My book SILENCE: A WHITE DISTRUST in Spanish edition
The Kindle edition of SILENCE: WHITE DISTRUST in Spanish is now published and is available on Amazon.
https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Ram-Krishna-Singh-ebook/dp/B08XWHTG19/
Some observations about the book:
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“Ram Krishna Singh continues to strive along the road of poetry alongside the damaging actions of politicians around the world, big corporations, and society at odds with itself. We need poets to champion us, and Ram Krishna Singh is one of our champions. His haiku and tanka carry a rawness as if a ragged breath at the shock of the world and its immensity is realised all over again.”
--Alan Summers, Co-Founder, Call of thePage, Japan Times Award Winning Writer, and leading Haiku poet, Chippenham, England.
[Comment received on Twitter: https://twitter.com/messages/24542225-30418551]
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R K,
Thanks for sharing this with me, and honoring me with your request.
Your writing contains many imaginative and evocative words, phrases, and lines!
Experimentation is good, but one needs to be mindful of the balance between
continuity and novelty.
I also think of John Coltrane, the famed jazz musician: One needs to break the
rules, well .
Writing a long poem, that sustains itself in intensity and imagination - is not
easy.
Combining preexisting short poems, into a longer one, is a tricky business…
Section headings or numbering, generally help. See Seven Ways of Seeing a Black
Bird by Wallace Stevens.
Otherwise, listing-linking them, while keeping the shorter poems fully intact,
is trickier – still.
First lesson of Walt Whitman, is to let a strong-long line
run its full natural length – it deserves it own line.
Second, present participles: he is running, as opposed to: he runs – keep a
poetic dynamic intact.
Third, if a long poem is developed by prior short poems, there needs to be some
trimming of fat and weak lines, and synthetic activity needs to be constructed
between them.
I have taken the liberty of doing – all -- this with the first third of the poem:
Ever evading happiness
for the now-
unfinished song
moonless this November night
but lively with stars and breathing silence
perfumed by night queen
still lingering her scent on the linens
drying in shadows
half painted palette and easel
collecting dust in the studio
painted silence of mothers,
lemon tea-shade of her lipstick
on my lip
last night's rain paves way for a clear sky
morning breeze cools and the sun adds
a new hue to spring
filling emptiness, waves dance over each other-
the sky intermingling with sea life
becoming one in each other
scenting cleavage &
crescent wanes
her name a soothing music in the mouth:
I forget pain
I seek the sky in silence
zipping her back-
hundreds of nights grow wings
with wasp touch
intruding the darkness of tree's silhouette:
she whispers its masked presence
saying no to love making
brightness of the star
half-closed bedroom window:
moon shies away
waking to a morning tainted with prayers
on the toilet seat
nude nature waves a dull sun
smitten by the night's long eclipse
moon energy
fills up the inner space-
calling to awake
….
You are free, of course, to reject all these notions,
suggestions, and revisions.
Or, use whatever you deem to be fitting.
Best Wishes
John F DeCarlo
John F DeCarlo , Currently Poet Laureate of the Long Island Philosophical Society, and studying Immuno Oncology at Harvard Medical School; Faculty Member, Writing Studies & Philosophy of Science, Hofstra University, Long Island, New York. Web: https://johndecarlo.academia.edu
[https://www.academia.edu/Messages?atid=19294490 ]
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A very unusual critique of RKs poetry, especially when he expresses the opinion of "balance between continuity and novelty." Two elements for clarity of the idea (difficult to see particularly if there's no punctuation), and "novelty" , depicting unique events, festivities, rites, traditions, which is the case of RKs poetry-- Contaminated with Prayers, for example,-- at times is tricky to perceive the theme of the verse , in fact, of the entire poem of it is lengthy---it makes difficult to ascertain the idea-- "writing a long poem that sustains itself in intensity and imagination”-- is not easy.
