कभी फुर्सत से मिलेंगे (kabhi fursat se milenge)

कभी फुर्सत में मिलेंगे, एक जाम थामे,
कुछ गज़लें कहेंगे सुनेंगे,
कभी शांति से बैठेंगे, किसी पहाड़ी झील किनारे,
पंछियों के गीत टहनियों में तलाशेंगें
अभी मैं तनहा बैठ कर, खुद से सलाह करलूं,
सत्य-साहित्य-विज्ञान से, मुलाकातें अथाह करलूं,
क्या अर्थ है, क्या बाट हो, कैसे गीत हों पग पग पर,
अभी मैं सवालों के सारे स्वरूपों से स्वयं का श्रृंगार करलूं,
अभी ऋण है मुझपर कई सपनों का,
कई अपनों की अधूरी इच्छायों का हासिल एक मुकाम करलूं
कभी फुर्सत से मिलेंगे,
अभी इन चुनौतियों से भिड कर, कुछ घावों से सज लूँ,
कभी फुर्सत से मिलेंगे,
अभी जिंदगी से किये वादों का सम्मान करलूं!

Poetry 101 or Poetry Basics

(Written as a review/critique of Sisters in Rhyme, an anthology published by sulekha; See here for details)

Required reading for the people who wish to be called poets (and poetry editors)

1) Poems by Shakespeare, Yeats, Keats, Wordsworth, Frost, Neruda, Tagore, Lorca, Billy Collins, Thomas Lux, Knott, TS Eliot, Pushkin, Akhmatova, Charles Simic, Ted Kooser, Rilke, Rumi, Kabir, Goethe, Ghalib, Mir, Dard, Dag, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Gulzar, Sylvia Plath, Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, DH lawrence, Thomas Hardy, Dinkar, Subramanium Bharati, Tulsidas, Kalidas, Mahadevi Verma, Bachchan, Nirala, Subhadrakumari Chauhaan, Sarojini Naidu, Vikram Seth, Jeet Thayil, Nissim, Ezikeil, Dom Moraes, Ramanujam, Sahir Ludhyanvi, etc. (Included a lot of female poets, just to ensure that sisters in rhyme can see them if they consider male poets as too confined)


and some essays and guidelines:

2) Best words, best order by Stephen Dobyns
3) Letters to a young poet by Rilke
4) Poetry handbook by Mary Oliver
5) Rhyme's reason by Hollander
.......
1000) Primer for poets by Karl Shapiro


Poetry requires craftmanship, creativity, labor and talent. If any one of these is not good enough, it fails to inspire, last, please, exist!


{Adding lines from my comments}

I suppose people agree with what I said here, or maybe they consider me as someone whose opinions are irrelevant or irreverant. In either case, my idea was to foster a useful list for anyone who is willing to use it for their own progress.

I personally think that sulekha has transitioned into a popularity contest, and therein lies its success and failing. The idea of publishing authors from sulekha is brilliant; but if they want the published books to be taken seriously, the content must be chosen by editors and writers who know grain from chaff. Many of the poems linked to the blog would not qualify for publication in the most ordinary of magazines and journals. If sulekha seriously believes in "sulekh" and wants to nourish "good writing", they must have people on the board who take literature and creativity seriously.

Art is hard work. Talent is as easy to find as is a toothpick. But someone who can fashion a masterpiece is rarer. Value the talent, value the effort, but it takes a real discovery on the part of someone to be revered as Einstein, Newton, Heisenberg, Poincare. It takes some real talent and work from someone to become Van Gogh, Mozart, WS Maugham, Rushdie, Ghalib. It requires "tapasya" or penance, and a devotion that is there irrespective of what rewards are offered or not.

But neither these ideas or the practice comes without long drawn effort; and even then not every cup will hold the "amrita" or "nectar". Yet sing on, o bards, for every poem has some audience and some purpose, like every food item has. Delicacy is not for everyday, and also not for everyone to offer or have.

(More from my response to comments)

I do not quite agree with the common stance that success and greatness is relative, and depends upon how you choose your standards. There is perhaps no one who won't know difference between Tagore poem and the one written by a five year old rhymster. There is a difference between Tendulkar and Dravid, Lara and Chandrapaul, Kumble and Sunil Joshi eventhough in these cases, we are still comparing relative greatness and success. But if you say that Ganguly is no better than the best batsman in the streets of Baraelli, I will be obliged to think that your knowledge of cricket and standards of comparison are flawed. The reason why Tolstoy and Dostovesky are considered great writers has something to do with how well they write, how profound and universal their stories are, how well crafted characters are part of well orchestered narrative, and how they engage the minds and hearts of readers across space and time. Don't you think so?

