The
session was unique in that men outnumbered women 3:1 at the start.
The poetry of of the Mithila poet, Vidyapati, figured, and also the
poetry of the earliest Indian English poet, Derozio.
Priya
We
had a guest from America, Thomas Duddy, who has spent the past ten
years coming annually to reside in Fort Kochi for extended periods. He is a retired professor of English literature who has taught
in many colleges, and knew poets such as Allen Ginsberg and Denise
Levertov.
KumKum and Thomas Duddy
The
recitation ranged from the sophisticated cynicism of Andrew Marvell,
to the abstract symbolism of Lawrence Durrell, who is better known as a
novelist.
Sunil, Arundhati, and Sivaram
One
poet was repeated for the third time: Angelou – testament to her popularity. Here are
the readers at the end of the session in the Library of the Cochin
Yacht Club. The late joining of Arundhati Nayar reduced the majority
of men from 3:1 to 2:1 ! We are still waiting for Verghese Samuel to
join the poetry sessions.
Thommo, Priya, Tom, KumKum Sivaram, Arundhati, Mathew, Sunil, and Joe
Click below to read a full account of the session ...
Kochi
Reading Group Poetry Session on Mar 16, 2012
Attending: Sunil, Mathew, Joe, Thommo , KumKum, Priya, Sivaram
Absent:
Verghese (impervious yet to the charms of poetry), Gopa (away from
Kochi), Soma (no reason), Talitha (away for family emergency), Zakia
(house moving), Bobby (away abroad)
Guests:
Thomas Duddy, retired English literature professor from America, and
Arundhati Nayar, furniture designer in Kochi.
The next fiction book for reading is to be selected by Sunil and Mathew. Future dates are:
The next fiction book for reading is to be selected by Sunil and Mathew. Future dates are:
Apr
13, The Stranger
by Albert Camus
May
11,
Poetry
Jun 15, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Jun 15, A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
Thomas
Duddy
Tom
thanked KRG for the invitation to recite. He said the poem he had
chosen by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678) belonged to the type called
carpe
diem (Latin,
'enjoy the day, pluck the day when it is ripe') poems, celebrating
the joy of the present. Andrew Marvell is primarily known for this
much-anthologised poem. Here's another by his slightly older
contemporary, Robert Herrick:
GATHER
ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is
still a-flying:
And this same flower that smiles to-day
And this same flower that smiles to-day
To-morrow
will be dying.
Herrick,
Marvell, Ben Jonson Richard Lovelace and others belonged the the
school of Cavalier Poets, who wrote in a light style on everyday
matters. They grew up in a Latinate tradition, and espoused the
elegance, cynicism and rationalism of Latin poets.
Tom
recited from memory – his eyesight is degenerating and he has made
it his aim to memorise the sonnets of Shakespeare before he totally
loses vision. He has come up to Sonnet 50. When he was done reciting
Marvell's poem, a round of spontaneous applause sounded!
Sivaram
asked if the phrase 'time's wingèd
chariot' comes from this poem. Yes, answered, Tom. He pointed to the
lines:
And
yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Deserts of vast eternity.
noting
the looming image embedded there. KumKum said that Joe often quotes the
mocking cynicism of these two lines:
The
grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
But none I think do there embrace.
Joe's rejoinder
was that he quotes these lines only when an embraceable woman
appears! But KumKum pointed out that no embraceable women, only
policemen and fishermen, are present when he declaims such lines on
the beachwalk in Fort Kochi.
Joe noted the
well-structured three stanzas of the poem and the variety of images
that run through them; these have the effect of deflecting attention
from the mechanical nature of the underlying iambic tetrameter
lines, rhymed in pairs. Though, it becomes easier to memorise for
that reason.
Tom revealed the
structure of the poem as as a syllogism: If clause (if there was
time), But clause (but there is no time), followed by a Therefore
clause (let us have our pleasure now). Rhyming in a natural way is
not easy, said Tom, particularly to rhyme without the poem becoming
'sing-songy'. The emotional flow is too intense to notice the rhyme.
Just so, added Joe, it is the images that break out every few lines
that keep the poem fresh, and so attractively on the edge.
Sivaram
Maya
Angelou has been recited twice before and Sivaram chose a poem of
hers that takes up the issue of discrimination against blacks in USA,
which could equally apply to Harijans in India (I believe the current
word is Dalits). The language is sweet and the thought is powerful,
said Sivaram.
KumKum
recalled the discomfiture of Bobby at the men being outnumbered by
women in our regular meetings. He would have been pleased that the
situation was reversed at this session as there were two women
(herself, and Priya) when we started, but six men were on board.
Thommo mentioned that it was for this reason, to emphasise and
celebrate women in the KRG setting, that he had chosen to recite
Phenomenal Woman by the same
poet on a previous occasion (Aug 13, 2010).
Sivaram
noted the great stage presence and confidence of the poet when
she appeared at a reading, when she was chosen to recite On the
Pulse of the Morning at the
inauguration of President Clinton in 1993. Sivaram was in USA at the
time studying in Ohio and recalled listening to the broadcast. Thommo
mentioned Ms. Angelou had a rough childhood. Joe asked what it was.
It included divorced parents, sexual abuse and rape. What a wonderful
recovery!
Tom liked the
lines:
Does
my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as
a surprise
It comes from the
strut of a proud woman. Joe said in his greener years he would
imitate the swaggering gait of Afro-American youth, which was
absolutely unique.
KumKum
Sara
Teasdale
Sara Teasdale was an American poet, born in1884. Hers was a short life, yet she was able to leave behind several volumes of beautiful poems. Most of her early life she was sick; later it was an unsatisfactory love-life that plagued her. Love and Nature were important subjects of her poems. KumKum enjoyed reading her poems, because of their simplicity, directness and musical rhyming patterns. Teasdale committed suicide in 1933.
In 1917, her most celebrated collection of poems, Love Songs, was published. It became very popular. She won three awards for this book: the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, The Columbia University Poetry Society Prize, and the annual prize from the Poetry Society of America.