The exercise becomes exciting when translating RKs poetry, it is when I have discovered , far beyond the verse itself, what RK meant there. Then, I am able to say in the other language exactly what he means in the original... at times I feel like going back to the English version and rewrite it -- I wont dare , first, because, once you understand in your own language what the poem says in the original, you do not want to change; and if you are satisfied that both languages are at their best, you do not want to alter their beauty. At the end, it all boils down to the ability of the reader to give the poem the accent it demands. Thus , as defined by the academy," without punctuation the poet is able to create more ambiguity and therefore more possible meanings." It is our privilege to give our poetry its own mark and approach.
"You are free, of course, to reject all these notions, suggestions,and revisions. Or, use whatever you deem to be fitting.”
Best Wishes, John F DeCarlo
Greatly appreciated are your comments and references to other poets. Glad to know you dear Prof. De Carlo.
--Joseph Berolo
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I fully agree with Joseph Berolo’s response to John F DeCarlo’s comments and suggestions. A creative reader can always re-create a poem for themselves in whatever style/form they choose. My haiku-tanka-haiku sequence is dynamic enough to be read, revised, or re-written differently, which John has tried to do. His version too can be re-written differently. However, I would prefer my poem to be read as it is, with all the nuances of haiku and tanka, even as it may be viewed, edited or interpreted variously.
--R K Singh
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Review essay by Dr Pravat K Padhy
SILENCE: A WHITE DISTRUST by R K SINGH
Reviewed by Pravat Kumar Padhy
There has been a long tradition of linked forms of poetry in Japanese literature.
The oldest Japanese poetic form, renga, is the nucleus of the evolvement of tanka and haiku. Waka or utaoriginated in the 7th century AD in Japan. The term waka (wameans ‘Japanese’, kameans ‘poem’) originally encompassed different styles: tanka (short poem) and chōka (long poem). The schemata or morae (sound units) patterns follow 5-7-5-7-7 (known as ‘sanjuichi’, the Japanese word for 31). The Japanese long poem, choka, is structured as 5-7-5-7-5-7-5-7-5 . . . 7-7 onjiin line length.By the turn of the first millennium, the two parts of the tanka were written by two people called tan renga. The collaborative poems were written in sets of 100, 1000, 10000 lines. The original structure was in 5-7, 5-7, 7 and subsequently, it became 5-7, 5-7-7 during the Man’yo period. In the sixteenth century, the opening stanza or the starting verse (5-7-5, go schichi go) of renga was named as ‘hokku’ and the last two-line (second verse) as ‘wakiku’.Matsuo Basho (1644-1694) was the pioneer of writing classical ‘hokku’ and he had rendered aesthetic values to the verse writing with the brilliant poetic spell.Later Masaoka Shiki (1867-1902) christened “hokku” to “haiku” at the end of the nineteenth century. In modern English, the syllabic form is not strictly followed and instead haiku and tanka are composed in s/l/s and s/l/s/l/l line forms respectively.
Keeping the view the brief historical background of the development of the Japanese linked form over the years, it looks fascinating to read Prof. R K Singh’s experimental linked verse of haiku-tanka-haiku or tanka-haiku-tanka. The collection, “SILENCE:A WHITE DISTRUST” is an innovative literary manifestation of a long sequence of poems and can be characterized by apparent link and shift if interpreted unit-wise of haiku-tanka-haiku or tanka-haiku-tanka.
The poet defines: ‘White distrust’ exposes what one tries to cover up, the various faults or hypocrisy. The distrust is transparent, lacking colour, in an otherwise colourful, silent experiences.’
R K Singh has skillfully crafted the images with imaginative word phrases like: she whispers its masked presence, smitten by the night's long eclipse, silk silence, fishing memories, Stairway to Heaven, seismic movement and others. The sequence as a whole is embedded with allegorical expressions culminating inthe insightful poetic spell.
R K Singh embellishes the thread of silence by poetic craftsmanship and lyrical utterance. Artfully he blends the voice of silence with the muses of nature:‘filling emptiness/ waves dance over each other-/ the sky meets the sea.’Appositely the great Tamil poet, SubramaniaBharathi says, “The one who understands loneliness and silence and the language of the flowers and lives in oneness with nature is a poet.”