(and more)

Once a piece of writing leaves from personal notebook, and if you want anyone to read it and maybe appreciate it, all rules of communication, grammar and composition apply. I have said this before that the world is more musical because of bathroom singers, and I guess I am one myself. But I don't expect all bathroom singers to take the stage and become performers. But if they wish to do so, they must be ready for putting in the hours of "riyaaz" (practice). A shoddy performance, even if excuses exist, is still a shoddy performance, and the spectator who criticizes it may not do it due to jealously, envy (sour grapes), but because he feels cheated when he must clap for something, that the performer himself thinks is average at best.

Fortunately, I have read most of the poets I listed, and trust me, it is a rewarding experience. When every sentence is laden with aethestic beauty, every word is chosen becuase it provides both the right music, and contexual meaning, the poem itself transcends the page, and becomes a part of your intellectual and emotional experience.

As I already said before, I can see why sulekha has chosen to pick and publish people, and in my own way, I have always supported sulekha's efforts. Like a loving parent or teacher, who chides his kids or student, for their faults, I sit here and comment on things. I suppose I love poetry and literature too deeply. I expect to read the writers who act and perform like a cricket team, where I will ever wish to see a competitive unit, a proper demonstration of every skill, and attention to every aspect of the game. Maybe I will sit and watch "gully" (street) cricket at times, clap at it, participate in it, pat a decent performance. Yet I think it wise and important to keep everything in perspective!

God Particles: Poems by Thomas Lux

God Particles by Thomas Lux is his eleventh book of poetry. His verses contain rather striking and unusual images that disturb or amuse at first and then coalesce into feelings more lasting than the initial reaction. Look at some of the titles in this collection: Hitler's slippers, Sleep ambulance, Stink eye, Gravy boat goes over the waterfall, Jesus' baby teeth, Apology to my neighbors for beheading their duck, The deathwatch beetle, Sex after funerals, Toad on golf tee and of course, the title poem, God particles.

The words that flow out of these striking titles make us traverse through landscapes that are vivid and well-crafted. The abstract world of poetry is absent from the lines that saunter through (natural) elements that have pleasure for children (and adults): ants, bees, stink eye, peacocks in twilight, toads and moles. Lux hunts for words and metaphors in realms that most poets would not venture into: the harmonic scalpel, the republic of anesthesia, vinegar on chalk (all poem titles). His similes are as uncommon as "His thoughts like a deck of cards hit/ by a howitzer." (from Puzzlehead).

The unmistakable skill of Thomas Lux lies in creating an aftertaste, which is like the coolness felt after water evaporates away. As we discover the tenderness with which he deals with human frailties, we realize that all this satire, wit and imagery is just there to make us stop and listen. As we scrape off the last words of a poem, we sense how subtly Lux commanded compassion, tolerance, morality and honesty to float into our hearts and minds. He propels us into his poems as if we were to watch the gladiators fight to death. After the initial thrill of watching the struggle is gone, we are left with an experience or an heartache, maybe sympathy for the loser, admiration for the skill of a fighter and maybe even disgust at the bloodshed, that seemed entertaining only moments back.

Let me take a step back here, and confess that my admiration for Thomas Lux is influenced by my endless regard for him as a teacher and a mentor. In Indian tradition, we believe that every seeker (of knowledge, truth or beauty) needs a Guru to guide his way. For countless students like me at Georgia Institute of Technology, Sarah Lawrence, Warren Wilson and numerous other places, Thomas Lux has provided that mixture of care, knowledge and guidance characteristic of a Guru. For this very reason, I always refer to him as Gurudev (Gurudev means teacher-God, and we refer to Tagore as Gurudev). In the opening poem of this collection, Gurudev Lux writes (the poem is dedicated to Peter Davidson): "The gentleman who spoke like music/ was kind to me/ though he did not have to be./ Who brought into the world a thousand books./ (Right there: a life well lived.)" The poem continues: "Who corrected my spelling, gently and/ my history too, who once/ or twice a year/ would buy me lunch/ and later let me leave his office/ with shopping bag of books to read." Our beloved Gurudev has nurtured poetry in seekers precisely like the gentleman in his poem, and this kindness and compassion form an essential backdrop to his writing. The language is simple, yet profound. The word weaving taught and presented in these poems makes them accessible to everyone, which has ever been the hallmark of the work by Thomas Lux.

