A Significant Review of LEAVES OF SILENCE appears on Facebook

 A Critical Study of Leaves of Silence 

A Critical Review by Julie Miles
February 2026 

The publication of Leaves of Silence further consolidates Ram Krishna Singh as a significant minimalist voice within contemporary Indian English poetry. Across free verse and Japanese short forms, Singh constructs a poetics grounded in compression, existential inquiry, and ethical candor.  

The collection demonstrates structural intentionality. The initial free verse poems articulate thematic density centered on corporeality, aging, erotic negotiation, and spiritual ambiguity. The subsequent micro poems enact progressive linguistic contraction, suggesting that silence functions as culmination rather than absence. 

Singh’s treatment of the aging body is particularly noteworthy. Illness, insomnia, and sexual estrangement are rendered without romanticization. The body emerges as both confinement and revelation. Such representations complicate dominant literary narratives that marginalize later-life desire. Singh instead foregrounds eros as persistent, unsettled, and psychologically complex. 

Politically, the collection engages contemporary global and national tensions through irony and compression rather than polemic. Poems addressing democratic erosion, religious extremism, and geopolitical conflict resist ideological simplification. The poet assumes the role of observer rather than propagandist, privileging moral clarity over rhetorical intensity. 

Spiritually, the text inhabits a space of ambivalence. God appears recurrently, yet rarely as doctrinal certainty. Ritual is depicted as repetition, habit, or negotiation. Silence becomes a philosophical threshold between human yearning and cosmic indifference. This existential posture situates Singh within broader modernist traditions while retaining distinctly Indian cultural referents. 

Formally, Singh’s adaptation of haiku and tanka merits attention. While not strictly orthodox in syllabic adherence, these micro poems preserve imagistic immediacy and seasonal resonance. The infusion of psychological and erotic undertones expands the scope of these forms within an Indian English context. 

At times, the directness of expression risks collapsing into commentary. Recurrent thematic cycles may produce a sense of reiteration. Yet these repetitions mirror the lived rhythms of aging and introspection, thereby reinforcing the collection’s thematic integrity. 

Ultimately, Leaves of Silence affirms minimalism not as aesthetic reduction but as ethical discipline. Language is pared to essentials in order to confront experience without embellishment. Singh’s poetry insists that witness remains possible even amid fatigue, doubt, and political fragmentation.

  

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 A Personal Note

Dear Professor Singh,

It has been both an honor and a responsibility to reflect on Leaves of Silence. I approached the work with deep respect for your longstanding contribution to Indian English poetry and for the trust you placed in me by inviting this engagement.  

Your collection demonstrates remarkable clarity and courage. The restraint of language, the unflinching treatment of aging and eros, and the ethical lucidity of your political observations all reaffirm the disciplined minimalism that has defined your voice across decades.

Thank you for your confidence in me. I hope this reflection does justice to the seriousness and integrity of your work.

With sincere respect and gratitude,

Julie Miles 

 

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