The poet paints the art of sensuality with graceful touch. His sense of love and the mystic union is a classic manifestation. He crystallizes love as practical and pure like ‘white of night’. He embodies its tenderness and aesthetic delight and subconsciously apprehends the image of manipulation of wetness.
in the white of night
sighs for supreme delight
steal tender pleasure
manipulating wetness
in bed unmask simple sin
He believes the brightness of love: ‘light switched off/ love sliding on/ window pane/ moon too shies away/ behind the bare tree.’The aesthetic essence and purity of love urge him to believe it as immortal manifestation, and he paints it as the eternity of union.
I'm not alone
waking up in the grave-
angels await
my rise to eternity
my love's union again
He accomplishes the adoration and sense of sensuality through poetry. Interestingly, the images in the linked form of haiku and tanka avidly synthesize both objective and subjective aspects of poetry.
ever evading
happiness for the now-
unfinished song
moonless
this November night
livelier with stars
and breathing silence
perfumed with night queen
still lingers
her scent on the linens
drying in shade
He is saddened by theprevailing pandemic situation and the global health crisis. He enumerates the plight with emotion and apprehension.
in the air
I expected romance-
corona
avoid her kiss
and breathing too
with spring comes
burial of romance:
COVID-19
quarantined
I clear my throat
behind the face mask
breathe in unknown viruses
suffer new repressions
The poet reminisces the bygone days and portrays past with poetic insight. He excels in interweaving concrete images. Nineteenth-century Spanish poet Federico Garcia Lorca says, “a haiku is a momentary burst of inspiration, the blush of all that is truly alive… the trembling of the moment and then a long silence.”
visiting home-
shadows of forgotten days
on the wall
spiders' network
between two photo frames
bridge or bury
sensations no longer
spurt action in silence
on the terrace
facing the sun
an empty chair
The famous American Poet Max Ehrmannin his early 1920s prose poem,‘Desiderata’writes, “Go placidly amid the noise and the haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence…..” Singh tries to rejuvenate the essence of silence in a meditative way by juxtaposing with white distrust. The experimental linked form is unique in its manifestation in contemporary literature.
***********
Brief-Bio:
Pravat Kumar Padhy has obtained his Masters of Science and Technology and a Ph.D from Indian Institute of Technology, ISM Dhanbad. His Japanese short forms of poetry have been widely published. His poems received many awards, honours and commendations including the Editors’ Choice Award at Writers Guild of India, Sketchbook, Asian American Poetry, Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival International Haiku Honourable Mention, UNESCO International Year Award of Water Co-operation, The KloštarIvanić International Haiku Award, IAFOR Vladimir Devide Haiku Award and others.He has seven collections of verse to his credit.
His work is showcased in the exhibition “Haiku Wall”, Historic Liberty Theatre Gallery in Bend, Oregon, USA and tanka, ‘I mingle’ is featured in the “Kudo Resource Guide”, University of California, Berkeley.He has experimented with a new genre of linked form, Hainka: the fusion of haiku and tanka. He is nominated to the prestigious panel of ‘The Touchstone Awards for Individual Poems’, The Haiku Foundation, USA. Presently he is the Editor of Haibun, Haiga and Visual Haiku of the Journal, ‘Under the Basho’.
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A Brief Critique of a Masterful Poem
by Kevin Marshall Chopson
Ram Krishna Singh's new experimental, long poem SILENCE: A WHITE DISTRUST is about our times; but, it's “meta” approach in form further demonstrates the complexity of each moment in our current condition of living through a pandemic and all the novel consequences of our behavior, voluntary or forced – like “normal” life itself, or as one embedded haiku in the poem states “pre-monsoon ramble / wilderness in harmony – / worlds within world.” Life is a series of short scenes with unpredictable associations and meanings. And, so, perhaps, is art. This poem perfectly expresses the realization that routine life, and life during a pandemic, do, indeed, run concurrently. Normalcy cannot easily be swept aside. SILENCE: A WHITE DISTRUST takes the ancient haiku and tanka forms and effectively sews them together in a beautiful, postmodern mosaic. This work is simultaneously linear and cyclical, romantic and erotic, cynical and inspirational, and, perhaps most importantly, sonically and contextually stunning. Everyone in the world should hear and/or read this poem. Even in its length, it is a beautifully compressed expression of empathy, compassion, and the importance of individualism. There is a lot to consider in this poem, a great deal of murmurings bundled-up for a greater purpose. SILENCE: A WHITE DISTRUST speaks loudly.
