Pinto, Jerry; Arundhathi Subramaniam (eds) [Arundhati];
Confronting Love : Poems
Penguin, 2005, 96 pages
ISBN 014303264X, 9780143032649
topics: | poetry | indian-english | romance | anthology
love in various ragas : from the erotic to the elegiac, the ironic to the exultant, the lyrical to the witty, the passionate to the enraged. - introduction i had been looking for this book for quite some time, and was glad to finally get hold of a copy at flipkart... because of its power as an emotion, love poems are very good at generating what Anandavardhana has called dhvani or suggestion - we are suggested that which is most strongly felt by us. This is perhaps why love poems rarely fail to work. Some of the best anthologies are therefore love poems. Anthologies also differ in the period they cover. Among anthologies of Indian love poetry, Meena Alexander's Indian love poems (2005) covers the gamut from ancient sanskrit to modern vernacular; Tambimuttu's [tambimuttu-1967-indian-love-poems|Indian love poems) (1967) restricts itself to the ancient and medieval, and Subhash Saha's Anthology of Indian love poetry (1976) is focused on modern English poetry. Both in terms of selection and getup of the book, Meena Alexanders' is the finest.
Any anthology faces a tension - selecting poems that work and evoke feelings, but are well known, vs those that are relatively fresh. The selections here are definitely on the fresher side. Even for the known poets, the poems chosen, (Kolatkar's Lice, Ramanujan's Love 10) are among the lesser known. Many poets are being anthologized for the first time, so it has an edgy feel about it. At the same time, this means that some of the poems (for me) don't work quite as well, but it is refreshing to such a lot of new work. This makes this volume of interest for those searching for fresh voices. So onto specifics. The opening villanelle by Ramanujan was new for me. Mamta Kalia is superb as always, and Kamala Das never fails with her directness. Ruth Vanita was a new voice for me. But some poems don't excite me as much. Ranjit Hoskote's Strawberry Morning has its fine points, and it works in the end, but in between he has you tripping up over adverbs: The clatter of a kettle... lucidly suggests that no one is conclusively awake yet Similarly I am initially brought up in Bhikaji Maneckji's Ageing Lovers by his many "therefore"s. Therefore no recklessness in their twin motion Nor passionate haste to undo the other Into the youthful luxury of possession but in the end, this poem also works for me. While Meena Alexander's volume is definitely richer on the where-the-page-falls-open measure, this selection of recent poets is certainly a worthwhile collection for one familiar with indian poetry in English.
Love poems, he says, are not easy to write because they've all been written before. Words play dead. The seasons are trite. Love poems are not easy to write for anyone present: their lips are sore, hearts elsewhere, or just full of spite. And love poems are not easy to write for absent ones: can't remember any more the colour of their eyes, try as one might. Love poems are not easy to write for the dead: after the sting of sorrow, ironies of relief, one's stricken with blight. Turning over and over tomorrow and yesterday, day is already night. Love, unwritten, cataracts his sight. [villanelle]
Fond husband, ancient settler in the mind, Old fat spider, weaving webs of bewilderment, Be kind. You turn me into a bird of stone, a granite Dove, you build round me a shabby room, And stroke my pitted face absent-mindedly while You read. With loud talk you bruise my pre-morning sleep, You stick a finger into my dreaming eye. And Yet, on daydreams, strong men cast their shadows, they sink Like white suns in the swell of my Dravidian blood, Secretly flow the drains beneath sacred cities. When you leave, I drive my blue battered car Along the bluer sea. I run up the forty Noisy steps to knock at another's door. Though peep-holes, the neighbours watch, they watch me come And go like rain. Ask me, everybody, ask me What he sees in me, ask me why he is called a lion, A libertine, ask me why his hand sways like a hooded snake Before it clasps my pubis. Ask me why like A great tree, felled, he slumps against my breasts, And sleeps. Ask me why life is short and love is Shorter still, ask me what is bliss and what its price...
And even now, when a dozen years have passed, Love has nothing to say: it's simple the day waking beside you, unaware of itself, the warmth after sleep and sleep's slow reckoning of where it has been: it's the day waking with the light on the still interwoven figures we make as we drift into sleep, drifting through the night towards the foreseen and forgotten morning when our bodies stir again, touched by the sun, and I lie there waiting for your eyes to open, two brown pools that lighten inwards with recognition
in the midnight bar your breath collapsed on me. I balanced on the tip of your smile, holding on to your words as i climbed the dark steps, Meticulous, your furniture neatly arranged for death, you sharpened the knife on the moon's surface, polished it with lunatic silver you were kind, reciting poetry in drunk tongue. i thought: at last! Now I loiter in and out of your memory, speaking to you wherever I go. I'm reduced to my poverties and you to a restless dream from another country where the sea is the most expensive blue. My finger, your phone number at its tip, dials the night. And your city follows me, its light dying in my eyes.