Sara Teasdale was an American poet, born in1884. Hers was a short life, yet she was able to leave behind several volumes of beautiful poems. Most of her early life she was sick; later it was an unsatisfactory love-life that plagued her. Love and Nature were important subjects of her poems. KumKum enjoyed reading her poems, because of their simplicity, directness and musical rhyming patterns. Teasdale committed suicide in 1933.
In 1917, her most celebrated collection of poems, Love Songs, was published. It became very popular. She won three awards for this book: the Pulitzer Prize for poetry, The Columbia University Poetry Society Prize, and the annual prize from the Poetry Society of America.
Joe
asked if the first poem (There Will Come Soft Rains)
is about war-time. Line 7 mentions war, and the poem could be seen
as a statement that even war cannot overcome nature which will
replenish the earth after war's destruction.
KumKum
said the poem After Love
is a gem. No pretensions, slight words, yet it affects you. These
poems have a place in our lives, KumKum said. She regretted that Sara
Teasdale is relatively unknown today. Tom replied that when he was in
college in the fifties everyone read Teasdale, but in the sixties the
entire canon was rewritten by the onset of the drug culture.
Priya
found the poems feminine and delicate. If a man could write such
poems he would be an effeminate man. Or an androgynous one, said Joe.
Or a metrosexual, added, Sivaram. Priya didn't like such words. But
they are used a lot on page 3 of the Times of India, featuring
Bollywood, Mollywood, and all the other forested areas of our
culture.
Thommo
Thoreau
was a philosopher and poet. Thommo chose to read his poem, I
Knew A Man By Sight.
It reads like a succession of limericks, said Thommo, but proceeds by
stages confronting a stranger in different parts of the world until
he becomes the familiar other:
As I had known him well a thousand years.
As I had known him well a thousand years.
Thoreau
wrote Walden
after his experiment living in the woods alone. He wrote his reasons:
I went to the
woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the
essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to
teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.
Gandhi
was influenced by the ideas of 'Civil Disobedience' which Thoreau
advocated to fight injustice peacefully. Thommo did not learn about
his poetic work until he came to this session. Henry David Thoreau
(July 12, 1817 – May 6, 1862) was an American author, poet,
philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development
critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist. He is
best known for his book Walden, a reflection upon simple
living in natural surroundings, and his essay Civil Disobedience,
an argument for individual resistance to civil government in moral
opposition to an unjust state.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_David_Thoreau
)
Thommo
laid out some maxims of Thoreau for us to reflect upon:
If
misery loves company, misery has company enough.
City
life is millions of people being lonesome together.
What
does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch of a free,
meandering brook.
Every
generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the
new.
Many
men go fishing their entire lives without knowing it is not fish they
are after.
The
language of friendship is not words but meanings.
There
are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking
at the root.
To
regret deeply is to live afresh.
A
man is wise with the wisdom of his time only, and ignorant with its
ignorance.
Success
usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.
Men
are probably nearer the central truth in their superstitions than in
their science.
Men
profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no
evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it.
Mathew
Yehuda
Amichai (1924-2000) was an Israeli poet, born in Germany. He is
considered the greatest poet of modern-day Israel. Amichai immigrated
with his family at the age of eleven into Palestine in 1935. He
attended a religious high school in Jerusalem. He was a member of the
Palmach, the strike force of the Haganah, the defense force of the
Jewish community in Mandate Palestine. As a young man he volunteered
and fought in World War II as a member of the British Army, and in
the Negev on the southern front in the Israeli War of Independence.
Amichai
was a student at Teachers College in Jerusalem, and became a teacher
in Haifa. After the War of Independence, Amichai studied Bible and
Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Encouraged
by one of his professors at Hebrew University, he published his first
book of poetry, Now and in Other Days, in 1955.
In
1956, Amichai served in the Sinai War, and in 1973 he served in the
Yom Kippur War. Amichai published his first novel, Not of This
Time, Not of This Place, in 1963. He was a poet in residence at
New York University in 1987. For many years he taught literature in
an Israeli seminar for teachers, and at
the Hebrew University to students from abroad.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yehuda_Amichai
)
He
later became an advocate of peace and reconciliation in the region,
working with Arab writers. Since he lived continuously in Jerusalem
for the longest time, he came to love the city and wrote many poems
about it. A pervasive humanism flows through his work, often
irreverent, and not afraid to take on the the orthodoxies of life in
Israel. He wrote in Hebrew, but his work has been translated into ~40
languages. Ted Hughes was a fan of his work. Although Israel does not
have a poet laureate, he became such de facto in his lifetime,
and was mourned by all when he died of cancer in 2000. He had been a
candidate for the Nobel prize.
In
the first poem (What kind of
a person are you), Amichai is asserting his own
individuality against the mechanical contraptions of the twentieth
century and its dehumanised buildings:
Now
I stand at the side of the street
Weary,
leaning on a parking meter.
I
can stand here for nothing, free.
Tom
found the allegory of the last two lines of the second poem (An
Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion)
a striking summation of the country's history:
Searching
for a goat or for a child has always been
The
beginning of a new religion in these mountains.
It
refers probably to Abraham searching for a ram to kill instead of his
son when his slaying hand was stopped by an angel, and the other
reference is to the wise men from the East who came in search of the
child Jesus. Some readers thought it could also refer to Moses found
in the bulrushes.
(Re:
“Chad Gadya” — it is an old Aramaic fable sung at the end
of the Passover seder — often associated with a sense of relief
that the long evening is finally over.
The
playful ditty traces a cascade of events beginning with a baby goat
being devoured by a cat. Each verse adds a link to the chain
reaction; a dog comes and bites the cat, a stick beats the dog, fire
burns the stick, water puts out the fire … and on it goes. Each
successive verse gets longer until the fable ends in a final karmic
stroke; God kills the Death Angel. It’s part morality play, part
Rube Goldberg device.
