Dilly-dallying

New year. New resolutions.

2012-01-15T18:28:00.001+05:30

New reading resolutions that is. My main resolution is to stay on top of the reading challenge this year. The goal this year, is the same as last - 25 books. This year I'm hoping I can actually meet this. So far I've finished one book (although it's one I started last year) and am told I'm on track, which is good to know. I'm currently reading Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood. It's one of those books that I've let sit on my TBR pile for ages and always shyed away from because it seems so dauntingly thick and warrant a certain length of time. But at the moment I'm almost three quarter way through the book and am surprised at how easy it's been. Will report back on it once done of course.

Apart from that, this year I really am keen on reading widely and venturing in to new genres or genres that I have neglected over the years. My reading diet lately has mostly compromised of Literary Fiction and a few Speculative stuff thrown here and there. This I want to change. Because I really do think while reading doth maketh the person, it also doth come down to what one doth reads. Reading informs and forms ones worldviews, opinions, etc and if we stick to reading just the one kind of books, what narrow perspectives and knowledge we'll have. So yes, widen my reading is another.

Tick off the Classics. Even though I did an English Lit BA, I never really got through most of the Classics. Our degree was very un-Classic in a way, i.e. it covered a lot of feminist, postcolonial and modern texts. (This is a good thing in general.) I have read a fare share of the Classics but I do have quite a few that I've never really cared to approach. So this year, I'd like to tick a few of those off as well.

And last but not least, watch and keep a log of all the "lit flicks" I've watched through the year. By "lit flicks" I mean, adaptations or any films with a bookish/literary theme. I've already started with that and you can find them listed with a short review (see menu on right).

That's mostly it really. Nothing too taxing, I'd say. What about your own reading resolutions? Got any this year?

Review: Blink by Malcolm Gladwell

2012-01-08T19:36:00.000+05:30

Blink: The Power of Thinking without Thinking confirms and surprises you about the way our mind works when it comes to making choices/decisions in the blink of a moment. Malcolm Gladwell reveals with research and case studies how 'thin slicing' (a phrase used to describe the way in which our minds form impressions/decisions in a matter of seconds) can be both a good and bad thing. He uses case studies from a variety of life situations and people, from cops at gunpoint with a suspect, to the famous Coke-Pepsi blind taste test, the music industry, a tennis match, and even an Orchestra audition. Gladwell gets at the heart of why some people can get it so right when it comes to making certain decisions in a split second while in some cases having all the information about a situation or person isn't necessarily going to arm you with a better decision-making ability. On the flip side Gladwell also uses some fantastic examples of where choices based on first impressions or in split seconds have gone seriously wrong.

I quite enjoyed this book, and can't really find anything specific to criticize it with. It was written accessibly, convincingly and I reckon I will venture to read more of Gladwell's work in the future. Blink has some fascinating revelations but it also re-frames the obvious. On the whole it's all intriguing stuff and its content will no doubt make for an interesting conversation starter, at the very least.

Goodreads rating: 3/5

Could appeal to: anyone interested in how the mind works and about decision-making, marketers, advertising folks

Read it with: Google at hand (because there'll be plenty of little triviaesque stuff that you might want to Google whilst reading)

Taster quote: “The entire principle of a blind taste test was ridiculous. They shouldn't have cared so much that they were losing blind taste tests with old Coke, and we shouldn't at all be surprised that Pepsi's dominance in blind taste tests never translated to much in the real world. Why not? Because in the real world, no one ever drinks Coca-Cola blind.”

Published by: Back Bay Books

My favourite reads of 2011

2011-12-31T18:03:00.001+05:30

So here we are on the last day of another year. I began a lot of projects this year, including the 2011 Goodreads Reading Challenge, which I can report back I have not completed. I couldn't get to my goal of 25. This is disappointing, given that I know people who have made and met goals like a hundred books! Where the HELL do you people find the time??? I am a relatively slow reader and if I'm on a particularly difficult book, I might struggle with it for weeks, even months. Of course this year I picked up the naughty habit of taking on two or three books simultaneously. I might read one when I'm commuting, another at home. This system works but sometimes, if one books is particularly difficult I might tend to neglect it - you will notice Tinker, Tailor still there on my 'Currently Reading' shelf. I'm still debating whether to retire it to my 'We're on a Break' shelf but for some reason I feel determined to conquer it.

In all fairness though, if I count all the books I needed to read for Uni and the full manuscripts I read for one of my internships, I have technically gone well beyond the goal but that's not the point is it? I think this reading challenge that Goodreads initiated has been a fantastic idea and I can't wait to get to the New Year and devour more books and this time next year I'll be damned if I don't report back to you all with a 'mission accomplished'!

This year I've read some amazing books but also some not-so-amazing ones. But my top 5 should be pretty straightforward if you've been keeping tabs on my reviews. But here we are my favourite top 5 books read in 2011:

5. Starter for Ten (David Nicholls)
David Nicholls was an author I had never read and I'm glad it was Starter for Ten that I read first. It's been laugh out loud funny, probably one of the best funny books of all time.

4. Chinaman (Shehan Karunatilaka)
The debut novel of Sri Lankan author that made it in to the Waterstones 11 - it's bold, it's witty, it's big. It IS the Great Sri Lankan Novel we've been waiting for. Only it's 'great' in the most unexpected ways. I know not everyone agrees with this but BOO to you.

3. Room (Emma Donaghue)
It was sad to see this book not making its way up the Booker list. It's really fantastic writing by Donaghue to be able to keep the voice and narrative confined to the vocabulary and insight of a little boy who has never seen a world outside a 'room' and a 'television screen'.

2. The Sense of an Ending (Julian Barnes)
2011 Booker Prize winning novel - light in weight, heavy in subject, small in size but big in questions. It's one of the few books I read in one sitting because it was so so good.

AND NOW FOR THE BIG NUMBER ONE. DRUM ROLL PLEASE....

1. We Need to Talk About Kevin (Lionel Shriver)
This book is written with such sincerity, boldness and insight and is so clever and complex. The film adaptation was recently released (I am yet to see it) and on the back of that I imagine there will be new interest sparked for the book and deservingly so. It's a difficult book in many ways and perhaps not for everyone but if you haven't read it yet, I couldn't recommend it more.

So there you have it folks, my favourites of the year. Thanks for dropping in this way over the past year.

Wish you all a fantastic New Year!

Merry Christmas dear readers...

2011-12-24T01:32:00.000+05:30

Came across the idea for a bookish tree thanks to this link one of my tweeps shared. I needed a Christmas tree in my little room and having a little money, a little space but a lot of books, it made perfect sense! Of course mine is considerably less enchanting but I love it none the less.

Merry Christmas everyone!

