topics: |  poetry | indian-english | anthology

The book title and cover page are clearly "Writing Love", but Rupa appears to have some confusion on this - blurbs etc. often list the title as WritingLove. A sense of ambiguity lies at the heart of poetry - but in the title as well?

Indeed, few of the poems are about love as clearly as in Meena Alexander's Indian love poems (2005). However, this anthology does present a number of new voices, unanthologized elsewhere. But the quality is uneven - also, the utterly inadequate introduction and the idiosyncratic arrangement leaves one wondering about the structure.

Excerpts

Grandmother's Garden : Meena Alexander

I

A space without history—
At the rim of the pond

Grandmother loosens her sari
Steps into water

Her skin glistens, utterly naked.
No one remembers this.

Lotus petals flicker
Float to the axle-tree

Tree of Heaven
They call it in the family.

By its roots
Grandfather made a fire

Tossed in her poems
Poor things, penned in black ink

She had folded them
Into finicky squares

Buried them
In her jewel case

With molten rubies
Slow sift of sapphire

Poems of no climate,
Words halting, quick with longing

For a man whose name no one knew.
She dreamt him up?

Who can tell?
Two whole months she took to her bed

Her hands bent under her
Broken-winged

Refusing what food she could.
One night

Half mad, she stumbled out
Ran her fingers

Over scorched bark
- Alstonia Scholaris - what was left of his body

Imagined reliquary
Blushing like koi fed from her own hand.


II.

Syntax surrenders
To an axe biting into wood

And hearing small shocks from my past
I know it's all over – the years of childhood

The Innocence of Before and After
Seasons of rain, fragrance of burnt blossoms

And under the axle tree
Stars musk scented, acutely unreal.

In the shadow of that tree
Mirza Ghalib comes to me

Lambs wool cap askew,
Flecked with blood --

I tried to wash it
In your grandmother's pond.

He took off his cap
I saw it was crowned

With pale freckled eggs
He knelt beside a hole

Where the  tree once stood.
I can see through this pit

To the island city
Where you’ve gone to live, he said.

In the glory of the Beloved
All borders vanish.

I saw her then in moonlight,
A girl,  my close familiar

Her wrists were stumps
Her black hair

Blew into resurrection waves,
She could not comb it back

She was grandmother
And she was me.

She strode up the invisible
Stairs into the sky.


III.

In glowing heat
In blessed synchrony

I saw what Ghalib saw --
Houses with their eyes torn out

Books knifed, goblets shattered
Townspeople, some in soiled dhotis

Twirling from the lampposts.
O lilies  he wrote on his sleeve

Your mouths
Are filled with syllables –

Love draws us down into history.
Men on horseback bearing myrrh and fine paper

All the way from Mecca to Manhattan
Dream of a garden where

A poet sips wine
From the crook of your elbow –

O girl with moonlit hair
Whose wrists are stumps!

Then whispering
So I had to stoop to hear:

Beloved my body is scarred with age
Fit for burial

While yours gleams,
Rainbow colored.

In the rain washed trees
There is nothing to see but nakedness.

Your hands on my body : Priya Sarukkai Chabria 17

Early rain darkens light, pulls sky
to earth as a coverlet.

Tonight, I recall a lust that stormed
as comets crashing clouds, as the helplessness
of ripping mouths, sweat tangling us in running light.
My body trusted its avatar as acrobat swinging
over the never never present.
				all space all time
				is us.  Heavens stall;
				I reign

Flesh called to midnight rainbows and a storm of
unicorns bright
as suns but the sprit was weak, tip toed, hid behind a cloud.  So we
had what we had.
Like lightning clefts we parted on a day that seemed high
summer.
It was your desire.  Harsh -
the hit of sudden rust;  a dry future spreading.
				once more give
				me thy lips once
				more once more

On this first
day of monsoon I remember that first
night with thunder licking the windows as you thrust
me into sheets of light, into another
impression of myself.

Months to go of veiled moons,damp roads that drizzle the city
upside down
and greenness that will grow.
				in a corner, petals of light
				drift against a horizon dreaming of
				fireflies

(read an earlier version at http://authspot.com/poetry/o-2/)

Shoulders : Anindita Sengupta 37

Wedged together in that cycle-rickshaw
like sections of an orange, my shoulder
jabbed your arm.  We squelched
across stone, polythene, water.
I wanted this to last, this ride
over potholes in the rain,
with us so fully aware, so embodied.

But on Park Street, the lamp-posts
glossed the enamel of your eyes
and your shoulders sagged
with fatigue, the bitter wilt
of things long over.  I remembered
how I once measured their span
with my head.

When you stepped off lightly
and walked without afterthoughts,
I tilted towards the driver,
urged him on so I would not have to see
the breadth of your shoulders
shrink into the distance.