It’s
also a great metaphor, making its appearance in a painful
contemporary poem by Yehuda Amichai. Amichai’s metaphor — the
terrible Chad Gadya machine — is pitch-perfect for the Arab-Israeli
conflict, with violence generated and regenerated by self-righteous
rage, desperation and vengeance.)
http://www.jweekly.com/article/full/63868/in-the-name-of-peace-chad-gadya-machine-must-stop/
The
translations of Amichai's verse are into vers libre.
Priya
Vidyapati
Thakur (1352? - 1448?), also known by the sobriquet Maithil
Kavi Kokil
(the poet cuckoo of Maithili) was a Maithili poet and a Sanskrit
writer. The name Vidyapati is derived from, Vidya (knowledge) and
Pati (master), connoting a man of knowledge. Vidyapati's poetry was
widely influential in centuries to come, in the Hindustani as well as
Bengali and other Eastern literary traditions. Indeed, the language
at the time of Vidyapati, the prakrit-derived late abahatta, had just
begun to transition into early versions of the Eastern languages,
Maithili, Bengali, Oriya, etc. Thus, Vidyapati's influence on making
these languages has been described as "analogous to that of
Dante in Italy and Chaucer in England."
Vidyapati
is as much known for his love-lyrics as for his poetry dedicated to
Lord Shiva. His language is closest to Maithili, the language spoken
around Mithila (a region in the north Bihar), closely related to the
abahattha form of early Bengali.
The
love songs of Vidyapati, which describe the sensuous love story of
Radha and Krishna, follow a long line of Vaishnav love poetry,
popular in Eastern India, and include much celebrated poetry such as
Jayadeva's Gita
Govinda of
the 12th century. This tradition which uses the language of physical
love to describe spiritual love, was a reflection of a key turn in
Hinduism, initiated by Ramanuja in the 11th century which advocated
an individual self-realisation through direct love.
The
songs he wrote as prayers to Lord Shiva are still sung in the Mithila
region of India, and form a rich tradition of sweet and lovely folk
songs.
The
influence of the lyrics of Vidyapati on the love of Radha and Krishna
on the Bengali poets of the medieval period was so overwhelming that
they largely imitated it. As a result, an artificial literary
language, known as Brajabuli
was developed in the sixteenth century. Brajabuli is basically
Maithili (as prevalent during the medieval period, whose script is
close to Bengali, said Priya) but its forms are modified to look like
Bengali. Rabindranath Tagore composed his Bhanusingha
Thakurer Padabali
(1884) in a mix of Western Hindi (Braj Bhasha) and archaic Bengali
and named the language Brajabuli as an imitation of Vidyapati (he
initially promoted these lyrics as those of a newly discovered poet,
Bhanusingha). The songs are sung to this day, and KumKum chimed in to
say she has the experience of singing it in her mother's home. Other
19th century figures in the Bengal Renaissance like Bankim Chandra
Chatterjee have also written in the Brajabuli.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vidyapati
). Aurobindo translated 41 poems of Vidyapati into English. You may
listen to Maithili songs by going to:
Mention
was made of reciting the Lalita sahasranama, a sacred Hindu
text dated to the 12th century A.D. for the worshippers of the
Goddess Lalita Devi, i.e., the Divine Mother, in the form of her and
the male gods' feminine power, Shakti. Lalita is the Goddess of
bliss, for "Lalita" means "She Who Plays". The
Lalita sahasranama is supposedly one of the most complete
stotras, one need only recite it to gain total salvation. The
names are organised as in a hymn, i.e. in the way of stotras,
to recite the one thousand names of the Devi.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lalita_sahasranama
)
Sivaram
noted that in Hinduism the physicality of love is celebrated and even
sacred devotional poetry is full of it. (consider the second song,
River and Sky).
Joe
wished to hear Priya recite in Maithili, but she confessed she did
not know the language, nor did she have access to the original of
Vidyapati.
Joe
Lawrence Durrell (1912 - 1990)
Lawrence
Durrell's first work at age nineteen was a book of poetry called
Quaint Fragments,
written in 1931. During the war he served as a British civil servant
and diplomat in the Levant and he delivered some lectures for the
British Council in Argentina, collected in A Key to Modern
British Poetry. After the war he
continued to write about his travels (Prospero's Cell is
magnificent writing), and then came the late fifties when he wrote
his most famous novels, the quartet called Justine,
Balthazar, Mountolive,
and Clea. It was
praised by critics for its writing, and its ability to give a sense
of the time and the place . The novel is set in Alexandria, “the
great winepress of love!”
Joe
learnt many new words by reading these novels when he was a student, and
recognised at once a style completely different from the novels he
had read till then. These novels eased the strain of earning a living
for LD. He published many collections of poetry, but regretted he
would not be considered among the best. He wrote: “I
think really I'm a poet. In poetry perhaps I'm not of sufficient size
myself; but it leaks into my prose.”
One
of his dicta is this precious notion of poetry:
Prose
can be constructed, but poetry comes from nothing. It surprises even
the poet.
LD
died in 1990 after being married four times. One daughter by his
first wife survives and has written her mother's biography.
The
poems of Durrell had an impact on the listeners. Joe cautioned that
it is not clear exactly what Durrell is talking about quite often.
The sense, Sivaram retorted, is often in the total sound and sensuous
impression left by the lines, not in the precise meaning of the
individual lines, for instance consider this about an express train:
Night
falls. The dark expresses
Roll back their iron scissors to commence
Precision of the wheels' elision
From whose dark Serial jabber sparks
Swing swaying through the mournful capitals
Roll back their iron scissors to commence
Precision of the wheels' elision
From whose dark Serial jabber sparks
Swing swaying through the mournful capitals
KumKum
said she had never read Lawrence Durrell's poems. Tom recalled that
in the late fifties to early sixties, when the Alexandria Quartet
came out, they were talked about much, and you had to read them to
claim to be counted among the progressives. Joe noted that there are
many novelists who made their name in prose fiction, but considered
themselves primarily as poets: our own Vikram Seth, Thomas Hardy,
D.H. Lawrence, and Lawrence Durrell. Priya remembered that Seth's
first novel was in verse; indeed in sonnets of the particular form
used in Onegin
by
Pushkin; not the English forms practised earlier, but iambic
tetrameter rhymed with feminine and masculine rhymes.