-----------------
Kevin Marshall Chopson is a lecturer, filmmaker, conceptual artist, and four-time Pushcart Prize nominated poet. He has over one hundred and twenty poems published in dozens of university and independent journals across the U.S., Europe, and the U.K. His experimental short film TOUCHED has received several accolades from numerous small festivals across the globe,including an Official Selection designation at the 2020 Blow-Up Chicago International Arthouse Film Festival. His first poetry collection A Hollow Earth was published by the Anticus Multicultural Association in Romania in 2017.
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Prof RK Singh is a poet who, through his unique poetic works in English, is carrying forward the tradition of world poetry for a happy and blissful life on earth. He is continuously doing it through his capacity to create and glorify haiku and tanka by way of revealing the eternal truths and values of mankind on a big and beautiful canvas of his poetic world. The specialty of his creation is that through haiku and tanka, he also makes a subtle investigation of the inner world of human beings as well as of the fundamental reality of the outer world, which are often left unexplored by ordinary poets. Hence, his bilingual haiku-tanka-haiku book— Silence: A White Distrust, which is excellently translated from English into Spanish by Joseph Berolo, would create immense value for the Spanish-knowing audience.
---
- Abnish Singh Chauhan, M.Phil & Ph.D, Professor & Dean, Faculty of Humanities & Journalism, Faculty of Management, Bareilly International University, Bareilly-243006 (U.P.) India; Editor, Creation and Criticism . www.creationandcriticism.com
8.
"R. K. Singh as a poet nourishes the grandest of ideas, emotions and thoughts in such microscopic forms, that he becomes the god of minute things.
The readings of his poems are usually complex, as he rarely brushes simplistic caricatures through his writings. The backdrops are vivid, ranging from personal to political, social to religious, sexual to psychosexual, physical to psychological, etc.
His poems are not meant for ordinary readers, it requires sharpness. That's why, for a translator, shifting his complexities from one language to another becomes a walk on double-edged sword."
- Dr. Varsha Singh
Managing Editor, Reviews (Jharkhand, India)
---
Born in Jharkhand, Varsha Singh is a Poet, Translator and Editor. She currently teaches at the Department of English, Guru Nanak College, Dhanbad. She writes in English and Hindi. Along with being the Managing Editor of Reviews (http://thereviewsindia.co.in/ ), she edits for several national and international journals. Her works have been featured in several journals, books and magazines including Sahitya Akademi’s journal “Indian Literature”.
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9. OBSEVATIONS AND COMMENTS ON POETRY OF PROFESSOR
RAM KRISHNA SINGH TANKA and HAIKU
The stark realism of Professor Singh’s HAIKU is mellowed by the use of his sometimes humorous use of TANKA verse with its own internal rhyme somehow enveloping the Haiku stanza while at the same time underlining the ever present threat of the pandemic. For example:
pandemic:
bullying before vaccine
the November wave
Then as if a form of counterbalance to this unseen, behind closed doors, but ever present outdoors, he gives us hope in his TANKA.
things get hairy, scary
with body failure
ailments pop up
spirit dries up
mind disconnects
Seasons and the moon are reflected both in the Christian calendar and the Hindu references to Diwali, for always the TANKA is refreshing and hopeful. This seems to be a recurring thread in his work, for when the hard reality of what is happening around, then nature gives a refreshing respite to all worries and the natural world continues unabashed around him.