My love , I love your breasts, I love your nose I love your accent and I love your toes I'm your slave. One word and I obey But please don't slurp your coffee in that way.
Who speaks of strong currents
streaming through the legs, the breasts
of a pregnant woman
in her fourth month?
She's young, this is her first time,
she's slim and the nausea has gone.
Her belly's just starting to get rounder
her breasts itch all day,
and she's surprised that what she wants
is him
inside her again
Oh come like a horse, she wants to say,
move like a dog, a wolf,
become a suckling lion-cub -
Come here, and here, and here –
but swim fast and don’t stop.
Who speaks of the green coconut uterus
the muscles sliding, a deeper undertow
and the green coconut milk that seals
her well, yet flows so she is wet
from his softest touch?
Who understands the logic
behind this desire?
Who speaks of the rushing tide
that awakens
her slowly increasing blood – ?
And the hunger
raw obsession beginning
with the shape of the asparagus:
sun-deprived white and purple-shadow-veined,
she buys three kilos
of the fat ones, thicker than anyone's fingers,
she strokes the silky heads
some are so jauntily capped...
even the smell pulls her in–
They move with deference, as being aware Each that his body is his and is the other's ANd to comfor the other, must be moved with care. Therefore no recklessness in their twin motion Nor passionate haste to undo the other Into the youthful luxury of possession. For in the withering night, under the dimmed stars That makes them old, they must be one another's Restraint against their acknowledged mortal fear. Therefore no child's fury of ownershi That argues 'Forever'! they are lent one another Only until their expression close in sleep. Therefore conduct themselves with ceremony Of gentleness, embracing one another Through a darkness of inseparable love and pity. It shakes their hearts. Therefore even when they are Most truly the lips and tongues of one another, They kiss through losses, and they move with care.
Who speaks of strong currents
streaming through the legs, the breasts
of a pregnant woman
in her fourth month?
She's young, this is her first time,
she's slim and the nausea has gone.
Her belly's just starting to get rounder
her breasts itch all day,
and she's surprised that what she wants
is him
inside her again
Oh come like a horse, she wants to say,
move like a dog, a wolf,
become a suckling lion-cub -
Come here, and here, and here –
but swim fast and don’t stop.
Who speaks of the green coconut uterus
the muscles sliding, a deeper undertow
and the green coconut milk that seals
her well, yet flows so she is wet
from his softest touch?
Who understands the logic
behind this desire?
Who speaks of the rushing tide
that awakens
her slowly increasing blood – ?
And the hunger
raw obsession beginning
with the shape of the asparagus:
sun-deprived white and purple-shadow-veined,
she buys three kilos
of the fat ones, thicker than anyone's fingers,
she strokes the silky heads
some are so jauntily capped...
even the smell pulls her in–
A lean back, walking into the sagebrush with infinite possibilities of never returning again, exterminated by an inscrutable Comanche, a stubbled renegade, or a crook general, introducing -- my husband. Our lovemaking would have the sweep of brushfire our orgasms the crisp certainty of death, our life the aroma of fried bread, beans and hash, and the guarantee, always lurking somewhere in the background, that the goods would last for only two or three years, that our marriage could be deliciously wiped out, like an Indian tribe, forever.
In the dark smell of cooking meat Blindly i licked you with tongues Of pleasure and fingers of fear In my memory you are a treatise on light Written on braille We rocked in the afternoon's empty cradle Swinging across the night ‘O my unbelieving lover’, you said ‘The sky has opened in my blood; Fly’. Now i find that love has taught me nothing I am unable to escape myself My senses are beasts without forests My soul is a bird without sky
Dusk and the ghats were behind us when we reached the river. Summer had drained it of all motion, but its grey Surfaces were still cold and clear. I watched you shiver As we undressed. We swam, and between the algae The moon swam with us like a silver Fish, then sank into the silt like a broken plate As your fingers ruffled the summer-still river. Reflection made it more distant, and we had no bait With which to catch the quick inflections of its light - Only the taut insistence of memory. How long it seemed till the water resettled, and sight Pieced together again that cracked porcelain moon. We Swam, bare as ourselves and the river we swam in, Then deep in the shallows dead still we lay. You will remember this now though you were looking away: Us wading ashore through the river's wet skin, And clouds roll below us like shoals of grey salmon.