However, Joe thought LD's best prose is in a little travel book he wrote called Prospero's Cell (referring to Shakespeare's play), with gorgeous descriptions of the island of Corfu:
However, Joe thought LD's best prose is in a little travel book he wrote called Prospero's Cell (referring to Shakespeare's play), with gorgeous descriptions of the island of Corfu:
Our
life on this promontory has become like some flawless Euclidean
statement. Night and sleep resolve and complete the day with their
quod
erat demonstrandum;
and if, uneasily stirring before dawn, one stands for a moment to
watch the morning star, which hangs like a drop of yellow dew in the
east, it is not that sleep (which is like death in stories,
beautiful) has been disrupted: it is the greater for this noiseless
star, for the deep scented tree-line and the sea pensively washing
and rewashing one dreams. So that, confused, you wonder at the
overlapping of the edges of dream and reality, and turn to the
breathing person in whose body, as in a sea-shell—echoes the
systole and diastole of the waters.
Tom
liked the unusual descriptions and pairing of words, e.g.,
'consenting night', squinting rains', and such lines as:
Landscapes
of drumming cloud and everywhere
The lack of someone spreading like a stain.
The lack of someone spreading like a stain.
Sunil
Sunil
confessed he is new to poetry. Thommo noted that he too was
reintroduced to poetry by KRG, having let his college reading of
poetry lapse into the distant past. Kumkum stated that Sunil's wife
has noted the change that came over him: “Astonishingly, my husband
has started reading poetry. What have you done to him?”
Sunil
recalled reading Derozio in his Pre-University days in college.
Derozio belongs to the Bengal Renaissance which has been written
about in the book Awakening
by Subrata Dasgupta:
Derozio
, it seems, is the first Indian to write prose and poetry in English.
He lived at a time when India hardly existed as an idea, and the
renaissance had a lot to do with making people conscious of their
past, and thereby inspiring them to grasp a more promising future.
Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (18 April 1809 – 26 December 1831) was a
fiery Indian teacher and poet. As a lecturer at the Hindu College of
Calcutta, he invigorated a large group of students to think
independently; this Young Bengal group played a key role in the
Bengal renaissance.
He
was born at Entally-Padmapukur in Kolkata on 10 April 1809. He
attended David Drummond's Dhurramtallah Academy school, where he was
a star pupil, reading widely on topics like the French revolution and
Robert Burns. Drummond, "a dour Scotsman, an exile and a
'notorious free thinker'", instilled in him a passion for
learning and superstition-free rational thinking, in addition to a
solid grounding in history, philosophy and English literature.
In
May 1826, at the age of 17, he was appointed teacher in English
literature and history at the new Hindu College. He encouraged
students to read Thomas Paine's Rights of Man and other free-thinking
texts. He encouraged questioning the orthodox Hindu customs and
conventions and infused in his students the spirit of free
expression, the yearning for knowledge and a passion to live up to
their identity, while questioning irrational religious and cultural
practices.
He
took great pleasure in his interactions with students, writing about
them:
Expanding
like the petals of young flowers
I
watch the gentle opening of your minds…
On
account of his unorthodox (legendarily free) views on society,
culture and religion, the Hindu-dominated management committee of the
college expelled him as a faculty member. The charges curiously
resembled those for which Socrates was arraigned: corrupting the
youth with novel ideas. Though facing penury, Derozio continued
interacting with his students; indeed, he was able to do more,
helping them bring out several newspapers, etc. However, at the end
of the year, he contracted cholera, which was fatal at the time, and
died on 26 December 1831 at the age of 22. Being a Christian
apostate, he was denied burial inside South Park Street Cemetery;
instead he was buried just outside it on the road. His bust was
unveiled at the Esplanade.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Vivian_Derozio
)
Arundhati
Jayanta
Mahapatra is an Oriya writer, who has worked in English and Oriya. He
is one of the well-known Indian English poets. He took to writing
poetry when he was into his 40s. The publication of his first book of
poems, Svayamvara
and Other Poems,
in 1971 was followed by the publication of Close
The Sky Ten By Ten.
One of Mahapatra's better remembered works is the long poem
Relationship,
for which he won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1981. He was the first
among Indian English Poets to bag the honour.
Mahapatra
was conferred the Padma Shri title in 2009 by the President of India and
was awarded an honorary doctorate by Ravenshaw University on 2 May
2009. Also awarded Litt.D. degree by Utkal University, 2006.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jayanta_Mahapatra
)
You
can read more about his style and concerns in poetry at:
Mahapatra
writes:
My
own writing has always reflected an Oriya sensibility and I have felt
myself to be an Oriya poet, who happened to write in English. I
suppose our sensibility, the Indian sensibility, is different from
the Western one, and this fact stands in the way of the Western
reader.
You
can learn more about his work at: www.jayantamahapatra.com/
Joe
mentioned that the US Library of Congress has a South Asian Literary
Recordings Project. Writers and poets in various Indian languages
have donated their voice recordings and they can be downloaded from
the website:
Priya alerted readers to the excellent work, slim at 118 pages, by the poet Denise Levertov, in collaboration with the scholar of Bengali, Edward Dimock of the University of Chicago, in translating devotional songs
about Krishna. It is titled In
Praise of Krishna: Songs from the Bengali.
The English reader gains access to the songs and poems of Jayadeva,
Vidyapati, Chandidas, Mirabai, and others. Dimock writes:
The
burning of human love and longing comes, in poetry at least, from a
spark of the divine; man's yearning “for a twin of the flesh,” as
one of the Vaishnava poets says, is a reflection of some primordial,
long-forgotten lust, and pain of separation.