Literary Link of the Week: Ryan Gosling works in publishing and the library

2011-12-17T15:28:00.001+05:30

I am well aware that again, this link is more of an excuse to drool over a hot guy and is in no way actually "literary" or intellectual. But how can I deprive you lot of the opportunity to feast your eyes over The Gosling, especially when he is, for some strange and unknown reason linked with libraries and publishing?! It's an extension of that now famous Hey Girl tag that has kick-started a flurry of tumblr blogs with Gosling as the inadvertent poster child and advocate of feminism to now libraries and publishing. Where it all started I think is with the blog Fuck Yeah! Ryan Gosling. Whatever will he champion next?

Ryan Gosling Works in Publishing

Hey Girl. I like the Library too.

Have a great weekend!

Literary Link of the Week: We Give Books

2011-12-09T17:25:00.001+05:30

I love the idea of this digital initiative by The Penguin Group and Pearson Foundation where for every book read online they donate a book. So if you have kids and are looking for wonderful books for them to read check out www.wegivebooks.org/books where you can find a host of children's books for young and early readers which you can read online for FREE! There's the option of creating your own library of books on the site by registering and logging in. And of course for every book you read, there's the promise of a book being donated. More details on the website.

The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho

2011-12-08T04:31:00.001+05:30

The first time I tried reading this book I read a few pages and found it to be such drivel that I left it, never to return. But you know how they say, 'being at the right place at the right time'? Well, in the same vein I'd say I was in the right mood at the right time for The Alchemist when I felt like going back to it recently. I won't go much in to personal circumstances but suffice to say that I was in this vulnerable place where nothing fills that void quite like a diet of Oprah and Chicken Soup for the Soul. The only reason I managed to keep flipping through the pages of The Alchemist was this need and the fact that it's a short and easy read; other than that on the whole this parable of a young shepherd boy who crosses oceans and desserts in search of his "Personal Legend" isn't my usual cup of literary tea.

The Alchemist, originally written in Portuguese was first published in 1988 and it does feel dated in many ways. While there is quite a lot of religious and spiritual references and symbolism throughout the text what is interesting about The Alchemist is that no one faith can claim it as a propagation of their own. What it definitely is though is spiritual and possibly even theistic but if there is any specific doctrine that Coelho consistently pushes for, it is "The Law of Attraction". If you're familiar with The Secret of course you know this concept is echoed in everything from religion to philosophy to Quantum Physics. That being said, I did find the worldview/s a bit contradictory--while saying you had your own free will and must persevere, it also seems to suggest that "it is written".

On the whole as a work of fiction it is rather poor but I think it's the wrong way to approach it anyway. It is very much in the vein of fables our grandparents might narrate which have come down through generations, and in that sense it does its job, albeit predictably.

My Goodreads rating: 2/5

Could appeal to: Self-help book readers, optimists, anyone in to fables or The Secret

Read it with: an optimist

Taster quote: “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”

Published by: HarperCollins

Review: After Dark by Haruki Murakami

2011-12-05T05:55:00.000+05:30

I've heard so many good things about Haruki Murakami that I felt I must must read at least one of his books this year. After Dark was at hand. It is short, didn't need too much commitment; I couldn't think of a better way to introduce myself in to a Murakami world than this. And what a world it is!

While Murakami writes in Japanese and what we read are actually translations this world that he creates, the atmospheric quality of his narrative does not seem to get lost in translation at any point in the book. Of course I can't say this with certainty unless I actually read the Japanese version and then compare but you get the point.

The events in After Dark all take place in one night. It's in what is called 'real-time narrative' where the story is unfolding in the then and the now with us readers as witness. We are introduced to several characters, mainly Mari, a young college student, Eri Asai, her older sister who seems to be in some deep state of sleep, and Takahashi, a young trombonist. There are also a number of other characters, all connected to Alphavill, a "love hotel". As the night progresses we are given snapshots of these characters as their paths cross each other's. Through out the novel I kept thinking what a fantastic film it would make mostly because of the way Murakami guides the reader's point-of-view almost like a cinematographer does with a camera. The whole story plays with the concept of perception and reality/realities. In fact duality is a major theme in the novel.

What Murakami does in this novel, and does quite brilliantly is to transport you in to a time and space that is bordering reality. Even the "reality" of the Japanese metropolis in the novel has a veil of the surreal cast over it. In a way this could be because "night time" does tend to carry with it that sense of the surreal and mystic. Therefore you could say we only encounter "reality" in the sobering sense of the word, when dawn breaks at the end of the novel. Until then, we are very much lost in a world that sits comfortably between the familiar and the strange, the real and the dream-like, the comprehensible and the hallucinatory.

The richness of the imagery, the uncanny tone all make for an immersive reading experience. It's hard to say exactly what Murakami is trying to say with all this: there's obviously meditations on time and an almost Quantum Physical conception of reality but it's not quite clear cut. But it really doesn't matter. After Dark, for me at least, was all about the journey, I didn't care about the destination.

Goodreads rating: 4/5

Could appeal to: readers of speculative fiction, fantasy

Read it with: a night light

Taster quote: "In this world, there are things you can only do alone, and things you can only do with somebody else. It’s important to combine the two in just the right amount."

Published by: Random House

Literary Link of the Week: Reading in bed with James Franco

2011-12-02T19:16:00.001+05:30

I'm downsizing this weekly feature to one link. Sorry, dear readers. Time is scarce. The world is on a recession spiral, AGAIN. It's the way the cookie crumbles. La-di-da you get the picture.

Anway, this week's link however, is a treat, especially for the ladies (and gentlemen?). Well, those in to James Franco that is. Those of you on my Twitter list might already have seen it because I did post it there sometime ago. But it's worth re-sharing.

Here's what happened: James Franco sent in a recording of him reading the shortstory William Wei by Amie Barrodale (includes PG13 material by the way) to The Paris Review. Of course he happens to be reading this in bed. The Paris Review posts the video on their site. The world is a better place. The end.

It takes hot guys reading books to a whole new level yes? More please!

Reading in Bed with James Franco from The Paris Review on Vimeo.

#16days: Skin and bones

2011-11-30T07:00:00.000+05:30

If I say 'Violence'
You expect big revelations
Bloody bruises
And black eyes
A chipped tooth
A dislocated jaw
or tell-tale scars
You want the evidence
of a crime scene
blood on the dancefloor
smears on the bedroom sheets
Broken plates on the kitchenfloor
But she has none of that to display
Only a corpse buried inside
A momentary plea in her eyes
Now you see it, now you don't
He never touched her skin and bones.

Akram Zaatari, 1966 at the Tate Modern (London)

I tend to be skeptical about activism sometimes. But I think one of the important things about projects like the currently ongoing 16 Days campaign against gender based violence is that it makes it ok to talk about difficult things, takes the taboo away, if not for always, at least for a few weeks, maybe months. I was especially moved by this bold and honest post and I can only imagine the effect it will have on a lot of people. When you're going through something, sometimes it means the world to know that you are not the only one. And that is what makes such campaigns, and moreoever posts like the above so important.

