and poets. One cannot deny that admirers of your poetry play a memorable role in your life. It feels so good to be admired. That's the naked fact. And thinking wildly, I would say that such responses of fans and listeners of your poetry mean a great deal more than awards and prizes. It's the human quality that emerges. I've been lucky that way, you know. I have read in places across the world, and have experienced it so vividly that it takes on the shape of an adventure. Believe me when I say that poetry readings have brought me closer to people I'd never known before, when a kind of both pleasure and pain fuels this dormant flame of doubt inside you. It is so fulfilling when a line you've written touches another; then you can feel that the world you live in is in a way yours. I've not forgotten those occasions when listeners walked out of my readings with tears in their eyes.

JS: Who are the important reviewers of your books and poems in the early part of your career as a poet?

JM:
I wish you didn't have to ask these questions. The reviews appeared forty years back, and that's a fairly long time to remember things. And the reviewers too. Frankly, one only falls back upon the positive reviews, it is basic human behaviour, I guess; and when these were published in foreign periodicals, and all by renowned American poets and critics, I was delighted. This was after A Rain of Rites appeared from the University of Georgia Press, USA in 1976. Vernon Young praised my work in The Hudson Review, and later Emily Grosholz reviewed both Relationship and The False Start in the same New York journal. Poetry (Chicago) published a review of my books and it was done by the poet Dick Allen. I seem to mix up things today. But these were comments on my early work.

In contrast, the reviews in India weren't good ones, they were pale and listless. My first two books fared badly, Nissim Ezekiel and Adil Jussawalla, both poets and critics, seemed indifferent. But editors like C B Cox and George Core spoke about my work in the Critical Quarterly and The Sewanee Review, and my poetry began to appear regularly in these two journals. Even today. It's a measure of confidence when an editor supports you. There have been other reviews too, Bruce King ,John Oliver Perry, Ronald Bayes, and Gary Corseri, to name some. And in India, my later poetry has been rated well�that's all I can say.

JS: What according to you, is a "good" poem?

JM:
It's hard for me to say. A good poem is a movement in life; and a "good" poem will always try to reach the condition of music. Plainly speaking, it takes you from the level you are in to a higher plane, like music.

JS: Will poetry travel in the age of cyber mania?

JM:
I can't say. I still use a manual typewriter and communicate by ordinary mail.

JS: Do you have a Facebook account?
JM:
No.I don't own a computer.

JS:Now-a-days you write in Odia more than in English. Why is this shift of mode?
JM:
No specific reason for writing in Odia. I suppose ultimately language doesn't matter. I wanted to be known as an Odia poet.And I found there are lots of things I could do easily in my mother tongue than in English. I find it all a little exciting,using both Odia and English. I've just completed my autobiography in Odia, and the feedback has been favourable. Writing is a search of some kind, and I don't care much about style or craft when I write. This human search is what my poetry is all about. And I am happy to go on doing that.

JS: How is our idol, Jayanta da in the silent house at Tinkonia Bagicha?
JM:
Fine. Between one day and another, there is one day and another.

JS: What are the books/articles you read these days?
JM:
Books, yes, they move me.I've read a lot these last few months:
2666 by Roberto Bola�o
The Kindly Ones by Jonathan Littell
Desert by J. M. G. Le Cl�zio
The Hunger Angel by Herta Muller
The Stone Raft by Jos� de Sousa Saramago...,to name some.
There's a greatness I found in these works, a light held high for me to see.

JS: Is there a spiritual growth in you as many Indians do when they become "senior" and experienced?
JM:
I don't know.I don't think I have had any "spiritual growth" whatsoever. The aim of art is to make one grow about of himself,to embrace a larger tenderness. And compassion. Perhaps this is what "goodness" is all about, I can't say. Or spiritual growth.

JS: Thank you, Jayanta da! You are the source of inspiration for generations! I remain grateful to you. Never let your pen dry! Wishes....

Monday, September 2, 2013

SILENT DAYS REVIEW

Exquisite Images in Silent Days

by Riya Mukherjee,

The poetic collection Silent Days is a collection of exquisite images, the language being one of its kind, where the figures of speech echo the sentiments in a brusque manner culling them into a palpable whole. The simplicity of expression coupled with the harmonic tone of the poems bestows upon them an incredible power of communication which delivers the message strongly to the readers. The poems cover a wide range of emotions, the poet’s mood swinging from that of gentle happiness to grimness, from nostalgia to a fight for the rights of the deprived. The myriad of emotions is indeed a delight to indulge in.
Colour is a dominant theme in the poems. The poet bathes in ‘green’ as in “Shiva’s green neck” in the poem ‘Morning’, “red and green” in “We are Connected”, “blue wings of my imagination” in ‘ A Rose is a Rose’ forming a “collage of dipping signals” even though he feels that “we have forgotten to dream colourful and bright”.
The poet’s nostalgia for his home becomes dominant through several poems of his like ‘The Red Soil Allure’, ‘I’m on Your Side’,’I Am’, ‘Growing Old with Time’, and he constantly refers to the “red soil”, which not only denotes his birthplace but also is an entity to which the identity of the poet is closely connected.  And the poet echoes
    A sharp and burning spirit with concrete form
    Takes me to the bank of the Ganges…
    And I am reminded of the flavour of cooking rice
    And an earthen lamp fed by castor oil. 

The adverse effect that science has brought in the lives of the humans is portrayed by the poet in his poem ‘Missed Calls’ where the poet shows how technology has distanced people from their kith and kin. The poet voices his thought,
    Promises hide their faces
    Amidst crowds of everyday duties.
The language that he uses to express his thoughts impresses the reader while driving the thought home. In the poem ‘Silent Days’ the poet tells, “I shall ask the woodcutter/ To cut my shadow as it is difficult to wait for sunrise”. Then in ‘As You Go’, the poet tells “Turn left/ To right/ Draw straight lines”. The conjunction of “left”, “right” and “straight” seems antithetical.
The strong social sense of the poet is reflected very strongly in his poems as he voices the “…sad history of women in our country” in ‘A Rose is a Rose’. The pitiable condition of the women folks are depicted in the poem and it naturally culminates in his concern for his daughter Titas. The poet tells,

    Brutal within is voiced
    When her innocent body crumbles
    She bleeds
The caste question gains prominence in his poems, ‘Why this Neglect’, ‘Bilingual Bird’, ‘Towards the Center’ where he questions the casteism practiced in our society which denies one even the basic human dignity to live with. The poet depicts this disparity carried over the ages as he tells,
    None has read
    Their tales of pain
    Not even the Gods!
The poems in the collection are however not separate pieces of emotion. They seem to reflect continuity. Even the titles of the poem are in a manner as if one begets the other. The titles of the poem ‘Refugee’, ‘In a Home Away from Home’ and ‘My Other’, ‘We are Connected’ provide ample evidence that the sense element in the poems are continued from one to the other.
Silent Days is an incredible collection of poems and the poet takes his readers to the world of his thoughts, and rightly quods, “…poetry is the window of hope” that takes one beyond the “…vile illusion of transience”.