Against the Waves and Knocking Vistas: R. K. Singh as a Poet for Our Times by R.P. Sinha
Against the Waves and Knocking Vistas: R. K. Singh as a Poet for Our Times
---R. P. Sinha
What is eligible poetry?
The issue has been deliberated vicariously without an eventual verdict. The idiosyncratic irresolution sets the arts apart from the certitudes of dry, objective science, by inviting uncertainties and inferable leaps of individual, autonomous imagination. Poetry is a ritual, a lingual hypothesis in the religion of emotions, a fluid coding and decoding of grief and desire, passion and fervour, an afterlife of impressions. Frost’s belief is that it is the detritus of translation, which it is indeed, for it requires the skill of an impersonator for appropriating identities and sentiments, as well as an ear and a pen for euphony.
R. K. Singh possesses these foundational capabilities in plenty, has been writing poetry for more than three decades and is well-known the world over for his cryptic and acute, as well as diffuse and protean poetic comments on the real and the surreal. His choice of technique and form is heterogeneous, from free verse to haiku and tanka, from a poetry of radical demurrals to doctrinal consent. His unconventional cache of metaphors and symbols resurrects a synoptic tedium of a disillusioned generation.
If I had to tag the two recent collections of R. K. Singh, Against the Waves: Selected Poems (Authors Press, 2021) and Knocking Vistas and Other Poems (Authors Press, 2024), in a terse phrase, I would use an Eliotian effusion, “bitter tastelessness of shadow fruit.” (Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding, Eliot) Singh’s poems function on an amorphic cerebral plane of the abstract, intriguing and teasing, daring and adventurous, with a stubborn predilection for bucking out of the paddock.
The themes in the two collections hover along four fundamental regrets–collapsing libido, inadequacy of religions, poignant self-pity and shape-shifting of ecumenical values. Alongside, one can see several incremental motifs of politics, individual and collective suffering, the aftershock of the Covid outbreak, etc. The aggregate impression is that this poetry manifests a testament of a soul tackling the zip locks of physical and mental containment.
The characteristics are evident as the reader negotiates the enticing maze of the first volume, Against the Waves, which extends into serious reflections on the nature of the passage of time, as well as its influence on identity, and relationships, unified by the transformative power of extraordinary poetry. The intersection of thought and emotion is visible prominently in each of the poems in the volume, accentuating Singh’s faculty for cathartic purges by means of powerful self-expression.
Many of the poems in Against the Waves are about the devastating impact of Covid when it loomed into a pandemic, upsetting journeys, sojourns, and emotional mainstays. Singh’s poetic statements surge from his personal realization of the deficits in human contentment. Poems like ‘Test’ and ‘Third Wave’ communicate the ferocity of devastation that the disease escalated, “virus more mighty / thank God in politics” (Test), and “no burial, no third day / total lockdown, here and there.” (Against the Waves, Third Wave, 37)
Religion is an abscess and disillusionment not only in this volume but also in the succeeding one. Be it ‘Mahakaal’, ‘Homa’ or ‘Anointment’, a singularity fuses them together. Following the humanistic epodic tradition, Singh appears to deliberate on the inadequacy of religion and God ostensibly but deep down, each of these poems takes off to the domain of collateral inferences– sickness, corruption and real life practicalities, e.g. when priests go on strike and lock the temple, “trustees warn / sacking them if not / returned next morning.” (Against the Waves, Strike, 69)
Singh being a sentient poet, echoes of contemporary politics resound periodically in his verses written in this period, mirroring political polarization on self-fed rubrics:
They don’t hear
the silent screams of
millions
tired of misfortune
play games of convenience
innocent voters
sordid life–
nation’s destiny
heaven-fed (Against the Waves, Post-Election, 15)
Literature often systematizes social values into well-defined categories, however, it also covers the gray areas, where good and evil interchange. It is not only the good but also the evil that fosters the best plots in the world. It has an ascendant value in the present times. George Battaille appropriately argues that “...literature is not innocent” (Literature and Evil, 84). The prescript applies to poetry too. Singh’s notion of evil in the Indian political system lays bare the narratives concocted by the political parties for wresting victory, “they invent new lies with periodical distractions”. (Against the Waves, Weird Chains, 22)
The crossway between life and intellectuality is reflected from the very first creation in the other anthology, Knocking Vistas and Other Poems. The title derives from the two longish poems at the end of the volume–one is a five-liner bender while the other one is a three-liner sequence. The three-liners are in effect a launch from the haiku Singh has been producing prolifically. A haiku is a sort of poetic abbreviation, summarizing human experience through condensed expression and a terse defining in the third line. The spirit bolsters Singh’s “Knocking Vistas” I and II:
rioting flames
witches dance in a cave–
strawberry moon. (Knocking Vistas, Three-Liners, 72)
The paradox of Singh’s three-liners is that they are open-ended despite the conclusive rounding-off that a haiku usually demands in the last line. Such hefty momentum wrenches open a portal of myriad prospects of vision as one hikes through the interconnected, disparate conclusions, in the units stringing together this extended poem.