Violence, however comes in many forms. Whether it is in the hands of an abusive partner or through the dictates of media, we are violated every day and sometimes in the most subtlest ways. I wanted to draw attention to that. Violence (particularly against women) is sometimes un-physical, passive, and the signs aren't skin deep.

Find out more about the 16 Days campaign and how the Sri Lankan blogosphere is responding to it here. You can also keep up with the online activism and get involved with the conversation on Twitter. Hashtags to note are #16days, #16daysSL, #VAW and #takebackthetech.

All things literary: a wishlist

2011-11-29T18:59:00.000+05:30

Dear Santa,

I've been good this year. Wishlist below.

kthanxbai

-Me

Sylvia Plath Pin from The Literary Gift Company

Mug from The Literary Gift Company

Tote from Cafepress.com

iPod/iPhone charging Dock via etsy

Poster print via etsy

Shakespearean Book Locket via etsy

Penguin Classics Mug via art meets matter

necklace from bookish

Umbrella from Penguin Books

I Read Banned Books bracelet via Amazon

Personal Library Kit via Amazon

Trivial Pursuit Book Lover's Edition via Amazon

Literary Tea Bags from What the Dickens?

Shakespearean insults badges! from What the Dickens?

Golden Snitch necklace via Etsy

Review: Even the Dogs by Jon McGregor

2011-11-26T04:41:00.001+05:30

Here's the thing. I'm on the fence about how I feel about this book so this review is going to be a bit short and perhaps even a little confused. Even the Dogs is a book about junkies and the harsh realities of their life. The story opens with a very CSI kind of crime scene where the dead body of a man is found in his flat. Cause of death is unknown but as the story progresses we come to learn that he has a history of substance abuse, mostly alcohol. As the novel progresses we come to learn more about him, his death and his acquaintances--homeless drug addicts who were given shelter in his flat in exchange for them going and getting him his food and drink. The narrative shifts between making the reader a distant observer and at other times it breaks into a stream of consciousness of one of the characters. It's almost as if McGregor wants us to look at this from two points of view: as outsiders and also very much from the perspective of an addict. The prose is very jagged and experimental. He opts not to use punctuation at all and sentences tend to be left hanging, even without a full stop or ellipses (Lynn Truss might be inclined to write a petition!). However, this is mostly when the narrative is from the stream of consciousness of one of the addicts, which justifies this style. But on the whole all this doesn't make for easy reading but at its best moments the effect is profound. At its worst, some might find it pretentious.

But Even the Dogs is an important story and it gives perspective of a community that is very much a part of a City's underbelly, straddling its margins. It does all this without judgement nor justification. It is dark, it is depressing, it is graphic and it most definitely isn't a book you want to start your morning commute with, which I sort of did because I mostly read while commuting. In retrospect, one of the important things the book did for me is make me realize how on a fundamental level we're all living like junkies. Chasing one high after another and doing a lot of waiting in between. Whether that high is a job, a lover or the next must-have thing. So while it's a book I'm glad to have gotten through, I'm also glad I did pick up. Perhaps had I been in a different frame of mind, read it in a different time and place I would have felt its effect far more.

Goodreads rating: 2/5

Could appeal to: If you've read Train Spotting this might be of interest, although possibly not as wry or readable. Also anyone into experimental fiction.

Read it with: perseverance

Taster quote:

"All this waiting though. Still.

Waiting outside the night shelter for them to open the doors. Hanging around for hours to make sure you get your place. Waiting at the walk-in centre to get something sorted, and getting referred on to somewhere else so you can wait a little bit more. Waiting for the chemist to open to get the daily script. Waiting to score when it seems like no cunt can get hold of it, the way it was before Christmas, all of us loading up on jellies and benzos to keep the rattles off. Too much to handle if you score on top of all that and you're not careful. But careful aint really the point."

Published by: Bloomsbury

A Picture Speaks

2011-11-04T05:33:00.000+05:30

Thought I'd take a cue from a project my sister is doing with song lyrics and photos. It's a good way for me to share more of my photos on this blog. It's also quite fun placing beautiful words on them. Feel free to share but do link the blog.

Everything Beautiful Began After by Simon Van Booy

2011-11-01T08:00:00.000+05:30

I suppose the title should very well have been an indicator of the kind of book I was in for but generally speaking I went in to this blind. The book opens beautifully and the first chapter dwells about cities and what they mean which seemed promising of what starts off as a love story set in Europe between an aspiring French painter and an English archaeologist. But that's as far as the appeal went for me. From then on it was a downward spiral.

For one thing, I don't think Simon Van Booy really had a story there to begin with. He has a poet's way with words no doubt but there's no point if you're the world's best wordsmith if you don't have something to say. Half way in I really was tempted to give up on the book but only pushed through because I had already invested too much time in it and this would've been in vain, especially because I'm so behind with my Reading Challenge!

I'm not going to go into detail about this book because there was a lot I didn't like about it from the over-poetic dialogue (for example: "That doesn't mean anything," Rebecca interrupted. "Loneliness is like being the only person left alive in the universe, except that everyone else is still here.") to its stagnant storyline and an ending that is a bit too corny for my liking. Suffice to say that I won't be gifting this to anyone for Christmas.

Goodreads rating: 1/5

Could appeal to: People who want to graduate from Harlequin romances perhaps?

Read it with: coffee

Taster quote: “Dreamers conquered the world long ago.”

Published by: Beautiful Books

Review: Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman

2011-10-31T10:00:00.000+05:30

Pigeon English by Stephen Kelman is another book that was shortlisted for the Booker this year and one I didn't particularly take to. Set in contemporary urban London, it is the story of Harrison Opuku, a 12 year old migrant boy from Ghana who lives in a council housing estate. Harrison is all wide-eyed wonder at a lot of what happens around him and at the same time somewhat aware of the violent neighbourhood he is in, made all the more evident when a teenage boy in his school is murdered. The book deals with the issue of knife crime and teenage violence, and also touches on the general migrant experience.

Why I didn't like the book had a lot to do with the narrative. As the narrator, Harrison failed to win me over. Doing first person child narratives is never an easy task and for Kelman there was also the added burden of it being a migrant child. It just wasn't convincing and most of the time I found it irritating. For one thing I just didn't see how he could be so completely in wonder of certain things and then in-tune and street-smart about others. I also a found this whole thing of seeing adult issues through an innocent childish perspective a bit overdone already, and what could've been fresh is if the perspective came from a less innocent child, like one of "the other" child characters. I found the portrayals of these characters a lot more succesful and convincing. The child-speak meets street-speak was also a test of my patience especially when it's an entire book of that. In Room the child-speak narrative worked beautifully and convincingly; it also would've meant a very different story had it been from another voice and perspective. I'm not sure Pigeon English would have lost out had Harrison not been the narrator.