Your eyes, glad and wondering, Dwelt in mine. And all that stood between us Was a blade of grass Trembling In the breath from our lips. But grass will bend. The world swings around. The sky spins, the trees go hush Hush, the mountain sings- Though we must leave this space. We're trapped forever in a little space One last sweet phantom kiss.
As the scooter speeds away from where you are, Each crossing seems less revocable, I think, In the myths they always stood on separate shores, Sohni-Mahiwal, Hero and Leander. But the river is not water nor even Heartless streets overrun with swarming traffic . The river is not to be measured in miles The river is more. Able to drown, deeper Than feeling or thought, indifferent to fragments Of desire -- the river is all that went before. --bio: Poet and translator Ruth Vanita was one of the founders of the well-known gender studies journal Manushi (along with Madhu Kishwar). She co-edited the journal from 1978 to 1990, while teaching at Miranda House college, Delhi. Subsequently, she moved to the University of Montana. She has written widely on gay and feminist issues, and has translated many poems and prose pieces from Hindi to English, primarily dealing with women. A Play of Light a book of poems written to a woman lover, was published by Penguin Books India in 1994.
She hasn't been a woman for very long, that girl who looks like a stick of cinnammon. ... She has been talking nonstop, jabbering away like this and laughing so much all day, because they let him out of jail this morning and her dirty no-good lover is back with her again. [...] 3. Her lover's lousy head pillowed on her thighs, has become a harp in her hands. As her fairy fingers run through his hair, producing arpeggios of lice and harmonics of nits, as bangles softly tinkle over him, he drifts off and dreams that he's holed up in a mossy cave behind a story-telling waterfall booby-trapped with rainbows, and hears the distant bark of police dogs.
1 Love 10 : A.K. Ramanujan 2 The Stone Age : Kamala Das 3 After Eight Years of Marriage : Mamta Kalia 4 Waking : Vinay Dharwadker 5 Leaving Your City : Agha Shahid Ali 6 Prandial Plaint : Vikram Seth 7 Strawberry Morning : Ranjit Hoskote ["A fruity tang pervades the mist..."] 8 Alibi : Eunice De Souza [ "a sour old puss in verse" ] 9 White Asparagus : Sujata Bhatt 10 The Ageing Lovers : Bhikaiji Maneckji 11 I would like to have a Movie Cowboy for a Husband : Charmayne D'Souza 12 Enemy : C.P. Surendran 13 Travelling in a Cage (Section 6) : Dilip Chitre 14 Licence : Gieve Patel 15 Antenna : Gayatri Majumdar 16 Mirror-Love : H. Masud Taj 17 You Said, I Agreed : Anita Nair 18 Nocturne : Anand Thakore 19 There is One Comfort : Marilyn Noronha 20 All the Words : Suniti Namjoshi 21 Cameo : Prabhanjan Mishra 22 Request : Tara Patel 23 Love Among the Pines : Keki N. Daruwalla 24 Wounded Vanity : Manohar Shetty 25 Knees : Imtiaz Dharker 26 Of That Love : Jayanta Mahapatra 27 One Moonlit December Night : Sudeep Sen 28 Some Questions I Want Answered : Jerry Pinto 29 Usage : Rukmini Bhaya Nair 30 Only a Street : Robin s _Ngangom 31 Sailor's Log : Jeet Thayil 32 Vigil : Arundhathi Subramaniam 33 Ripe Apples : Randhir Khare 34 A Letter in April : Adil Jussawalla 35 Bass Notes : Menka Shivdasani 36 Kiwi Fruit : Dinyar Godrej 37 Love as Research : E.V. Ramakrishnan 38 Food of Love : Anjum Hasan 39 You : Gerson Da Cunha 40 Making Out : Smita Agarwal 41 Lines Written to Mothers who Disagree with Their Sons' Choices of Women : Kynpham Sing Nongkynrih 42 Your Eyes, Glad and Wondering : Ruskin Bond 43 Daffodils : Meena Alexander 44 Distance : Ruth Vanita 45 Typed with One Finger : Dom Moraes 46 Lice : Arun Kolatkar Links: A rather negative review at pale parabolas
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