To
conclude the session Tom sought permission to recite a bonus poem,
A.E. Housman's When
I Was One-and-Twenty:
When
I was one-and-twenty
I
heard a wise man say,
“Give
crowns and pounds and guineas
But
not your heart away;
Give
pearls away and rubies
But
keep your fancy free.”
But
I was one-and-twenty,
No
use to talk to me.
When
I was one-and-twenty
I
heard him say again,
“The
heart out of the bosom
Was
never given in vain;
’Tis
paid with sighs a plenty
And
sold for endless rue.”
And
I am two-and-twenty,
And
oh, ’tis true, ’tis true.
Tom
said when he was teaching, the students would cry out: “We want
more of these kind of poems!”
You
can read more about Housman, a great classical scholar of Latin, at:
The
Poems
Thomas
Duddy
To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
Had we but
world enough, and time,To his Coy Mistress
by Andrew Marvell (1621-1678)
This coyness, lady, were no crime.
We would sit down and think which way
To walk, and pass our long love's day;
Thou by the Indian Ganges' side
Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide
Of Humber would complain. I would
Love you ten years before the Flood;
And you should, if you please, refuse
Till the conversion of the Jews.
My vegetable love should grow
Vaster than empires, and more slow.
An hundred years should go to praise
Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;
Two hundred to adore each breast,
But thirty thousand to the rest;
An age at least to every part,
And the last age should show your heart.
For, lady, you deserve this state,
Nor would I love at lower rate.
But
at my back I always hear
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Time's wingèd chariot hurrying near;
And yonder all before us lie
Deserts of vast eternity.
Thy beauty shall no more be found,
Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound
My echoing song; then worms shall try
That long preserv'd virginity,
And your quaint honour turn to dust,
And into ashes all my lust.
The grave's a fine and private place,
But none I think do there embrace.
Now therefore, while the youthful hue
Sits on thy skin like morning dew,
And while thy willing soul transpires
At every pore with instant fires,
Now let us sport us while we may;
And now, like amorous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapt power.
Let us roll all our strength, and all
Our sweetness, up into one ball;
And tear our pleasures with rough strife
Thorough the iron gates of life.
Thus, though we cannot make our sun
Stand still, yet we will make him run.
Sivaram
Still I Rise
By Maya Angelou
With
your bitter, twisted lies,
You
may trod me in the very dirt
But
still, like dust, I'll rise.
Does
my sassiness upset you?
Why
are you beset with gloom?
’Cause
I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping
in my living room.
Just
like moons and like suns,
With
the certainty of tides,
Just
like hopes springing high,
Still
I'll rise.
Did
you want to see me broken?
Bowed
head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders
falling down like teardrops,
Weakened
by my soulful cries?
Does
my haughtiness offend you?
Don't
you take it awful hard
’Cause
I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin’
in my own backyard.
You
may shoot me with your words,
You
may cut me with your eyes,
You
may kill me with your hatefulness,
But
still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does
my sexiness upset you?
Does
it come as a surprise
That
I dance like I've got diamonds
At
the meeting of my thighs?
Out
of the huts of history’s shame
I
rise
Up
from a past that’s rooted in pain
I
rise
I'm
a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling
and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving
behind nights of terror and fear
I
rise
Into
a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I
rise
Bringing
the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I
am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I
rise
I
rise
I
rise.
KumKum
Poems
by Sara Teasdale
There
Will Come Soft Rains
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
After Love
There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.
You were the wind and I the sea --
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.
But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.
Spring Rain
I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.
The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light's stain.
With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say. . . .
I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
Did You Never Know?
Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me --
That your love would never lessen and never go?
You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted,
You were too young to know.
Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before it
Far apart, far away in the gusty time of year --
Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking,
I know your secret, my dear, my dear.
It Is Not a Word
It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.
There will come soft rains and the smell of the ground,
And swallows circling with their shimmering sound;
And frogs in the pool singing at night,
And wild plum trees in tremulous white;
Robins will wear their feathery fire,
Whistling their whims on a low fence-wire;
And not one will know of the war, not one
Will care at last when it is done.
Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree,
If mankind perished utterly;
And Spring herself when she woke at dawn
Would scarcely know that we were gone.
After Love
There is no magic any more,
We meet as other people do,
You work no miracle for me
Nor I for you.
You were the wind and I the sea --
There is no splendor any more,
I have grown listless as the pool
Beside the shore.
But though the pool is safe from storm
And from the tide has found surcease,
It grows more bitter than the sea,
For all its peace.
Spring Rain
I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
I remembered a darkened doorway
Where we stood while the storm swept by,
Thunder gripping the earth
And lightning scrawled on the sky.
The passing motor busses swayed,
For the street was a river of rain,
Lashed into little golden waves
In the lamp light's stain.
With the wild spring rain and thunder
My heart was wild and gay;
Your eyes said more to me that night
Than your lips would ever say. . . .
I thought I had forgotten,
But it all came back again
To-night with the first spring thunder
In a rush of rain.
Did You Never Know?
Did you never know, long ago, how much you loved me --
That your love would never lessen and never go?
You were young then, proud and fresh-hearted,
You were too young to know.
Fate is a wind, and red leaves fly before it
Far apart, far away in the gusty time of year --
Seldom we meet now, but when I hear you speaking,
I know your secret, my dear, my dear.
It Is Not a Word
It is not a word spoken,
Few words are said;
Nor even a look of the eyes
Nor a bend of the head,
But only a hush of the heart
That has too much to keep,
Only memories waking
That sleep so light a sleep.
Thommo
Poem by Henry David Thoreau
Poem by Henry David Thoreau
I
Knew A Man By Sight
I knew a man by
sight,
A blameless wight,
Who, for a year or
more,
Had daily passed
my door,
Yet converse none
had had with him.