And then there's the pigeon. I assume it has a symbolic function, perhaps to do with migration but other than that I just didn't see its point. And when it starts to talk... Lord, the less said about it, the better!

There were some nice moments but on the whole Pigeon English has sadly been a disappointment.

Goodreads rating: 1/5 stars

Could appeal to: Those interested in urban contemporary fiction

Read it with: no expectations

Taster quote: "I needed to break a window. I needed a thousand points to catch up."

Published by: Bloomsbury

Reading list: get your spooky on

2011-10-30T15:53:00.000+05:30

The Halloween weekend is about to end but that doesn't mean you can't get your spooky on, particular on a nice cold winter night. Of course there's already several such lists that came out in the build up to Halloween over the past week such as this and this (which happened to include 3 books I planned on mentioning here). But there's always room for another one right?!

1. The Hound of the Baskervilles by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

I can remember reading this back when I was a teenager and being intriguingly spooked from page to page.

2. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

It's a classic Gothic novel and anyone who's read it knows how dark and atmospheric it is. Definitely has a lot to bring you to the edge of your seat.

3. Beloved by Toni Morrison

If there's a book that had the hairs on the back of my neck standing as an adult reader, this has got to be it!

4. Macbeth by William Shakespeare

I don't think this needs much explanation does it?

5. Mythil's Secret by Prashani Rambukwella

I think this would be a nice spooky bedtime read for kids. Despite its Gratiaen Award, it's been massively overlooked.

Happy reading! :)

Review: The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

2011-10-30T04:40:00.001+05:30

In my previous post I mentioned about the debate this year's Man Booker shortlist incited: readability vs Literature/artistic achievement. The thing with these kinds of debates is that not only does it force polarisation but worse, categorization. It makes you put a book in one box or the other, when it could be in several and enjoyed and celebrated as such. In my opinion, it's often when readability and "artistic achievement" enter into a happy marriage that literary magic happens. And The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes most definitely is that kind of literary magic, cover to cover.

When a book comes highly recommended to the level that this does (i.e. as the winner of this year's Man Booker) you obviously approach it with high expectations and/or skepticism. If it falls short, the disappointed reader will show no mercy. After all it won the Booker. It doesn't deserve mercy. I came to this book with that kind of expectation. If it had fallen even a little short, I would've been unforgiving. It had astronomically high expectations to fulfill and as far as I'm concerned they have been wonderfully fulfilled.

The book's narrator, Tony Webster is a divorcee in his sixties who has led, by all means a very ordinary life. As with any one who has seen the last of their youth, Tony recalls it with a particular nostalgia and self-deception, especially of a woman that came in to his life back then and a school friend he both admired and envied. But this is no Coming Up for Air kind of literary trip down memory lane with an ageing, existential man, although Tony Webster most definitely is ageing, and if not existential, philosophical. But at the heart of this memoir is a "mystery" that holds it all together and drives the narrative forward.

The book is in two parts: the first part could very well stand on its own as an excellent coming of age short story about a group of young school boys; but it is in the second part, when Tony discovers that he has been passed down the diary of his former school friend, the recollections of his past has a purpose beyond nostalgia. I loved the way in which Tony goes from being a self-assured youth to a self-deceptive and even self-doubtful man, as perhaps we all do within the course of our own lives. He also reminds us on several occasions that this story is narrative in retrospect and the book on the whole explores what this means, in terms of memory, and its subjectivity. Ultimately it's a story about history, and the ambiguity of it, even when this history is your very own.

There's a lot to be savoured in The Sense of an Ending, with many sentences and passages I know I will re-visit. I remember a quote by C.S. Lewis that went, "we read to know we're not alone"--in the sense that we read to find empathy, companionship, thoughts that echo our own but only with far more wit and poetry. That's when a book becomes more than just a jolly good read. This was such a book. Because not only does Barnes write beautifully but also with a sense of informed wisdom. Writing can easily be clever, but wisdom, now that's rare. I'm tempted to reproduce some passages here, but I'll leave you with just this one. It's my favourite line in the whole book:

"Still, she had danced."

When a writer can say so much with that kind of economy of words, you know he's meant for, and indeed deserves, great things.

Goodreads rating: 5/5 stars

Could appeal to: anyone who likes a good philosophical romp with the added appeal of a mystery thrown in to the mix

Read it with: a cup of tea on a winter night

Taster quote: (yipee! chance to sneak in one more!) "What was the point of having a situation worthy of fiction if the protagonist didn’t behave as he would have done in a book?"

Published by: Jonathan Cape

Belated Booker Talk

2011-10-29T16:16:00.001+05:30

So by now we all know who this year's Booker prize went to. In the event you've missed the big news (where the HELL were you???), it went to Julian Barnes' The Sense of an Ending. I am right now, not in a position to give my opinion on its worthiness but going by a lot of opinions out there, the general consensus seems that it was a worthy victory, and a long-time coming one for Barnes. I have only just finished one of the other shortlisted novels, Stephen Kelman's Pigeon English, which on the whole did not go down too well with me. I will elaborate with a review post soon! I intend to start on The Sense of an Ending this weekend, and really hope it's far more rewarding than Pigeon English.

This year, the Booker Prize was surrounded by controversy and criticism, so much so that there is even an announcement of a new prize: The Literature Prize. Although the creators of this prize do not claim theirs is in any way a reaction to the Booker list this year, it's quite evident it is. So what's the gripe? Strangely enough, it's a case of readability. This year's Booker judges explicitly made claims about the "readability" of their choices which I found unwarranted. Of course it will incite literary critics to retort back. One would think, 'readability is a given and as Andrew Motion pointed out, stating so only creates a divide. It's always hard to draw these distinctions. Some of the greatest works of "Literature" (Ulysses, I'm looking at you) are often on book shelves but rarely ever get read by the average reader. That being said, some books are difficult to get in to at first but prove to be the most revolutionary and rewarding (Ayn Rand anyone?). So perhaps readability for the most part also depends very much on the reader and his/her perseverance and like with everything else invovled with the Arts, is very subjective. For instance, if "readability" was a qualifier of some of the titles that made it to the shortlist, I found Pigeon English to the contrary. But that could very well just be me.

However this "readability" debate also has a whiff of intellectual elitism about it. I don't know who made "readability" a dirty word, but to me it ultimately means that it is a well-written book that holds a reader's attention. In a way it comes down to that age-old clash of the popular vs high art, which is something that has shaped debates on the Arts over the years. On the one hand within an increasingly commercialized cultural landscape it is easy to pander to the "popular" and if any industry is particularly reflective of this, it is the music industry. That being said, there is also the case of abstract art for instance that is ultimately a whole lot of tosh but are "critically acclaimed" (Jackson Pollock anyone?), and beautiful pop art that is reserved for the biscuit boxes. There are plenty of opinions flying around on the topic of "readability" vs "Literature" particularly in The Guardian, and as far as I'm concerned they each have a valid point to make. At the end of the day it all comes down to definitions. And as Stella Remington very rightfully said, personal response. Each to his/her own I say.

