The Indian Republic as fount of verse

In a civilisation where the most profound thoughts about the human condition were distilled in verse, where even mathematics and astrology were taught in meter, poetry is the life-sustaining river.

Adding a fresh tributary is The Harper Collins Book of English Poetry, edited by poet Sudeep Sen. The title claims English as our own and Sen has focussed on poets of Indian origin born after 1950, when India became a Republic. By simple fact of being brought together in an anthology, their works create something larger than themselves, providing the foundation for detailed literary analysis of themes, style and substance. Since the more famous poets appear with neighbours less known, they face the true test of how strongly their words leap off the page into the reader’s heart.

If you hold the book upright, you see a bright blue door with a bolt and a golden lock, something closed. Placed horizontally on a table or bed, the image lends itself to reinterpretation… The  door is perhaps the hinged cover of a blue treasure chest with a wealth of poems inside. While a book necessitates linearity, the numbered progression of pages, and also the tyranny of the alphabet when it comes to poet’s names, the reader can free herself of that yoke by dipping into the chest, abandoning herself to the random, to surprise. Written by 85 poets, there are more than 400 poems to touch, scan, read, inhale, absorb and reflect upon.

This anthology showcases Sudeep Sen’s self-confidence in his own assessment and choice, the range of his search, also his delight in the chance magic created when words lie next to each other. One eavesdrops on the silent thoughts of a poet, whose breath is the ‘vast space of earth and sky’ (Bibhu Padhi); sneaks into the non-space between two bodies united in sex, ‘the madness of skin/ saliva, semen, smell of concupiscence (Makarand Paranjape); admires the resilience of the India’s urban poor, ‘rummaging in the debris/crouching in the refuse/clutching our children/we piece together/another stack of huts’ (Marilyn Noronha); coasts through the gay universe, ‘the boys I love/never touch my tongue with theirs’ (R Raj Rao); shares private despair, ‘Father left us…this vacuum in my children’s lives/marked maternal grandfather’ (Srilata K), and feels the sudden joy of finding familiar lines, ‘her dreams/ traverse the solitary streams/of inward lands’ (Vikram Seth).

While Sudeep Sen reminds us that ‘art in its purest form never reveals all’, some poems remain opaque in the large collection and others fail to impress. Yet, having eaten this poetry, I came away happy, ink running from the corners of my mouth, to paraphrase Mark Strand. There are many types of poems here, including those that seem more prose than poem (without the poetic quality of, say, Baudelaire’s les petits poemes en prose), and in this abundant variety there is tangible proof that poetry is primal, poetry does not lie, and poetry matters.