I met him in a
lane,
Him and his cane,
About three miles
from home,
Where I had
chanced to roam,
And volumes stared
at him, and he at me.
In a more distant
place
I glimpsed his
face,
And bowed
instinctively;
Starting he bowed
to me,
Bowed
simultaneously, and passed along.
Next, in a foreign
land
I grasped his
hand,
And had a social
chat,
About this thing
and that,
As I had known him
well a thousand years.
Late in a
wilderness
I shared his mess,
For he had
hardships seen,
And I a wanderer
been;
He was my bosom
friend, and I was his.
And as, methinks,
shall all,
Both great and
small,
That ever lived on
earth,
Early or late
their birth,
Stranger and foe,
one day each other know.
Mathew
Poems
by Yehuda Amichai
What
Kind Of A Person
"What
kind of a person are you," I heard them say to me.
I'm
a person with a complex plumbing of the soul,
Sophisticated
instruments of feeling and a system
Of
controlled memory at the end of the twentieth century,
But
with an old body from ancient times
And
with a God even older than my body.
I'm
a person for the surface of the earth.
Low
places, caves and wells
Frighten
me. Mountain peaks
And
tall buildings scare me.
I'm
not like an inserted fork,
Not
a cutting knife, not a stuck spoon.
I'm
not flat and sly
Like
a spatula creeping up from below.
At
most I am a heavy and clumsy pestle
Mashing
good and bad together
For
a little taste
And
a little fragrance.
Arrows
do not direct me. I conduct
My
business carefully and quietly
Like
a long will that began to be written
The
moment I was born.
Now
I stand at the side of the street
Weary,
leaning on a parking meter.
I
can stand here for nothing, free.
I'm
not a car, I'm a person,
A
man-god, a god-man
Whose
days are numbered. Hallelujah.
(Translated
from the Hebrew by Barbara and Benjamin Harshav)
An
Arab Shepherd Is Searching For His Goat On Mount Zion
An
Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
And
on the opposite hill I am searching for my little boy.
An
Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
Both
in their temporary failure.
Our
two voices met above
The
Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
Neither
of us wants the boy or the goat
To
get caught in the wheels
Of
the "Had Gadya" machine.
Afterward
we found them among the bushes,
And
our voices came back inside us
Laughing
and crying.
Searching
for a goat or for a child has always been
The
beginning of a new religion in these mountains.
(translator
unknown)
Another
version, translated by Chana Bloch:
An
Arab Shepherd is Searching for His Goat on Mount Zion
An
Arab shepherd is searching for his goat on Mount Zion
and
on the opposite mountain I am searching
for
my little boy.
An
Arab shepherd and a Jewish father
both
in their temporary failure.
Our
voices meet
above
the Sultan's Pool in the valley between us.
Neither
of us wants
the
child or the goat to get caught in the wheels
of
the terrible Had Gadya machine.
Afterward
we found them among the bushes
and
our voices came back inside us, laughing and crying.
Searching
for a goat or a son
has
always been the beginning
of
a new religion in these mountains.
Priya
Poems by Vidyapati
Poems by Vidyapati
Signs
Of Youth
Radha’s
glances dart from side to side.
Her
restless body and clothes are heavy with dust.
Her
glistening smile shines again and again.
Shy,
she raises her skirt to her lips.
Startled,
she stirs and once again is calm,
As
now she enters the ways of love.
Sometimes
she gazes at her blossoming breasts
Hiding
them quickly, then forgetting they are there.
Childhood
and girlhood melt in one
And
new and old are both forgotten.
Says
Vidyapati: O Lord of life,
Do
you not know the signs of youth?
River
And Sky
Oh friend, I
cannot tell you
Whether he was
near or far, real or a dream.
Like a vine of
lightning,
As I chained the
dark one,
I felt a river
flooding in my heart.
Like a shining
moon,
I devoured that
liquid face.
I felt stars
shooting around me.
The sky fell with
my dress,
leaving my
ravished breasts.
I was rocking like
the earth.
In my storming
breath
I could hear my
ankle-bells,
sounding like
bees.
Drowned in the
last waters of dissolution,
I knew that this
was not the end.
Says Vidyapati:
How can I possibly
believe such nonsense?
As the mirror
to my hand,
the flowers to my hair,
kohl to my eyes,
tambul to my mouth,
musk to my breast,
necklace to my throat,
ecstasy to my flesh,
heart to my home --
as wing to bird,
water to fish,
life to the living --
so you to me.
But tell me,
Madhava, beloved,
who are you?
Who are you really?
Vidyapati says, they are one another.
the flowers to my hair,
kohl to my eyes,
tambul to my mouth,
musk to my breast,
necklace to my throat,
ecstasy to my flesh,
heart to my home --
as wing to bird,
water to fish,
life to the living --
so you to me.
But tell me,
Madhava, beloved,
who are you?
Who are you really?
Vidyapati says, they are one another.
(translated by
Edward Dimock and Denise Levertov)
The moon has
shone upon me,
the face of my beloved.
O night of joy!
Joy permeates all things.
My life: joy,
my youth: fulfillment.
Today my house is again
home,
today my body is
my body.
The god
of destiny smiled on me.
No more doubt.
Let the nightingales sing, then,
let there be myriad
rising moons, let Kama's
five arrows become five thousand
and the south wind
softly, softly blow:
for now my body has meaning
in the presence of my beloved
Vidyapati says, Your luck is great;
may this return of love be blessed.
the face of my beloved.
O night of joy!
Joy permeates all things.
My life: joy,
my youth: fulfillment.
Today my house is again
home,
today my body is
my body.
The god
of destiny smiled on me.
No more doubt.
Let the nightingales sing, then,
let there be myriad
rising moons, let Kama's
five arrows become five thousand
and the south wind
softly, softly blow:
for now my body has meaning
in the presence of my beloved
Vidyapati says, Your luck is great;
may this return of love be blessed.