Thoughts?

Poet of the Hour: Tomas Tranströmer

2011-10-11T02:42:00.000+05:30

image credit

Admit it, when you heard that this year's Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Tomas Tranströmer, most of you went 'Tomas who?' right? Well, if you didn't, bravo! I personally had no clue of his existence till the award and if it weren't for the Nobel Prize I'm not sure if I'd ever have stumbled on his work. Tomas Tranströmer is a Swedish poet so most of his poems are translations, but according to critics they are very good translations. There's plenty of bio information about him now more than ever, so I won't go there.

According to The New Yorker the best time to read Tranströmer is at night, alone and in silence. I did a bit of Googling around and managed to read a few of his poems; I am yet to find one that really wows me though. If you are familiar with his work please do share some. Here are a couple I was particularly intrigued by.

After A Death

Once there was a shock
that left behind a long, shimmering comet tail.
It keeps us inside. It makes the TV pictures snowy.
It settles in cold drops on the telephone wires.

One can still go slowly on skis in the winter sun
through brush where a few leaves hang on.
They resemble pages torn from old telephone directories.
Names swallowed by the cold.

It is still beautiful to feel the heart beat
but often the shadow seems more real than the body.
The samurai looks insignificant
beside his armour of black dragon scales.

The Outpost

I’m ordered out to a heap of stones
like a distinguished corpse from the Iron Age.
The others are back in the tent sleeping
stretched out like spokes in a wheel.

In the tent the stove rules: a big snake
that has swallowed a ball of fire and hisses.
But out in the spring night it is silent
among cold stones waiting for day.

Out in the cold I begin to fly
like a shaman, I fly to her body
with its white marks from her bikini -
we were out in the sun. The moss was warm.

I flit over warm moments
but can’t stop for long.
They’re whistling me back through space -
I crawl out from the stones. Here and now.

Mission: to be where I am.
Even in that ridiculous, deadly serious
role – I am the place
Where creation is working itself out.

Daybreak, the sparse tree trunks
are coloured now, the frostbitten
spring flowers form a silent search party
for someone who has vanished in the dark.

But to be where I am. And to wait.
I am anxious, stubborn, confused.
Coming events, they’re here already!
I know it. They’re outside:

a murmuring crowd outside the gate.
They can pass only one by one.
They want in. Why? They’re coming
one by one. I am the turnstile.

Review: The Tiny Wife by Andrew Kaufman

2011-10-08T22:41:00.003+05:30

The Tiny Wife is a strange tale if there ever was one. It's a fantastic (I mean this in the original sense of the word: imaginative or fanciful; remote from reality) fable, that kind of feels like you're on something. It starts off with a bank robbery that isn't like your average bank robbery. The rogue isn't really there to rob the bank but more to rob an item of sentimental value off each person there. Having got what he wanted, he leaves and everyone who was at the bank are happy to be alive and ~~free~~. They go about their lives but sooner than later, strange things start happening to them that can only be described as the stuff one might imagine when on hallucinogens. That's as much as I'll give away because it is a very tiny book and I've already said too much.

It was one of the more unusual reads of the year for me but definitely memorable! Kaufman's narrative is funny, clever and fantastical. The illustrations (by Tom Percival) that pepper the pages are as intriguing as the tale itself. I was trying to think of what I can compare it to but I really can't think of any. In the midst of all the weirdness, ultimately it is about the fighting spirit of people in the face of tough times and all the little things that ultimately do matter. The ending was unexpectedly heartwarming. It's a book that reminds us a story can be effectively fantastic without having vampires and wizards and talking lions in them (although I love all those things myself, except the vampires!) All in all, a delightful read.

My Goodreads rating: 4/5 stars
Could appeal to: fantasy fiction readers, modern fable lovers, anyone who wants a quick read

Read it with: an open mind

Taster quote: "The robbery was not without consequences. The consequences were the point of the robbery."

Published by: The Friday Project

Review: Coming Up for Air by George Orwell

2011-10-08T21:25:00.003+05:30

At first as I began reading Coming Up for Air, I kept going, 'this is Orwell???' Perhaps someone who has read Orwell far extensively than just 1984 and Animal Farm may well disagree but by golly those first few chapters felt very un-Orwellian, which is not to say they were bad, just unexpected.

In Coming Up for Air we are shown a London between the two World Wars through the perspective of its narrator, a middle-aged man named George Bowling. Bowling for the most part, reminds me of those uncles we meet who constantly keep telling us that life was generally better back in his youth. Going by his nostalgic often over-sentimental accounts of a Time Before the War, it really does seem so. Now, after the war, he lives as an average ageing Insuarance salesman with a house, a wife, children and bills to pay, yearning for the past and the carefree era of his youth. In a desperate attempt to re-visist that, he sneaks off on the pretence of a businees trip back to his childhood town.

The book starts off with a cracker of a first line: '"The idea really came to me the day I got my new false teeth." The narrative is witty and thought-provoking but steeped in sentimentality, which in hindsight makes perfect sense. Only that, it didn't make for easy reading. So initially the pace of the novel in the first half is rather slow and I struggled quite a bit, especially through his recollections of fishing. Boy, did he wax lyrically for chapters on end about fishing! It was only by the second half of the novel, once we got past all that childhood nostalgia, that I began to feel like he had something more to say about life and the state of the world. Where 1984 and Animal Farm were political, Coming Up for Air is more philosophical, almost to the point of existential and I quite enjoyed that about it. Even where it is talking about war and politics I found that it does so with a philosophical underpinning. The writing of course is brilliant and there were points in the novel, where I had to resist the temptation to spam everyone's twitter feeds quoting entire paragraphs off the book.

One of the things that the narrative does and does effectively is evoke a sense of permanent loss and inevitably about life. It's the stuff of pessimism but to me, it is also the stuff of reality. The narrator's thoughts about the war and what it does to society, and in particular the politics of it all are relevant even today.

The end was rather extraordinary in its ordinariness and abruptness. In fact I actually flipped the page hoping to see another paragraph or two! On the whole, perhaps not one of his most page-turning works but rewarding no less.

P.S. I don't know if it's just in my edition, but it was sort of refreshing to read a text that wasn't overladen with punctuation! Orwell apparently wasn't pro-semicolons and em-dashes and so forth so what you get is a clean, simple syntax which is really easy-on-the-eye and ear.

My Goodreads rating: 3/5 stars

Could appeal to: sentimentalists, pacifists, existentialists, pessimists...you get the picture?!

