Poetry Books
By
Kritya publication
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These days we are writing more about
poetry than poetry itself. When we talk about poetry, a number
of vague ideas occur in people's minds. Few days back while
reading about an Indian poet, I read few other poet's comments
on poetry. One comment which provoked me to write about poetry
was on the death of poetry. The Poet Mudrarakshas claimed that
poetry doesn't exist anymore, it is dead.
There is no doubt that in modern times, poetry does not have
the same power as it had in ancient times. But why only poetry?
Many other streams of knowledge are passing through the same
experience. In modern times, the power of wealth is stronger
than knowledge. Naturally, poetry cannot win the material race
as it depends on emotions.
We can be relieved that poetry is not in the material race,
otherwise we won't have anything to rely on. So, there is no
need of worry about the death of poetry. Until we feel, poetry
will live. Until poetry lives, we also will.
In this issue, we again have some very good poetry.
Rati Saxena
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he establishment puts us through greedy
displays of success
and the wind-swept creatures hate us more and more
*
our aptitude for cruelty increases
we forest our children into tree trunks/into twigs
*
waking up is a sad habit
*
that your hand/ my hand
*
flesh our single gesture
Bobbi Lurie
*
Opposites , fire and water,
and air in between
balancing ,
each one absolute, reining.
Standing alone
coming and going
together
a triad of endurance, sustaining.
Michaela Sefler
Embrace, it was in the last line in the letter
Embrace, I read as it is the only word
Exact in the middle of my head, sleep alighted
Sleep by sleep I burned and turned in to ash: entered
in to dark coolness
Embrace, Embrace - the pain wake up
Embrace, the sleep murmured
Embrace, the death smiled
Embrace, and
nerve by nerve I blossom in to white lily
Rati Saxena
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There is a set of poems that portray a sick mother ensconced in
a hospital or sanatorium with a perceptible lack of memory and a
failing of the senses ending with the last one, ‘My Mother, 79’
which goes thus, ‘my mother is/ the disappearing field/she walks
across’. How the mother’s slow backing out from the discord of
present day living affects the daughter’s grasp on it and the
sense of aloneness she is made to feel is brought out
effectively in these mother- daughter confrontations.
Lurie’s poems uses words and images to create and recreate
desolate worlds of self introspection and so have a way of
revealing and at the same time denying the self. This is aptly
brought out in the very short poem ‘Burning’. ‘The arms of the
trees open wide/
We are here for such a short time/ Do not imagine this dream is
yours. How bwtter to translate the transient nature of love,
life and dreams?
REVIEW OF ‘THE BOOK I
NEVER READ’BY BOBBI LURIE
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It is as if the songs fell
from a raven’s beak staked in the grass
moving its’ urgent suffocating head
its’ airborne cawing
cannot suddenly escape
that which is very near going
very far, a window on the sea
when something like this happens
just like when doves blackened in the distant sky happen
just like when stacks of hay happen
you must fly away, right away, raven
**
Amid the water
In the cold
In the depths of snow
I have found your heart
Wrapped in love
As warm as
An aquarium fish
Inside the house
Waiting to be caressed
Like a Persian cat
In the middle of the highway
**
Only the poems
Yes,
Only the poems
Will give strength for another war
Another exile,
Only the poems
Yes,
Only the poems
Like the nest of a bird
Between the words
HEBREW POEMS
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The drum with no drumhead beats;
clouds thunder without the monsoon;
rain falls without clouds.
Can anyone guess this riddle?
I have met Ram the beautiful,
and I too have become beautiful.
**
Thou art the Creator, Thou alone art my friend;
Thou, O Lord, art all-pervading.
True meditation revealeth Thee
in all Thy perfection;
And the snares of illusion
are rendered ineffective.
Vast and vicious is this mesh of illusion,
Whose intricate tentacles suck one dry.
Sing with all thy heart, the Name of the Lord;
It costs thee nothing, O Nama,
to repeat His Name.
**
The Saints are an Ocean of Mercy, says
Namdeva,
and they bestow upon us Knowledge, Devotion, and Love
He alone is a Saint, says Namdeva,
who is able to show God.
How fortunate am I,
that I have been able to see Him
in the company of such Saints.
Without the favor of these Saints,
the secret of spiritual life does not reach us.
The Names of God are various;
but unless the Saints confer favor upon us,
we shall not know how to meditate on the Name of God. **
Namdeva
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