moonless
this november night
livelier with stars
and breathing silence
perfumed with night queen
still lingers
her scent on the linens
drying in shade
half painting
palette and easel
collect dust
in the studio
painted silence of mother
It is the basic tasks of living each and every day as it comes that become the reality of Ram’s poetry as the Haiku blends into the next stanza of TANKA. Colour moves a shade to white and washing clothes or hair reflect the basic nature of a special rite of cleansing and are the moon takes the role of drying and the monsoon rites are hidden in the daily rituals of purging both clothes and body. Despite the starkness of the moonlight there is a simple task of washing hair and clothes that is both human and perennial.
Thus we have another triplet of HAIKU embraced it seems by two HANKA verses that use brief and simple words to describe something which is Holy.
in the white of night
sighs for supreme delight
steal tender pleasures
manipulating wetness
in bed unmask simple sin
white moon
shadowless-
folding laundry
my vests couldn’t dry
on the clothesline today
the rain’s music
turns different from the sun’s
I hear the hum in my hair
But it is the continual reference to times of the year that celebrate age old recurrences of the monsoon and interlace the spirituality of Hindu tolerance and Christian religious festivities that has a universal appeal. Again, it is the brief HAIKU that describes the short sharp Christian remeberance of Good Friday and the TANKA verse that surrounds this short eulogy to Easter, a time of the year which is celebrated by many cultures and many religions.
There is no doubt that this combination of two different but quite similar verse forms complement one another by bringing stark reality to a deeper method of understanding through referring to some other form of astrology.
--Professor John T Rankine, Australia
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Cecilita Gracias por la detallada correecion de estilo y comentarios general que he traducido asi;
Como escucha en la presentación virtual del Autor en la Sesión Final del Encuentro de SEMILLAS DE JUVENTUD S. XXI. debo decir que me sorprendió la sencillez del autor al leer sus poemas .... y me alegra tener la oportunidad de encontrar en los Silencios, grandes motivos para preguntarme el qué, el por qué y el para qué expresar sentimientos en la forma poética del haikú que da paso a múltiples figura y reflexiones. Como innovación, el estilo y el contenido llevan una profunda filosofía de la continua problemática del hombre ante su ser y ante las circunstancias de la vida que, en este momento, ha tenido cambios no imaginados, por la invasión del CONVID-19 un pequeño virus que, en el decir de los científicos es de tamaño mínimo: en el diámetro de un cabello, afirman, caben unos 600. La libertad y la eficiencia en la escritura, muestran una vez más, la facilidad del difícil arte de escribir.
As I heard in the virtual presentation of the Author of Silence White distrust, in the Final Session of the Meeting of Seeds of Youth XXI Century, I must say that, I was surprised by the author's simplicity when reading his poems ... and I am glad to have the opportunity to find in Silence, great reasons to ask me the what, why, and why to express feelings in the poetic form of haiku that gives way to multiple figures and reflections. As an innovation, the style and content carry a deep philosophy of the continuous problems of man before his being and before the circumstances of a life that, at this moment, has unimagined changes, due to the invasion of CONVID-19, a small virus which, according to the scientists, is of a minimum size: in the diameter of a hair, they affirm, there can be about 600. Freedom and efficiency in writing show once again the ease of the difficult art of writing.