Read it with: a little patience

Taster quote: "But it isn't the war that matters, it's the after-war. The world we're going down into, the kind of hate-world, slogan-world. The coloured shirts, the barbed wire, the rubber truncheons. The secret cells where the electric light burns night and day, and the detectives watching you while you sleep. And processions and the posters with enormous faces, and the crowds of a million people all cheering for the Leader till they deafen themselves into thinking that they really worship him, and all the time, underneath, they hate him so that they want to puke."

Published by: (my edition) Penguin Books

Literary Links of the Week

2011-10-08T00:48:00.002+05:30

1. Dare to test your spelling skills? http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/spellingchallenge

2. V.E.N.T. is an online magazine in Nepal that started this really cool chain poetry challenge called 'Poetry Bug'. The participants each had to write a poem in less than 24 hours which begins with the last word of the poem written by the participant before you on the chain. I joined in as well, just for the heck of it. You can read all the Poetry Bug poems here.

3. Word portraits: portraits of famous writers with their own words. Stunning project!

Bob Dylan: Poet or not?

2011-10-06T02:29:00.000+05:30

All Along the Watchtower

“There must be some way out of here,” said the joker to the thief
“There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief
Businessmen, they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth
None of them along the line know what any of it is worth”

“No reason to get excited,” the thief, he kindly spoke
“There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke
But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late”

All along the watchtower, princes kept the view
While all the women came and went, barefoot servants, too

Outside in the distance a wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching, the wind began to howl

Bob Dylan is said to have the highest odds for receiving the Nobel Prize in Literature tomorrow and in this article the Guardian questions if he is truly worthy of such an accolade. This is a question a lot of people ask and really goes down to the heart of the way people see his work. Song lyrics or poems? More so however it comes down to that one fundamentally debatable question: can song lyrics be considered poetry?

When I read or listen to Dylan I can't help but be convinced it comes from the mind of a poet. A lot of his songs have strong imagery, metaphors, an economy of words, rhythm--all of which to me are important features of poetry. Poets.org points out that "The problem many critics have with calling song lyrics poetry is that songs are only fully realized in performance. It takes the lyrics, music, and voice working in tandem to unpack the power of a song, whereas a poem ideally stands up by itself, on the page, controlling its own timing and internal music." But I think "performance" is embedded in prose and poetry too. We read silently but reading, as I know only too well, thanks to the extensive research done for my dissertation, wasn't always so; and in fact its origin were oral, hence performance-oriented. Performance therefore is very much part of the written word. You could say they too are fully realized by the performative act of reading.Today this is all the more the case, with audio books of novels and poetry and the popularity of performance poetry.

As for Dylan's work, I will leave you to make up your own mind whether it is capable of standing on the strength of their words alone. Assuming that this be so, the question is, to be worthy of a prize such as The Nobel prize in "Literature" is his body of work extensive and "Literary" enough? I guess we'll find out tomorrow.

You can find the words to pretty much all of Bob Dylan's songs here.

Literary Links of the Week

2011-09-30T19:28:00.000+05:30

I just love the idea of 'adopting a lost word'. Don't you? http://savethewords.org

If you're on the fence about jumping into the Fantasy/Sci-fi genre here's one way to make up your mind which book to start with. A flowchart based on NPR's top 100 Sci-fi and Fantasy books. Follow the arrows, say Yes or No, keep going till you get to the End: your book recommendation.

The Penguin blog. Some good stuff there.

Have a great weekend!

Review: The Third Pig Detective Agency by Bob Burke

2011-09-18T21:18:00.002+05:30

The Third Pig Detective Agency is not a book I'd usually pick off a shelf during a usual bookshop visit. In fact the book only made my way due to work but I'm glad it did. It's such a fun quirky little story and was ideal reading for me during the weeks leading up to my dissertation.

As the name suggests, it is about the Third Pig... What Third Pig you ask? Well, how many Third Pigs do we know but the thrid of the three little pigs that made a house of bricks and saved himself from becoming the Big Bad Wolf's dinner? So now we've all wondered what this Third Pig got up to after right? No, just me then? Ok.Well anyway, in Bob Burke's tale the Third Pig, Harry is quite the detective and has now started his own detective agency. This book, the first of many in the series, is about one case that he has to solve. Harry the pig lives in Grimmtown, which is of course a magical, whimsical one populated with nursery rhyme and fairy tale people from dwarves to Wicked Witches. Think something along the lines of Shrek here. But make no mistake this is not just fun reading for kids. The tongue-in-cheek, witty narrative makes this an amusing read no matter what your age. It calls itself nursery rhyme noir but I'd say it's less noir and more comedy. It's a bit predictable at times but on the whole definitely not a bad way to spend an hour or two.

My Goodreads rating: 3/5 stars

Could appeal to: kids of all ages

Read it with: suspended disbelief

Publisher: The Friday Project

Poet of the Hour: Roald Dahl

2011-09-15T01:46:00.002+05:30

image credit

Roald Dahl is beloved for his novels like Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Matilda (my personal fave!) but he also had a way with verse. Yesterday was Roald Dahl day and therefore I thought who better to feature as Poet of the Hour than him! My favourite Roald Dahl poems are those twisted fairy tale ones where he takes a fairy tale turns it into verse but gives it a darkly humorous and sinister twist.

Cinderella

I guess you think you know this story.
You don't. The real one's much more gory.
The phoney one, the one you know,
Was cooked up years and years ago,
And made to sound all soft and sappy
just to keep the children happy.
Mind you, they got the first bit right,
The bit where, in the dead of night,
The Ugly Sisters, jewels and all,
Departed for the Palace Ball,
While darling little Cinderella
Was locked up in a slimy cellar,
Where rats who wanted things to eat,
Began to nibble at her feet.
She bellowed 'Help!' and 'Let me out!
The Magic Fairy heard her shout.
Appearing in a blaze of light,
She said: 'My dear, are you all right?'
'All right?' cried Cindy .'Can't you see
'I feel as rotten as can be!'
She beat her fist against the wall,
And shouted, 'Get me to the Ball!
'There is a Disco at the Palace!
'The rest have gone and I am jealous!
'I want a dress! I want a coach!
'And earrings and a diamond brooch!
'And silver slippers, two of those!
'And lovely nylon panty hose!
'Done up like that I'll guarantee
'The handsome Prince will fall for me!'
The Fairy said, 'Hang on a tick.'
She gave her wand a mighty flick
And quickly, in no time at all,
Cindy was at the Palace Ball!

It made the Ugly Sisters wince
To see her dancing with the Prince.
She held him very tight and pressed
herself against his manly chest.
The Prince himself was turned to pulp,
All he could do was gasp and gulp.
Then midnight struck. She shouted,'Heck!
I've got to run to save my neck!'
The Prince cried, 'No! Alas! Alack!'
He grabbed her dress to hold her back.
As Cindy shouted, 'Let me go!'
The dress was ripped from head to toe.