Joe
Poems by Lawrence Durrell
Poems by Lawrence Durrell
“Je
est un autre.” – Rimbaud
He is the man who makes notes,
The observer in the tall black hat
Face hidden in the brim:
He has watched me watching him.
He is the man who makes notes,
The observer in the tall black hat
Face hidden in the brim:
He has watched me watching him.
The
street-corner in Buda and after
By the post-office a glimpse
Of the disappearing tails of his coat,
Gave the same illumination, spied upon,
The tightness in the throat.
By the post-office a glimpse
Of the disappearing tails of his coat,
Gave the same illumination, spied upon,
The tightness in the throat.
Once
too meeting by the Seine
The waters a moving floor of stars,
He had vanished when I reached the door,
But there on the pavement burning
Lay one of his familiar black cigars.
The waters a moving floor of stars,
He had vanished when I reached the door,
But there on the pavement burning
Lay one of his familiar black cigars.
The
meeting on the stairway
Where the tide ran clean as a loom:
The betrayal of her, her kisses
He has witnessed them all: often
I hear him laughing in the other room.
Where the tide ran clean as a loom:
The betrayal of her, her kisses
He has witnessed them all: often
I hear him laughing in the other room.
He
watched me now, working late,
Bringing a poem to life, his eyes
Reflect the malady of De Nerval:
O useless in this old house to question
The mirrors, his impenetrable disguise.
Bringing a poem to life, his eyes
Reflect the malady of De Nerval:
O useless in this old house to question
The mirrors, his impenetrable disguise.
Night
Express
Night falls. The dark expresses
Roll back their iron scissors to commence
Precision of the wheels' elision
From whose dark Serial jabber sparks
Swing swaying through the mournful capitals
Night falls. The dark expresses
Roll back their iron scissors to commence
Precision of the wheels' elision
From whose dark Serial jabber sparks
Swing swaying through the mournful capitals
And
in these lighted cages sleep
With open eyes the passengers
Each committed to his private folly,
On hinges of wanhope the long
Sleeping shelves of men and women,
A library of maggots dreaming, rolls.
With open eyes the passengers
Each committed to his private folly,
On hinges of wanhope the long
Sleeping shelves of men and women,
A library of maggots dreaming, rolls.
Some
retiring to their sleeping past,
On clicking pillows feel the flickering peep
Of lighted memories, keys slipped in groves
Parted like lips receiving or resisting kisses.
Pillars of smoke expend futurity.
On clicking pillows feel the flickering peep
Of lighted memories, keys slipped in groves
Parted like lips receiving or resisting kisses.
Pillars of smoke expend futurity.
This
is how it is for me, for you
It must he different lying awake to hear
At a garden's end the terrible club-foot
Crashing among iron spars, the female shrieks,
Love-song of steel and the consenting night.
It must he different lying awake to hear
At a garden's end the terrible club-foot
Crashing among iron spars, the female shrieks,
Love-song of steel and the consenting night.
To
feel the mocking janitor, sleep,
Shake now and wake to lean there
On a soft elbow seeing where we race
A whiplash curving outwards to the stars,
A glowing coal to light the lamps of space.
Shake now and wake to lean there
On a soft elbow seeing where we race
A whiplash curving outwards to the stars,
A glowing coal to light the lamps of space.
The
Tree of Idleness
I shall die one day I suppose
In this old Turkish house I inhabit:
A ragged banana-leaf outside and here
On the sill in a jam-jar a rock-rose.
I shall die one day I suppose
In this old Turkish house I inhabit:
A ragged banana-leaf outside and here
On the sill in a jam-jar a rock-rose.
Perhaps
a single pining mandolin
Throbs where cicadas have quarried
To the heart of all misgiving and there
Scratches on silence like a pet locked in.
Throbs where cicadas have quarried
To the heart of all misgiving and there
Scratches on silence like a pet locked in.
Will
I be more or less dead
Than the village in memory's dispersing
Springs, or in some cloud of witness see,
Looking back, the selfsame road ahead?
Than the village in memory's dispersing
Springs, or in some cloud of witness see,
Looking back, the selfsame road ahead?
By
the moist clay of a woman's wanting,
After the heart has stopped its fearful
Gnawing, will I descry between
This life and that another sort of haunting?
After the heart has stopped its fearful
Gnawing, will I descry between
This life and that another sort of haunting?
No:
the card-players in tabs of shade
Will play on: the aerial springs
Hiss: in bed lying quiet under kisses
Without signature, with all my debts unpaid
Will play on: the aerial springs
Hiss: in bed lying quiet under kisses
Without signature, with all my debts unpaid
I
shall recall nights of squinting rain,
Like pig-iron on the hills: bruised
Landscapes of drumming cloud and everywhere
The lack of someone spreading like a stain.
Like pig-iron on the hills: bruised
Landscapes of drumming cloud and everywhere
The lack of someone spreading like a stain.
Or
where brown fingers in the darkness move,
Before the early shepherds have awoken,
Tap out on sleeping lips with these same
Worn typewriter keys a poem imploring
Silence of lips and minds which have not spoken.
Before the early shepherds have awoken,
Tap out on sleeping lips with these same
Worn typewriter keys a poem imploring
Silence of lips and minds which have not spoken.
Sunil
Poems
by Henry Louis Vivian Derozio
To
My Native Land
My
country! In thy days of glory past
A
beauteous halo circled round thy brow
and
worshipped as a deity thou wast—
Where
is thy glory, where the reverence now?
Thy
eagle pinion is chained down at last,
And
grovelling in the lowly dust art thou,
Thy
minstrel hath no wreath to weave for thee
Save
the sad story of thy misery!
Well—let
me dive into the depths of time
And
bring from out the ages, that have rolled
A
few small fragments of these wrecks sublime
Which
human eye may never more behold
And
let the guerdon of my labour be,
My
fallen country! One kind wish for thee!
The
Harp Of India
Why
hang'st thou lonely on yon withered bough?
Unstrung
for ever, must thou there remain;
Thy
music once was sweet - who hears it now?