CECILIA LAMPREA DE GUZMAN URL http://www.aveviajera.org/nacionesunidasdelasletrasuniletras/id1290.html
---------------------
Book Review:Basudhara Roy
Poised between Contraries: A Review of Ram Krishna Singh’s Silence: White Distrust : Basudhara Roy
Ram Krishna Singh
Silencio: Blanca desconfianza
Silence: White Distrust(Spanish Edition)
Poetry
Editorial Ave Viajera S.A.S., 2021
ASIN (Kindle) B08XWHTG19
Pp 65 | Price Rs. 441
Can mental spaces engage in a chromatic dialogue? Can colours be narrativized? Can contrary impulses generate a meaningful conversation? Is it possible to find a poetic rhythm for the darkening world that has been ours ever since the Covid’19 pandemic set in? As crisis follows crisis in these difficult times and existent words recurrently fall short of expressing new, unimagined realities, one wishes one had something more concrete than language to work with and cast one’s feelings immortally to memory. “Language in art,” says Harold Pinter, “remains a highly ambiguous transaction, a quicksand, a trampoline, a frozen pool which may give way under you, the author, at any time. But as I have said, the search for the truth can never stop. It cannot be adjourned, it cannot be postponed. It has to be faced, right there, on the spot.” For poet-academic-critic R.K. Singh too, truth-seeking is a responsibility that cannot be shrugged off by the committed artist, no matter how difficult the trials faced. In Silence: White Distrust, the poet attempts the daunting creative challenge of forging a new poetic rhythm to express the new pandemic experience of disillusionment, fractured chronological time, acute biological consciousness and an alienating isolation from the social world. What is remarkable is that the attempt, besides meeting unquestionable success, reaches into the depths of philosophical questioning to offer new perspectives on life and the potential of the human mind to map its paradoxes.
In his Introduction to the collection, the poet writes:
Covid-19 lockdown has been a physically, mentally andemotionally challenging experience. Living in isolation inconstant fear, suffering strict social and personal distancing,there has been a gradual rise of ‘distrust' in all that was positive,self-regulating, and internally strengthening or uplifting. Mysilent reflections within, and observations without, exposedto me my personal, as well as socially larger, loss of hope andfaith that embed spirituality.I noticed the trend in my recent poetic expression anddiscovered that it was possible to develop a new collection ofpoems with a thread of silence and distrust running throughit. It also seemed possible to do a long experimental haiku-tanka-haiku linked verse….
The entire collection is composed in the fabric of a linked haiku-tanka-haiku sequence that not only appears to replicate the experience of pandemic slow time but conjures in sincere, heartfelt rhythms the despondency and sanitized silence of our days. Singh’s poetry, as one reads through it, records the minutiae of our everyday lives with infallible accuracy and stark realism. Strewn across it are familiar landmarks of desire, unfulfillment, waiting, conjecture, failure, disappointment and loss. Singh’s evocative imagination finds powerful metaphors for emotional states in the most mundane objects of our daily world – “empty chairs”, “stain-dried lingerie”, “spiders' network/ between two photo frames”, “broken bangles”, and “the city’s garbage”. The observations are neither extraordinary in themselves nor worth pondering over out of context. But through their rare felicity of association in Singh’s poetry, they derive a potency that transforms them into three-dimensional architectural images of memorable strength and beauty.
Throwing light on the significance of his title, Singh writes, “Silence ispositive; White too has positive connotations, but Distrust isnegative. White Distrust is ironical; it is a harmless fib. Thereis no moralising, lecturing, or teaching.” The idea, one realizes, is to sketch experience sharply poised between contraries. On the one hand is the overwhelming regime of silence with its epistemological, creative and poetic possibilities. On the other, however, is the constant and poignant sense of distrust that inhibits the mind from settling down comfortably into this space of silence. Here is a vivid and vibrant interaction of two opposing modes of feeling – silence with its connotations of fertility, expansiveness, absorption, acquiescence and peace, and distrust with its echoes of interruption, destructive questioning, faithlessness and disjunction. The accomplishment of the book rests on the delicate but firm balance established between these powerful opposing emotional forces. It is to Singh’s immense credit as a poet that he never disregards the unspectacular truth to conquer the glamorous falsehood and allows them both to stand as they are, sans regret and sans illusion. In Silence: White Distrust, there is no obliteration of one category of experience by the other but rather, a unique expression of their cohabitation. If silence is spatial, distrust is projected as temporal so that the two remain ceaselessly poised in a perpendicular relationship, commenting and reflecting on each other through these monologic verses of confident elegance.