She ran out in her underwear,
And lost one slipper on the stair.
The Prince was on it like a dart,
He pressed it to his pounding heart,
'The girl this slipper fits,' he cried,
'Tomorrow morn shall be my bride!
I'll visit every house in town
'Until I've tracked the maiden down!'
Then rather carelessly, I fear,
He placed it on a crate of beer.

At once, one of the Ugly Sisters,
(The one whose face was blotched with blisters)
Sneaked up and grabbed the dainty shoe,
And quickly flushed it down the loo.
Then in its place she calmly put
The slipper from her own left foot.
Ah ha, you see, the plot grows thicker,
And Cindy's luck starts looking sicker.

Next day, the Prince went charging down
To knock on all the doors in town.
In every house, the tension grew.
Who was the owner of the shoe?
The shoe was long and very wide.
(A normal foot got lost inside.)
Also it smelled a wee bit icky.
(The owner's feet were hot and sticky.)
Thousands of eager people came
To try it on, but all in vain.
Now came the Ugly Sisters' go.
One tried it on. The Prince screamed, 'No!'
But she screamed, 'Yes! It fits! Whoopee!
'So now you've got to marry me!'
The Prince went white from ear to ear.
He muttered, 'Let me out of here.'
'Oh no you don't! You made a vow!
'There's no way you can back out now!'
'Off with her head!'The Prince roared back.
They chopped it off with one big whack.
This pleased the Prince. He smiled and said,
'She's prettier without her head.'
Then up came Sister Number Two,
Who yelled, 'Now I will try the shoe!'
'Try this instead!' the Prince yelled back.
He swung his trusty sword and smack
Her head went crashing to the ground.
It bounced a bit and rolled around.
In the kitchen, peeling spuds,
Cinderella heard the thuds
Of bouncing heads upon the floor,
And poked her own head round the door.
'What's all the racket? 'Cindy cried.
'Mind your own bizz,' the Prince replied.
Poor Cindy's heart was torn to shreds.
My Prince! she thought. He chops off heads!
How could I marry anyone
Who does that sort of thing for fun?

The Prince cried, 'Who's this dirty slut?
'Off with her nut! Off with her nut!'
Just then, all in a blaze of light,
The Magic Fairy hove in sight,
Her Magic Wand went swoosh and swish!
'Cindy! 'she cried, 'come make a wish!
'Wish anything and have no doubt
'That I will make it come about!'
Cindy answered, 'Oh kind Fairy,
'This time I shall be more wary.
'No more Princes, no more money.
'I have had my taste of honey.
I'm wishing for a decent man.
'They're hard to find. D'you think you can?'
Within a minute, Cinderella
Was married to a lovely feller,
A simple jam maker by trade,
Who sold good home-made marmalade.
Their house was filled with smiles and laughter
And they were happy ever after.

Back from hiatus with a Random Literary Photo

2011-09-12T03:43:00.000+05:30

I was compelled to take a break from blogging during the final weeks leading up to the dissertation deadline, hence the silence. But blogging business will commence as usual here. First of all though, I must shout out a big THANK YOU to everyone who took my survey and helped me out with the research. Much appreciated. In fact I mentioned you all in my Acknowledgments!

Now that student-life is technically done and over with (which I am also partially sad about) there will be time for poetry and books again without a dissertation deadline looming over my head. For that I am thankful.

Taken at The Festival of Britain, South Bank Center

Page to Screen: Upcoming Films Edition

2011-08-12T23:06:00.001+05:30

The coming months are going to be exciting ones with some highly anticipated film adaptations of bestsellers making it to the cinemas. Here are 5 I'm especially keen on seeing!

1. One Day

Ok, so the truth is, I'm dreading this. My last experience with a David Nicholl's book adaptation was Starter For Ten, a book I love LOVED and it was trauma seeing the film. And the sad sorry affair was that the screenplay was by David Nicholls himself! Authors, don't write screenplays for your own books. He's gone and done the same with One Day (they've also gone ahead and cast Anne Hathaway as Emma Morely, which is just not doing it any favours, especially when you're acutely aware of the accent she's putting on and I'm not even British!) but still I want to see it. Hopefully to be pleasantly surprised. Much like the book itself did.

2. The Help

The Help got a lot of buzz since its publication and a lot of friends have recommended it to me. I haven't read the book yet although I definitely plan on this year. Going by the trailer, the movie looks like it's going to be one of those teary-eyed, inspirational flicks that leaves your heart feeling full at the end of it. Just the kind of movie I like!

3. Jane Eyre

Ok so it's a classic more than a "best-seller" but I had to include it. I am such a fan of the book and I honestly do think "Reader, I married him" is one of the best lines in literary history. The film looks like it's got just the right cast and feel and I'm keen to see how this gets interpreted by the filmmaker.

4. Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Now if there ever was a case of a film adaptation prompting me to go read the book, this has got to be it. I know John le Carré is the best-selling author of espionage novels (not usually my cup of tea) and if you're a fan of his this film adaptation looks like its going to do it very good justice and even open out his work to a wider audience. And OMIGOSH DID YOU SEE THAT CAST?!!!

5. We Need to Talk About Kevin

Lionel Shriver's book has had me raving about it from the rooftops about it ever since I read it and now the film is to be released soon. Going by the trailers alone, I do sense that the film maker has made some very different character interpretations from what I imagined, which are reflected in the casting. The film has had great Cannes reviews so that's always a good sign. The above is a teaser trailer but they've put up the official full trailer on The Guardian site today. You can watch it here.

Happy Birthday...

2011-08-11T02:47:00.000+05:30

It's was 40 years yesterday since Roger Hargreaves created the first character in his Mr Men series: Mr Tickle. It all started with a question from his son: what does a tickle look like? Now we know. :)

Read about how the series was formed here.

Literary Links of the Week

2011-08-06T15:50:00.000+05:30

1. Planet eBook : eBooks of out-of-copyright Classic Literature for free. Get reading!

2. How many books have I got left before I die?

3. SlushPile Hell: the inner-workings of an exceptionally devious Literary agent (hilarious stuff!).

Have a great weekend!

Poet of the Hour: Jack Gilbert

2011-08-05T21:39:00.001+05:30

With Poet of the Hour I'm going to try and put a spotlight on the work of poets that are fairly new to me. However they may not necessarily be new to you, so apologies if this be the case. But hopefully there will be something fresh for you to discover over time.

To start off with here are three poems by Jack Gilbert (born 1925), an American poet, whose body of work is still very new to me. Read this interview and intro to him here in the Paris Review. I find every sentence in his poems to be beautiful and yet so simply crafted, each weighted with an understated emotional current that literally makes my heart hurt. I can't quite explain it any other way. I hope you like them too.