When I first read poems by Thomas Lux (New and Selected Poems), I frowned at the mention of library of skulls, lake of snakes, shooting off a bird at close range and about sex in history. I was in fact perplexed by those weird, ‘un-poetic' references. I wasn’t too excited by reading poems that were lucid, tangible and written as free verse. But when I set the book down, I found myself meditating on the thoughts seeded by his poems, and re-opening pages to revisit the poems. The aspects of life that remain somewhat unspoken of in the ritualistic diet of abstract, obscure poems served to us these days, were surprisingly alive in his poems. Now I realize that his poems have a rhythm, a music that is felt when they are read aloud. Working class people, small town people, hunters, fathers, mothers, daughters and army soldiers all unfold their daily worries or joys into his poems. While the idioms are very American, they speak of emotions and aspirations of all human beings. I have found at least two dozen poems that translate really well into Hindi and resonate with Indian themes (e. g. A Little Tooth).

Typically a poem meanders through similes, metaphors, line breaks and syllables like a river that has a source, a terrain claimed by it, and the sink is the ocean of understanding expected from the reader. Most poets thrive on either an intellectualism or erudition associated with academic circles, or they thrive on a hobo lifestyle, where they extract potent lines from a mist or a fog of highly unconventional, unworldly life. Poems by either of these schools of thought are perhaps most apt for reading by their followers. Hence even though a common man, at times, is amazed, confused or startled by these verses, these contain emotions, examples and philosophies beyond his realm. The presence of occult, obscure, obscene, Oriental and/ or opiated ramblings does not always amount to original and good art. Great art can be extracted by reinventing or reinterpreting the obvious or the ordinary. To illustrate an idea simply, to present an emotion that resonates with feelings of a the non-literary, 'untrained' majority, to produce a sonnet or a song that is deep in meaning and yet contains everyday thoughts and objects, I believe, requires the greatest scholarship. Even though the poems of Lux revel in absurdity of the modern life, by a clever mix of humor and satire, through understatement and careful attention to craft, they leave the reader with a clearer idea and a sense of understanding and joy. For this one reason, he is a poet who will ever be read, and should be read.

The poems of Lux are often full of self-effacing humor. In a poem titled Invective, he says: "I pray your son wish to be a poet." He laughs at himself and at his community by writing: " Vatricide/ i.e. the murder (metaphorical) of poets,/ is not such a bad idea in some cases:/ the case of the poet who put fish poison in her poems/ the case of the poet who put his life,/ every part of it, over/ and over again, in his poems." His satire is telling in Autobiographophobia, where he conjures up an absurd biography for a poet. Judge the poem, and not the poet is somewhat unacceptable to the gossip-mongers that abound in public and in media. The dense poetry and prose that is celebrated by intelligentsia gets satirized in The General Law of Oblivion, where he says: "Though one cannot deny/ its genius, Mr. Proust's prose/ kills me, it loops me over and out." Poems of Lux have endless lessons from history, served to us as humorous anecdotes on one hand, and as parodies of whimsical present on the other. So in the same collection we found an account of a Greek poet (second only to Homer) as well as a poem about Jesus baby teeth on sale!

At times, his poems seem irreverent: like talking about Jesus baby teeth or "the Buddhists quick-change from bright orange/ to camo robes, pointing their howitzers eastward" or where he says "God's expository writing lacks lucidity/ and he or his scribes often write sloppily” Yet if you put these lines in perspective, read them in the context of the poem or the argument, these very lines display a respect for humanity and the divine, that wants to help us transcend our limited, orthodox or nonsecular thinking. In other words, if there is a flame or two here or there, it is to light or corner. I will leave you with the exemplary first three lines from the title poem, God Particles:

"God explodes, supernovas, and down upon the whole planet
a tender rain of him falls
on every cow, ladle, leaf, human, ax handle, swing set."

and at the end:

"...and He wanted each of us,
and all things we touch
and are touched by,
to have a tiny piece of Him,
though we are unqualified
for even the crumb of a crumb."

Tao Teh Ching by Lao Tzu

"True words are not fancy
Fancy words are not true"

The ancient wisdom flows across the centuries to illuminate us. The simple sentences are like calm seas, they have a great depth and greater treasures beneath, to be revealing only to them who dive and seek them.

"There is nothing better than to know that you don't know"

The whole text is laced with wisdom, insight, instruction and knowledge. A must read for everyone interested in Taoism, philosophy, morality, spirituality or with the plain desire to benefit from the immortal thoughts and works of this ancient great!