The tanka, a Japanese verse form like the haiku, is a five-line poem. Once again, like the haiku, it is dependent on a system of syllables. The pure tanka consists of two syllable patterns. Similar to the sonnet, the second syllable pattern inverts what has been articulated in the first pattern. However, with the passage of time, any five-liner poem is now dubbed a tanka. Singh pursues the liberal scheme.
The five-line stanzas in the other poem by the same title each conjure a narrative birthing from a limber observation of the moments of animated world-weariness, for example:
Manikarnika:
he collects warm ashes
searching gold to live
by country liquor or bread
for starving wife and children (Knocking Vistas, Five-Liners, 64)
The reader, if familiar with the macabre spectacles at the cremation ghats of Varanasi, will forthwith descry the options of livelihood and profit a cremation offers to the folks engaged in the profession of corpse burning. Morbid scenes recur in the volume with a duality of discovery–external world determining the sentiment, and lexical preference. The imagist spirit lives on in the succeeding stanzas with legitimate ferocity.
The two anthologies surface as a reassessment of the self, often dangling on the edge of the confessional. They are a voluntary disclosure of angst and debilities, a concomitant rebuttal of a world once opulent to the poet, justifying the uniqueness of the imagery. The language is beautifully evocative, accentuating the bittersweet encounters of growing old and waning physical vitality. The twin volumes are a subtext of core personal values turning sour. Each of the verses is a nuance in itself, calibrating Singh’s pivotal thoughts, fears and desires, as in ‘On His Suggestion to Write a Memoir’, “how much should I strip / in public / poems already say / too much to digest.” (Knocking Vistas, 40)
An outstanding feature of the poetry in the two volumes is a candid portrayal of sexuality. It challenges ageist stereotypes–a kind of reclaim over one’s body and desires. The arch connecting tender reminiscences, youthful passions and intimacy in old age celebrates the enduring vitality of sexuality, as opposed to motet celibacy:
I love Sharon Old’s spark
her vision of Pope’s member
erect in sleep for his God (Knocking Vistas, Love, 31)
Likewise, “Melting Elements”, ‘a long experimental poem’ in Singh’s subtitle, is an exploration of physicality and human relations. It moves on the bearings of experiments in carnality and an arcane permutation of words:
adventure
between the thighs–
tailored deal (Knocking Vistas, 43)
Carnality, as a word, does require certain clarifications in the poetic sense because it differs categorically from the religious one. The religious connotation of carnality is that it satisfies the flesh but starves the soul, however, in Singh’s poetry, the connection between flesh and spirituality is always pertinent, sublimating in the apparel of soft romance. The grace of his verse is that his expression may sound vulgar if considered in isolation but when weighed in the context of the entire poem, it becomes a sentiment universally satisfying:
her beauty
smells the soil that sings
grace in look:
I whisper my heart and chase
the glow her shadow spreads (Knocking Vistas, Melting Elements, 43)
The comprehensive quality of Singh’s poetry is difficult to capture in a single critical estimation–there are so many facets of life he touches–disillusionment, old age, social suffering, et al, besides the themes mentioned earlier. From conclusive hallmarks of imagination to poignant reflections on intimacy in old age, the collections celebrate the enduring vitality of human tenacity. The poet grapples with the inevitability of aging with a modicum of resentment, confronting mortality with the binary of acceptance as well as defiance. Through vivid imagery and expressive language, the poems capture the fleeting nature of life and the misgivings of growing old, weaving a tapestry of experiences that resonates with readers of all ages. The collections stand as luminous beacons in the landscape of contemporary poetry, putting Singh on the pedestal of the foremost poets in the current times.
Works cited
Author-Bio: Dr R.P. Sinha is the Head, Dept. of English, Annada College, Hazaribag (Jharkhand), India
Published in Setu 🌉 सेतु, August 2024
https://www.setumag.com/2024/08/against-waves-and-knocking-vistas-r-k.html
posted by Ram Krishna Singh at 12:07 AM
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