Dear All,
It is perhaps about time I stopped being a quiet observer on this list and came out in the open, especially after Shivam's inspiring monthly call. My name is Aniruddha Dutta and I became a member of this list while at St. Stephen's College, Delhi: now I have shifted base to Kolkata, and am doing my first year of post-graduation in English at Jadavpur University. I have also been working at Indian Express since June as a trainee-sub-editor, though I will be giving up the job at the end of this of this month as I find it too tough to manage both college and office.
I took to both reading and writing poetry only after I joined college: before that, I never thought I was particularly a poetry person. It seemed to be a too figurative a medium for me to handle (even by way of appreciation): since then, however, I've grown to discover how much of a precise and pungent medium it can be, maybe by paradoxically opening up the very scope of figurative play in language: by showing the ambiguties and fruitful multifarousness of linguistic construction itself. In general, I tend to agree with Mallarme's position regarding the poetic art: it allows language to speak for itself, opening itself out in a way that is precluded by the conventions of interpretation and meaning that go with a lot of prose and with everyday discourse. But this 'opening out' itself is not vague ambiguity, but necessitates a keen awareness of words and the way they work.
But that, of course, sounds too vague and academic. To give more concrete examples, I have been affected by the work of such poets as (to give a very dispersed range) Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Maya Angelou, A.K. Ramanujam... ah well, I see that I am being very scatter-brained and following no chronological or geographical pattern. Anyway. I am attaching this poem of mine with this rather than going on forever about poetry, perhaps that will help the reader gauge better whether he/she would have any use for me at all.
Regards,
Aniruddha
It is perhaps about time I stopped being a quiet observer on this list and came out in the open, especially after Shivam's inspiring monthly call. My name is Aniruddha Dutta and I became a member of this list while at St. Stephen's College, Delhi: now I have shifted base to Kolkata, and am doing my first year of post-graduation in English at Jadavpur University. I have also been working at Indian Express since June as a trainee-sub-editor, though I will be giving up the job at the end of this of this month as I find it too tough to manage both college and office.
I took to both reading and writing poetry only after I joined college: before that, I never thought I was particularly a poetry person. It seemed to be a too figurative a medium for me to handle (even by way of appreciation): since then, however, I've grown to discover how much of a precise and pungent medium it can be, maybe by paradoxically opening up the very scope of figurative play in language: by showing the ambiguties and fruitful multifarousness of linguistic construction itself. In general, I tend to agree with Mallarme's position regarding the poetic art: it allows language to speak for itself, opening itself out in a way that is precluded by the conventions of interpretation and meaning that go with a lot of prose and with everyday discourse. But this 'opening out' itself is not vague ambiguity, but necessitates a keen awareness of words and the way they work.
But that, of course, sounds too vague and academic. To give more concrete examples, I have been affected by the work of such poets as (to give a very dispersed range) Pablo Neruda, T.S. Eliot, Sylvia Plath, Emily Dickinson, Adrienne Rich, Maya Angelou, A.K. Ramanujam... ah well, I see that I am being very scatter-brained and following no chronological or geographical pattern. Anyway. I am attaching this poem of mine with this rather than going on forever about poetry, perhaps that will help the reader gauge better whether he/she would have any use for me at all.
Regards,
Aniruddha
The attached poem was intended to be about a lot of things: about delhi and the experience of its streets, about Urban experience in general, about love and loss and loneliness, about inter-personal interactions... I leave the executed result open to judgement.
Scarecrows and Mannequins
I
Lost in little streets, lanes off lanes,
Caught by jaundiced lights, lots of them
Glint among extended arms and thighs,
Between heaving plaits, sarees, bellies and talk,
Yet immaculate and still.
You squeeze through, you pass by
The others — old men with
Lifetimes of flab (who yet think
They have weight requisite
To wooing the world)
Young girls huddled even in motion,
Could-be handsome young men
Where _expression_ betrays lineaments
And sounds the insecure inside.
Why should you —
But then, you do —
Mistake dull arms for glinting ones
Or jump at ceramic seeming flesh:
(Even if figures differ starkly,
And clothes are fashionable or not,
In startled moments of realisation
You have lost the sense
Of the right way round.)
Till the spaces turn darker and empty
And halide lamps loom way overhead
And chaos turns cold
And you rest, tired with the maze
And certainly, slightly amazed.
In trains, a similar thing:
Fields pass by, the drowsy afternoon
Passes by slower, or stickily stands
While the coach buzzes with sleep, noise and spilled water.
Bare straw, stubbled corn and men bent low
Arrange themselves outside, should one look out,
Except for those sticks here and there,
Tall, with painted clay-pot heads
Not much interruption.
While they scare birds away
You wonder which face the last resembled…
It's like watching clouds, or damp walls.
So much of use to them that use them
Here, only pegs for reflection till willed confusion
Sets in.
II
At some point
Eerily, your
Thoughts turn and they
Line up this with that and they
Make you think of barren stumps, make
You think of bared rooms.
You think of nothing where trees should have been,
Of pitiless sun instead of tardy shifting leaves.
You think of eyes, hands and lips
That stood for nothing you thought they stood for.
And when you no longer know
If you have that ancient knowledge of telling heat and rain,
The subtle art in sounding people —
You are alone in a very long corridor to the end,
Like bazaars and trains
Lighted, with glinting scarecrows and mannequins.
And trees grow,
And buzzards watch
And stones keep quiet.
(Repeat, piano)
And
Trees grow and
Buzzards watch
And stones keep quiet.
(Repeat, pianissimo)
And trees grow and
Buzzards watch and
Stones keep quiet.
(Repeat, pianississimo.)
--
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POEM.DOC
Description: MS-Word document
