SENSE AND SILENCE: COLLECTED POEMS

Now the covers of my book, SENSE AND SILENCE: COLLECTED POEMS,( ISBN 978-81-910588-2-6), have been finalised and printed. The book is available from:

Yking Books
18 Jain Bhavan
Opp. NBC, Shanti Nagar
Jaipur 302006

It is a library edition priced at Rs. 995/-, but it is available to Indian readers, students, researchers, and teachers at 40% discount and free postage. Others may like to contact the publisher for special discount by email: ykingbooks@gmail.com

-R.K.SINGH

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Sense and Silence

Collected Poems : 1974-2009








R.K. Singh







Yking Books
Jaipur India


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First Published : 2010
ISBN : 978-81-910588-2-6
© Author
Price : Rs. 995
Published by
Yking Books
18, Jain Bhawan, Opp. N.B.C., Shanti Nagar, Jaipur - 302006
Tel. 0141-2221456 (O), 09414056846 (M)
E-mail: ykingbooks@gmail.com
Laser Typesetting by
Vikram Kumar Sharma, Jaipur
Printed at
Ruchika Printers, Jaipur


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For the most wonderful source of my creativity and strengh, my wife Durga, daughter Winny, and son Vikram.




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“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”



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Prefatory Note

Sense and Silence: Collected Poems: 1974-2009 brings together for the first time all my published collections of poems, including several new ones and/or not yet published old ones. The inclusive dates, 1974-2009, correspond to the dates of composition or first publication of the earliest and latest poems (even if a few poems might have been composed in their revised or pre-revised form as early as 1971). In effect, the poems in this collection, though not chronologically arranged, cover a span of over thirty-five years, reshuffling the past and providing a composite view of my creativity.

Apparently without a pattern, artificially arranged, and untitled, each poem is an experience independent of the rest, and complete in itself, though continuous in spirit. Short or shorter snapshots of daily life, at times unusual but not without depth, each poem reveals the growth of my mind and style. It should also be possible to read each of the sections, viz., My Silence, Music Must Sound, Memories Unmemoried, Flight of Phoenix, I Do Not Question, The Face in All Seasons, and Sexless Solitude as a long poem, though the reader is free to re-create the material according to his/her own taste and sensibility.

Some poems, including haiku and tanka, have been dropped or shifted from one section to another to avoid repetition of their appearance. In the experimental haiku and tanka sequences, however, a couple of haiku and tanka poem might have reappeared.
I continue to believe in giving no titles to my poems (titles tell too much, as Lyle Glazier once observed), and, in fact, I am yet to compose a poem with a title integral to it, even if in some of my earlier publications, especially Memories Unmemoried, ‘I Do Not Question’ in Two Poets, ‘Some Recent Poems’ in My Silence and Other Selected Poems, and Sexless Solitude and Other Poems, I did suspend some poems by their titles like pictures on the wall. I have now preferred to restore my original design and identify all the poems in each section by numbers. This should not, however, interfere with the readers’ freedom of imagination.

Finally, I am indebted to Shri S.K. Jain for reposing his faith in me and readily agreeing to publish my Collected Poems to benefit researchers and interested students of contemporary Indian English Poetry both at home and abroad.


--R.K. Singh
Dhanbad
31 December 2009


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Prefatory Note ix

1. My Silence 1
2. Music Must Sound 25
3. Memories Unmemoried 52
4. Flight of Phoenix 64
5. I Do Not Question 82
6. Above The Earth’s Green 101
7. The Face in All Seasons 131
8. Sexless Solitude 152
9. The River Returns: Tanka 198
10. Every Stone Drop Pebble 227
11. Peddling Dream: Haiku 234
12. The River Returns: Haiku 256
13. Some More Haiku 290
14. Some Haiku Sequences 305
15. Some Tanka Sequences 320
Acknowledgements 329

Published Prefatory Notes/Forewords/
Front-Notes/Some Comments 334
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"My friend, your book is incredible, a work of incredible breath, voice, and creativity coupled with depth and infused with your culture. I am awed.

Robert"

--Robert D. Wilson
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