The final countdown (Random thoughts for Graduatestudentkind & Pre-doctors)

My silence is not sullen. My absence from social, economic, political, cricket and amorous conversations is not permanent. I am a being who must finish his PhD thesis to really relish any encounters with pseudo-reality called world. I am as eager to speak out as is a baby who knows only how to make sounds, but knows neither the words nor the language. Like a yogi, I sit day after day, staring at my computer screen, waiting for some God-sent boon, that will burst out with graphs that will transform the world. Unlike the Maharshis of yore, I still shave, get a hair cut, and pander to my taste-buds. But quite like them, the world has become a detached entity for me, something like the city you read about in a novel, and you seem to know, but not quite.

Writing poetry involves a process quite similar to a personal prayer. The lines, rhymes and thoughts come in a stream. In the silence of your head, a song takes shape, and bursts forth when the melody is done. Writing a story is quite like lying. You concoct situations and lines to go with them. Writing a thesis is more like reporting your achievements and failures to the custodians who guard the doors of heaven and hell. Your faults and strengths are not hidden from them, your works are as well known to them as can be. In a rather subjective assessment of facts and data, there seems to be standards that are hard to define and yet difficult to dismiss.

I suppose the effect of reading Proust can be seen in length of my sentences here. Maybe it is just the aftereffect of writing sentences in logical, technical language, that now I want to wallow in a river of metaphors and similes.

There was a time when I could delegate work to my future self, thinking he will know how to finish it. The last few months have brought me to the realization that whatever needs to be done must be done by me, and now. The quest for glory through graphs has passed like the dreams of youth; it is still pleasant to know how naive we are when we are young. A lot of self-evaluation and self-realization occurs when you must sit down and assess your work. It is a kind of meditative state you see, and whoever knows Gita, knows that the grandest path to Nirvana is through gyaan or knowledge of self, and the universe. Possibly, I have entered a hyper-delusional state by severing contact with procrastination, lack of results and direction, agelessness (or agedness) and unbearable lull that are essential qualities of a graduate student who is a year or two away from this pre-doctoral awakening. The efficiency, wisdom and problem solving skills revealed to me by my pre-doctoral self are quite heartening. I sometimes feel that the solace, the smile of the enlightened, learned men has begin to emanate from me.

Every long drawn struggle is carried out with the faith that it will finish one day. One might not know it while one is engaged in it, but to be a fighter, a relentless wielder of pen/sword is a respectful way of life. As I urge myself on through the last three months of my career as a student, I see that after all this hiking through unknown terrain for years, I stand at a higher ground; the sun is in sight, fog is clearing and another realm, a valley perhaps laden with fruits (or a possibility of growing them) is mine for taking. What happens hereafter will form another story, but whatever skills and experiences I have gathered, and the years that have passed by, will help me through every expedition I am embark on.

Moby Dick by Herman Melville (A Whale of a book)

Moby Dick by Melville is considered by many to be the greatest American novel ever written. To come up with such credentials is no meek achievement for a novel, that was floating in wilderness for first sixty years of its existence. The 1851 novel was at best ignored by readers and critics alike, till in the beginning of twentieth century, D. H. Lawrence declared it to be "An epic of the sea such as no man has equalled." Thereafter two critics, Carl Van Doren (1921) and F. O. Matthiessen (1941) managed to convince the generations that followed that Moby Dick was not only a great novel, but perhaps one of the greatest work of fiction ever written. My only intention to quote this history before I write my own review is to point out that this whale of a book comes with contexts and content that make it a remarkable study. If I were to judge the book with dead objectivity, I think I would have sided with the reception this book got in the first sixty years of existence. Now I am burdened by biases created by people in last hundred years. But in what follows, I will speak my mind, in spite of what impressionists, critics, symbolists and literary hoi polloi might have inferred due to an imposing reputation that this novel has begun to acquire.

Moby Dick is an encyclopedia on whaling. It is an almanac about how the products that can be extracted from the body of a whale. It is a tome that contains endless entries about ships, whaling, oil business and zoology of a whale. As an epic, which it is touted to be, it cannot light a candle to the epics of the ancients, say Homer or Ved Vyas. There is an obsessive Ahab, captain of the ship Pequod, whose only motive is to kill the white whale, Moby Dick. He sets out on the journey with a set of "barbarian" harpooners, and the book presents the imperialistic, (White Man's Burden) thoughts of the age, in an honest portrayal of the non-white races.

The ocean roars in the background, sharks chase dead whales, the hunting of whales is described without creating much adventure and then it is usually a notebook entry about this or that. The story in itself can be told in a few lines, but Melville choses to take us on an endless journey, where interlocking ships converse to fill in the interminable sailing time. For all the diversions and digressions into the plethora of facts and rumors Melville manages to supply us with, I would have liked him to put little more effort into those celebrated elements of novel as a form of fiction: plot, characters, story, climax and drama. The characters are "flat", i.e. they don't get altered by experiences. If I would wish to read a fable, I will always prefer the ones by Aesop or the ones by Vishnu Sharma (Panchtantra).