Non-conversations with a lover : Meena Kandasamy

	don’t talk to me
	of sudden love. . .

	in our land
	even the monsoons come—
	leisurely, strolling like
	decorated temple elephants
	(the pomp, the paraphernalia)—
	after months of monotonous prayer,
	preparations and palpitating waits.

	my darling
	his silence
	(those still shoulders)
	but his eyes dance
	his eyes dance
	(so wild, so wild)

	so i think of raging
	summer storms—
	like uncontrollable tuskers
	trampling in mast
	(the madness, the lust)—
	across the forests of our land. . .

Peggy Gordon : Anjum Hassan 57

	I go out into the August slush and get the wine,
	and all weekend is one long afternoon,
	watching the light soften on the sill,
      	knowing it'll rain soon, drinking happiness
	like Peggy Gordon: "I put my head to a glass
	of brandy / it was my fancy I do declare."
	I'm seeing our life from the outside like a lit window,
	I'm shaking it like a locked box, trying to judge
	the contents from the sound.
	Everyone does their made-up thing inside -
	getting pissed and not showing it, panic and desire,
	speaking half-sentences into the phone for someone
	three thousand kilometers away to complete.
	So this is what love means - the weak beating
	of a hardened heart.  Smiling at the thought -
	I'm not young anymore.  Drinking and thinking,
	we're going to forget this only because
	some day we can do it again.

Akhil Katyal : You alleged of your absence in my poetry

You alleged of your absence in my poetry.
Not a sentence, you said, for you. Not a word or two.

Did you not mark those turns
in my lines where the sense alters?
You were present where
one meaning falters into another.
Where a word spurns
another. You were in the pauses
where I halted for breath. Perched
at the edge of consternation.
Between unrelated things and phrases
you stood. You were punctuation.
The latter remembered the former
by you. The words were warmer
by you. Sometimes you were the comma.

Loving a woman

To love a woman is
to resurrect her  from stone,
to fondle her from tip to toe
until her blood frozen by a curse
is warmed by a dream.

To love a woman is
to turn her soot-laden day
into a skylark that breathes
the flower-dust of paradise;
to turn oneself into a tree in bloom
for her tired wings to rest at night.

To love a woman is
to set sail on a storm-swept sea
under an overcast sky
in search of a new continent;
to carry a red balsam
from your frontyard to an unseen shore
and plant it there

To love a woman is
to exchange the harshness of your muscles
for the tenderness of a flower,
to free yourself of the armour and the crown,
bare, cross another sky
and leave your flesh to the winds of
another planet, to another water.

To love a woman is
to help her unearth a ray-sharp sword
from her ancient scars
and lie pressing your heart on its blade
until you are drained of all your blood.

I have never loved a woman.

Love in square metres

Vivek Narayanan : The City 3
	A woman puts her hand on my shoulder from behind:
	I wonder if I should turn to greet her.
To the Chinese Restaurant : Anjum Hasan 4
At the Rodin Museum : Tishani Doshi 7
Grandmother's Garden : Meena Alexander 13

Nature's play

Your hands on my body : Priya Sarukkai Chabria 17
The gathering of time : Dialogues with Kalidasa : Priya Sarukkai Chabria 19
An evening among silent trees : Krishnakumar Sankaran 20
Moon and Night scents : Uddipana Goswami 21
Glow : Nandita Jaishankar
TIll Tomorrow : Vineetha Mokkil
Animal Love : Annie Zaidi
Sky song : Mamang Dai
Closing the Kamasutra : Meena Alexander

The mystery of history

Lovers : Aditi Machado
Laila's call : Sukrita Paul Kumar
All over again : Sukrita Paul Kumar
Shireeza : Vivek Narayanan
Shoulders : Anindita Sengupta 37
The ghost : Kynphan Sing Nongkynrih
Pebble : Jane Bhandari
I remember Siachen : Anindita Sengupta
Yesterday : Ashmi Ahluwalia

Of blacks, whites and grays

My jealous friend : Aruni Kashyap
Non-conversations with a lover : Meena Kandasamy
You and Marmalade : Arundhati Subramaniam
Terminus : Uddipana Goswami
Peggy Gordon : Anjum Hassan

'Heart'ing

Note : Aditi Machado
At the second hand bookshop : Akhil Katyal
What he said, what she said : T. P. Sabitha
Your smile ...  : Dan Husain 65
When words fail... : Dan Husain 66
A poem for my aging wife : Raamesh Gowri Raghavan 67
Raj <3 Meeru : Krishnakumar Sankaran 69
A rose : Raamesh Gowri Raghavan 71
Reading Donne : Aseem Kaul
You alleged of your absence : Akhil Katyal
Muse : Meena Alexander

Shades of red

Loving a woman : K. Satchidanandan
First love: : Aseem Kaul
Affliction : Nandita Jaishankar
Two poems of love : T. P. Sabitha
In you : K. Satchidanandan
Love : Vineetha Mokkil
Love is love : Ashmi Ahluwalia
Love lyric for the 21st century : Annie Zaidi