Why
doth the breeze sigh over thee in vain?
Silence
hath bound thee with her fatal chain;
Neglected,
mute, and desolate art thou,
Like
ruined monument on desert plain:
O!
many a hand more worthy far than mine
Once
thy harmonious chords to sweetness gave,
And
many a wreath for them did Fame entwine
Of
flowers still blooming on the minstrel's grave:
Those
hands are cold - but if thy notes divine
May
be by mortal wakened once again,
Harp
of my country, let me strike the strain!
ArundhatiPoem
by Jayanta Mahapatra
One
day, standing in a corner of a strange city
One
day, standing in a corner of a strange city
I
felt I was blind to the real meaning
of
whatever I had done all along to my life.
I
remembered the wide world I kept tempting
to
innocence, the past and the future
that
lusted for my death, and the magic
of
a day that gave a dry little sob and sighed.
There
was this poison my blood would carry
to
my heart those dreams and desires
as
they kept being fulfilled in the world
carrying
enormous human costs with them.
This
poem of mine which was never an answer,
shook
the surrounding darkness like a bell
and
quietened, finding itself
lying
about my life. All the poem could do
was
to close its eyes and fed the breeze
and
the sun in its face. It disregarded
the
hour between night and dawn, when
most
of us die, and my sleeplessness lay there,
waiting
for the fear of the wholeness of life.
That
day, standing in the corner of a strange city,
the
world spoke to me in an unintelligible language.
The
silence of history rang with noiseless trumpets
and
echo-less drums; the city became
my
own skeleton that intruded like an aline
inside
my flesh. Was there a voice at all?
People
were all around me and we were
all
alive at the same time. Our realities
were
different and our heroisms were lies.
My
blood had gone naked so long
that
my veins decayed not saltiness,
and
reality was a soft, perfumed bridal bed
with
a scarlet sheet that was a potential market
for
a country used to live on without memories.
It
wasn't clear if the fate fo the people was mine,
whether
the key to my life had been
handed
to me by a blind man who was not
blind
at all at the end of this marathon;
and
that revenge, loosened of its moral code,
was
to be revelled in as an assuring feat –
the
past of the land was on parade
and
the faces of tradition were defying masks.
I
was suddenly aware that nothing could ever
repair
things, napalm could flower on the breasts
of
a young girl ot give democracy its wings,
may
mind a dead leaf caught by a lazy autumn breeze.
Like
a dying man confined to his bed, paralysed
but
aware, was poetry itself,
watching
the ones he loved pilfer his familiar goods.
Fantastic Joe. Thank you for the work
ReplyDeletethat makes this worth reading.
It was a wonderful Poetry Session. Thank you, KRG folks, enjoyed your committed participations.
ReplyDeleteWe meet again on the 13th of April when we will discuss Cammus' The Stranger. The book was selected by Bobby. I hope he will be present at that session to lead the discussion.
Joe, it is very nice to read your blog. And I enjoyed your poems by L. Durrel. I did not know he wrote such lovely poems.
Bobby,
ReplyDeleteI am glad you enjoyed the post of the Mar 16 Poetry session, especially as you weren't there to experience the delight. It is the very idea of the blog to allow others to share remotely, though they cannot yet participate remotely -- not even asynchronously by sending in voice readings, or textual commentary.
Hope to tackle that some time in the future.
Joe
Hello KumKum,
ReplyDeleteYes, wasn't it an occasion to remember?
We all become acquainted with poets and poems we did not know existed. That's the nice thing about the KRG Poetry sessions.
-- joe
Prof Tom Duddy's recitaion was truly the highlight of the session for me. I cannot imagine reciting from memory.
ReplyDeleteA very enjoyable session indeed and the reading the blog makes it come alive once again.
The poems of the Isareli poet too were very beautiful.
Thank you Joe for keeping this wonderful group simmering.
I enjoyed reading these poems and seeing your photos. I knew Tom Duddy when he lived on Long Island many years ago. We shared some pleasant summer evenings boating in the moonlight on the Great South Bay in Moriches, New York. Please say hello to him, from Linda Carter Prentiss. Maybe he will remember me.
ReplyDeleteHello Linda Carter Prentiss,
ReplyDeleteI am happy you derived some pleasure from reading the poems and commentary. The blog helps us recall the events, long past, we all enjoyed. For instance, the all-Shakespeare reading we organised two years ago, complete with Elizabethan songs recorded at:
http://kochiread.blogspot.in/2009/05/shakescene-all-shakespeare-poetry-event.html
I spoke to Tom on his mobile (cell) phone and he remembered you very well as Linda Carter, and regretted you had disappeared from his life. He did not even know he was on our blog with a photo, for his eyesight is not good enough to make it enjoyable to read on the Internet. Yet there, without the benefit of Facebook or Twitter, he's been revealed to you.
When he comes to our house tomorrow he'll dictate a note to you. Please watch this post's comment area; or better still if you send e-mail to me at kjcleetus followed by gmail.com, he'll write to you directly.
Caro Thomas Duddy, finalmente ti ritrovo dopo tanto tempo! come stai? sono contenta di rivederti nel mondo della poesia
ReplyDeleteelisabetta lovato
Hello Elisabetta Lovato,
ReplyDeleteI am Joe Cleetus, writer of this blog, and friend of Tom Duddy, who spends time in Fort Kochi, Kerala, India, where I live. He is here now and I told him about the message and he recognised you immediately and wanted to return your greetings. He does not do e-mail any more but if you have an e-mail address that he can write to, I can transmit a message he dictates. His eyesight is bad from macular degeneration, but he is still writing poetry, and is currently revising a long poem.
You can also write a message for him to me at kjcleetus@gmail.com
joe
I'm interested to read my lines there....with you.Jaydeep Sarangi
ReplyDeleteGlad to know the activities of The Kochi Reading Group.Would like read there sometime...wishes,Jaydeep Sarangi
ReplyDeletee mail: jaydeepsarangi@gmail.com