On the whole, Moby Dick is a readable book, for it does contain some remarkable passages. With some editing, it could have risen in my estimation, and fared better in the era before symbolists explained that what is presented is not as important, as what metaphors, what allusions, (what illusions) it can inspire. Since the book is sold as the battle between the whale and the Captain Ahab, I must add that the face-off between these occurs only in the last thirty pages of a six hundred and fifty-five page version I read. The build-up to the battle begins so far into the novel, that by then most people who read for readings sake, would have given up. The reader is as exhausted as maybe Melville was when he brought his epic struggle of writing this to an end.

Surprisingly, while I did find that I had marked at least hundred pages as worth revisiting (and that in my typical estimation makes it an awesome novel), I was more disappointed than not, after finishing the novel. Even in translation, the Russians and the French find favor from me and I feel transformed after reading them. I prefer and prescribe Lawrence, Maugham, Hemingway, Nabokov, Victor Hugo, Virgina Woolf, Dickens, Joyce, Marquez, Tolstoy, Tagore, Dostovesky, Prem Chand, Pamuk, Gogol, Austen, Forster, Rushdie, and many more over Melville. Be it for entertainment, word play, historical or mythical content or for sheer imagery, I will recommend at least few dozen novels that must enter your reading room before this Whale rams its way there.

Science of foam, beer, bubbles and soap suds

The Physics of Foams by Denis Weaire and Stefan Hutzler
Coherent and succinct introduction to foamy physics

The Physics of Foams by Denis Weaire and Stefan Hutzler is a lucid, terse and coherent introduction to the realm of foams. Weaire, who is co-author of another delightful text "The Pursuit of Perfect Packing", presents ideas about minimum surfaces, packing problems, and associated structural question with simple and elegant examples.

The authors use minimum of mathematics to emphasize the key ideas related to foam rheology, drainage, stability, structure, coarsening and conductivity. By drawing their examples from varied sources (bubble rafts, beer foam, metal foam, magnetic froth, soap suds), and citing relevant experimental and simulation results that explain the concepts, Weaire and Hutzler have created a text that will be handy to instructors everywhere. As a scientific treatise, it connects our understanding with ideas emanating from observing beer and soap bubbles, thinking about Kepler or Kelvin's hypothesis about packing, and basic understanding of properties of (complex) fluids. The text is entertaining, and is supplemented by innumerable illustrations to make it a worthwhile reading for anyone remotely interested in foam physics.

In context of the other review, I may add that the text comes with a list of useful articles and books that can be referred to by the serious researchers interested in deeper questions or details left out of the text. Brevity of presentation has its own merits, and learning and teaching through analogies and intuition is favored and practiced in this informal, but elegant text. Recommended reading!


Universal Foam by Sidney Perkowitz
An entertaining and illuminating journey into foam physics

In Universal Foam by Sidney Perkowitz, we encounter everyday phenomenon and objects - coffee froth, beer head, styrofoam cups, soap suds, shaving cream, bread, cork - and begin to see the underlying mystery, pleasure and physics, that guides their appearance, form and function. The science of bubbles contains answers to complex and varied questions: puzzles about the origin of universe and the softness of bread are revealed and deciphered using foam physics. As a teacher, Perkowitz exudes a ready wit, an imitable enthusiasm about the subject.

After reading this book, the ubiquitous foaminess of the world will reveal itself to you at every juncture. A glass of beer will turn into a laboratory for experiments about size dependence of bubbles of the froth, their stability and strength, and their variation with brand. As you stir your coffee, the foam will organize into patterns; corks on wine bottle will spark discussions about why certain champagnes taste better just because of their packaging. A walk by seaside or river will prompt observations about how much rain (and condensation nuclei) is being generated by the white effervescent milkiness that rides the waves. Night sky shall beckon your thoughts about big bang and about questions as philosophical as "do we really live in a bubble?" The book will reveal the scientific merit of such a question (and many more).

Universal foam is a great read, both as an introduction to the initiated, and as a witty jaunt for they who work their hours of intellectual activity by exploding or imploding bubbles. If you are looking for a more mathematical account, "The Physics of Foams" by Denis Wearie and Stefan Hutzler will provide you both with entertainment and equations in a beery Irish manner. (The text starts with the line: "Pour a bottle of beer")