Silence, yes, but why distrust, one might be prompted to ask? Also, one wonders if these are entirely topical poems that derive their shape and sensibility from the context of the difficult pandemic? A close reading of the collection amply illustrates that the answers to both questions are linked. The distrust is dominant only because though appearing during the pandemic, these are not exclusively or merely pandemic poems. Born out of long drawn-out years of Singh’s constant poetic searching for permanent existential truths, these poems claim for their creative site, the ageing human body and a mind wizening towards omniscience. For Singh, the body through its needs, demands, rituals, illusions and fallibility, establishes itself as the most significant medium of experience. The fact of ageing and distrust of the body marks itself indelibly in these poems:
things get hairy, scary
with body failure
ailments pop up
spirit dries up
mind disconnects
hesitating
to take the first step through–
stands at the door
unhappy
with how I look and
feel right now
seek a best version
and just look within
It is worth noting how the spatial breaks in the poem underline the sense of disconnection, hesitation, faltering and repair. The rhythm is that of the colloquial, speaking voice and yet, the arrangement of the lines graphically on the page compounds its meanings manifold. “The white space between anytwo haiku and tanka adds to the sense of silence or peace,” explains Singh. “It adds to the sense of Meditation too. The verses becomemeditative as Silence is poetically and spiritually meditative,but its rhythm is disturbed by the rising feeling of Distrust.” Consider the following set:
earthy body
nights of silence
fear in mirror
return to the river
echoing hollowed sound
long waiting
short consultation–
ophthalmologist
morning smog–
an asthmatic with grandson
coughing restlessly
on the terrace even
a limping crow seeks fresh air
The fragility of the body is paramount here and yet, one realizes that this fragility is not only physical or individual. It is, in the larger sense, a condition and imperative of life itself, of the earth, of human myopia, and the thread of existence that inevitably runs from one generation to another. Even the mirror and the crow then, become a part of this uncertainty and distrust, reflecting it and responding to it. Consider again, the following set of poems:
pre-monsoon ramble
wilderness in harmony–
worlds within world
hail stones
lashing mango florets
my car too:
I fear thunder squall and rain
leaking roof and wetting bed
wild sugar cane
no animals savor
ageing monsoon
Here again, the poet leaves us amazed by the symbolic registration of the progress of time through telling images – pre-monsoon rambles, lashing mango florets and the ageing monsoon. The temporal pace of these poems merits observation as the reader is constantly made aware of the steadyflow of moments and seasons in a cyclical frame. Singh’s economy, terseness, sharpness and precision of expression deserve special attention as does his mastery over poetic form. The haiku and the tanka are highly challenging poetic forms by reason of their sheer minimalism, their syllabic discipline and their ability to speak more only through less. Independent, self-referential and self-explanatory units of meaning and thought, the haiku and tanka demand a deep acquaintance with techniques of condensation, reflection, refraction and amplification. The haiku-tanka-haiku sequence that Singh crafts in the book bespeaks volumes for his expertise and experimentation in minimalism, transforming the linked sequence into an evocative narrative of colour and a dense chromatic dialogue between the myriad hues of the mind. Each haiku and tanka has its own distinct subjectivity here as it formulates its personal perspective of the world. And yet, there is a strong etiological force spurring the reader on from one poem to another so that in its totality, the sequence acquires a grand epical quality and becomes a poignant litany for our times.
Tranquil yet restless, linear yet cyclical, multi-layered yet unified, fragmented yet compound, R.K. Singh’s Silence: White Distrust that includes a Spanish translation by Joseph Berolo, Bogota, Colombia, is a singular success in the poetic ambition of translating emotional colour into language and engaging contrary ideas in an insightful colloquy. Travelling through the piece which is now included in the poet’s latest collection Against the Waves: Selected Poems (New Delhi: Authorspress, 2021), is a journey through life’s outwardness into the deep, inward recesses of the self. As a reader and critic, one realizes that an encounter with this book shall remain memorable and worthy and that these poems shall continue to be valued both for their independent lustre and for the astounding brilliance that they impart to the unfathomable wisdom of life.
posted by Ram Krishna Singh at 10:49 PM
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