Hey-- I just finished reading Srikanth Reddy's stunning first collection, Facts For Visitors (UC Berkeley Press, 2004). Reddy really does seem to be doing something new. Part of how he works seems to be by assembling fantasy narratives but with very-closely observed "real" details, as in the two poems below. Notionally, they seem to be set in rural South India, but they seem to redraw identity and resist any sense of ethnic fetishism, renewing mythology by making it innocuous and universal, and, apparently, sticking to what he can see in the near distance. The chariot is a recurring symbol in the book, signifying (I simplify) the early connection between technology and war. Of these two, Scarecrow Eclogue is the better one, I think, a very nice remix of Wallace Stevens' Anecdote of the Jar.
Vivek (Two poems by Srikanth Reddy) SCARECROW ECLOGUE Then I took the poem in my hand & walked out past the well & three levelled acres to where the sugarcane built itself slowly to the songs of immature goats & there at the field's shimmering center I inserted the page into the delicately-woven grass of the scarecrow's upraised hand where it began to shine & give a little in the gentle unremitting breeze sent over from the east. I stepped back several paces to look at what I'd done. Only a little way off & the morning light bleached out my ink on the page so it simplified into a white rectangle against a skyblue field flapping once, twice as if grazed by one close shot after another. The oxen snorted nearby & there was a sense of publication but not much else was different, so I backed off all the way to the sugarcane's edge until the poem was only a gleam among the fieldworker's sickles surfacing like the silver backs of dolphins up above the green crop-rows into view, then down from view. How it shone in my withdrawal, worksongs rising over it all. So then I said the poem aloud, my version of what the god dressed up as a charioteer said to the reluctant bowman at the center of the battlefield. How he spoke of duty, the substance of this world, & the trembling armies ranged. MONSOON ECLOGUE Some years ago a procession of men calling themselves the sky-clad came to this district to build a hospital for birds that had been damaged by the rains. The landholders here my grandfather among them decided against it-- it not being our way to intervene with monsoons which is why to this day the birds here grow so damaged & wise, or so our tutor said gravely before stepping out into the sun- washed coriander patch to watch droplets work down stems one by one, small storms suspended, while over the rooftiles came breakers of mist making our whole house to him drift back like the high prow of the viceroy's steamship he watched sail off with his youth. Inside I still could not find the main verb the chariot wheel performed. I thought it was silver. It bore the king with 100 heads across a battlefield red with his wounded up to the end of the beginner's workbook then blue-skinned Rama bent his bow then his raider's arrow met the axle & then I could not stop laughing as through the doorway my mother scolded the aphasic houseboy who peed into our green watertank (black putti, untouchable) arcing the thin golden stream & singing ooo-ee ooo-ee at our ruin. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> In low income neighborhoods, 84% do not own computers. At Network for Good, help bridge the Digital Divide! http://us.click.yahoo.com/S.QlOD/3MnJAA/Zx0JAA/yqIolB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> Did you get this mail as a forward? Subscribe by sending a blank mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED], OR, if you have a Yahoo! ID, by visiting http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/join. Members are encouraged to post poetry, their own and others', respond critically to the poems circulated, and participate in discussions. Post via email at [email protected] OR online at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/post. ---theZESTcommunity-------------- [1] ZESTCurrent: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCurrent/ [2] ZESTEconomics: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTEconomics/ [3] ZESTGlobal: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTGlobal/ [4] ZESTMedia: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTMedia/ [5] ZESTPoets: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ [6] ZESTCaste: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTCaste/ [7] ZESTAlternative: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTAlternative/ [8] TalkZEST: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TalkZEST/ Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ZESTPoets/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