Falling and Flying

Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.
It's the same when love comes to an end,
or the marriage fails and people say
they knew it was a mistake, that everybody
said it would never work. That she was
old enough to know better. But anything
worth doing is worth doing badly.
Like being there by that summer ocean
on the other side of the island while
love was fading out of her, the stars
burning so extravagantly those nights that
anyone could tell you they would never last.
Every morning she was asleep in my bed
like a visitation, the gentleness in her
like antelope standing in the dawn mist.
Each afternoon I watched her coming back
through the hot stony field after swimming,
the sea light behind her and the huge sky
on the other side of that. Listened to her
while we ate lunch. How can they say
the marriage failed? Like the people who
came back from Provence (when it was Provence)
and said it was pretty but the food was greasy.
I believe Icarus was not failing as he fell,
but just coming to the end of his triumph.

Tear it Down

We find out the heart only by dismantling what
the heart knows. By redefining the morning,
we find a morning that comes just after darkness.
We can break through marriage into marriage.
By insisting on love we spoil it, get beyond
affection and wade mouth-deep into love.
We must unlearn the constellations to see the stars.
But going back toward childhood will not help.
The village is not better than Pittsburgh.
Only Pittsburgh is more than Pittsburgh.
Rome is better than Rome in the same way the sound
of racoon tongues licking the inside walls
of the garbage tub is more than the stir
of them in the muck of the garbage. Love is not
enough. We die and are put into the earth forever.
We should insist while there is still time. We must
eat through the wildness of her sweet body already
in our bed to reach the body within the body.

Going There

Of course it was a disaster.
The unbearable, dearest secret
has always been a disaster.
The danger when we try to leave.
Going over and over afterward
what we should have done
instead of what we did.
But for those short times
we seemed to be alive. Misled,
misused, lied to and cheated,
certainly. Still, for that
little while, we visited
our possible life.

Random Literary Photo

2011-08-03T02:15:00.000+05:30

Shakespeare & Company, 5th arrondissment, Paris.

Page to Screen: Poets edition

2011-07-31T15:00:00.008+05:30

The big screen has always looked to the literary world for inspiration, including poetry. Poets no doubt are fascinating subjects for film makers. Here are five films, about or inspired by five awesome poets.

1. Sylvia {Sylvia Plath + Ted Hughes}

Two poets that have had the literary circles speculating about their lives and work are Sylvia Plath and Ted Hughes. This film stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Sylvia Plath and Daniel Craig (never registered when I watched it way back then. This is pre-Bond obviously) as Ted Hughes and explores their often tumultuous marriage.

2. Howl {Allen Ginsberg}

When it was initially published, Howl by Allen Ginsberg was tried for obscenity in the US courts and this film centers around that trial. James Franco's acting chops are never more obvious than here in the role of Allen Ginsberg and I love how the film juxtaposes animations to bring to life the poem itself. If you haven't yet watched it, you must!

3. The Edge of Love {Dylan Thomas}

You're not going to quite like Dylan Thomas (played by Matthew Rhys) as a person in this film but who said poets were always nice people?! The film is mostly about the two women in his lives: his wife, played by Sienna Miller and his friend, played by Keira Knightley. I like the way the film locates certain poems within certain life events of these characters. There's no reason to assume any of this is accurate but it does give an interesting way of looking at some of his work.

4. I'm Not There {Bob Dylan}

This film is such a genius piece of work. It's an attempt at portraying the many aspects of Bob Dylan's life, from poet to star to outlaw and so each facet is played by a different actor; 6 to be precise (Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Marcus Carl Franklin, Richard Gere, Heath Ledger, and Ben Whishaw). The film opens with the line "Inspired by the many lives of Boby Dylan" but that is the only reference you will find to him throughout the rest of the film. From then on everything is implied rather than stated. Even the 6 roles have 6 different names. It's less biopic-ish but does really get into the heart of looking at who he is.

5. Bright Star {John Keats}

Ben Whishaw as John Keats. Really, need I say more?

Bonus: Il Postino/The Postman {Pablo Neruda}

I haven't seen this yet but it looks like a lovely film. It is entirely fictional I assume: about how Pablo Neruda teaches his postman to love poetry.

There's more out there. For another post perhaps.

Literary Links of the Week

2011-07-29T17:08:00.000+05:30

Hello lovely people. Hope this has been a good week for you all. Here are this week's three fantastic literary links!

1. Just discovered this food blog through a friend of mine on Facebook and I just HAD to share these Harry Potter inspired deserts. Hermione's Chocolate Frogs anyone?

2. Who would've thought some of the greatest adult fiction authors of our time have also dabbled in Children's fiction! Here's a list to add to your reading list.

3. I am kind of in love with Maggie Taylor's Alice in Wonderland inspired paintings which I discovered via Flavorwire. You can see some of them here on her super cool website or here on Flavorwire.

Have a great weekend!

P.S. Big HUGE thank you to everyone who took my dissertation survey. I have well over 100 responses and I owe it all to you! Now to do justice to them by churning out a dissertation of decent standard.

Literary Links of the Week

2011-07-22T20:11:00.000+05:30

Here are this week's recommendations:

1. It's either a work of genius or a complete train-wreck. But I'm intrigued by the idea of Tweet-sized fiction. One site that's doing it: http://nanoism.net/

2. Fantastic TED Talk by Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding From You, which I think is so so relevant for us today: Beware online "filter bubbles"

3. Some extra attractions to add to your world travels: 10 unconventional Bookstores (via Flavorwire).

Have a fantastic weekend!

Random Literary Photo

2011-07-21T03:47:00.000+05:30

Eve Listening to the Voice of Adam (Edward Hodges Baily 1788-1867)

Taken at the V&A Museum, London

The description: "The sculptor is an illustration of a scene from Milton's Paradise Lost where Eve sits beside a lake in the Garden of Eden and describes to Adam 'a shape within the watery gleam'. Adam warns her that this is her own reflection. "

Calling all book readers...

2011-07-19T03:53:00.000+05:30

I need you! So as some of you may know, I'm currently doing my MA and am now in the process of working on my dissertation. Broadly speaking my dissertation is about reading and reader behaviour in this Web 2.0 age. I don't know how it's shaping up but one of the key parts of the research is getting some solid stats to prove or disprove my claims. Which means, survey time! I would really appreciate it if you could spare a few minutes and take this survey. It's only 10 questions and dare I say, quite amusing! You can take the survey directly without leaving this site (see below) or click here to be directed away.

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

It would also be fantastic if you could pass the link around and perhaps, if I'm not asking too much, Tweet or post it on your FB or blogs so other bookish people like yourselves can take the survey too. I need to get at least a 100 to make this somewhat of a representative sample so more responses the better. The only requirement is that it is taken by people who are book readers.

Big BIG thank you in advance to all those who take the survey. It means a lot!

Review: Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss

2011-07-18T19:13:00.001+05:30

Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation could very well have been a rather dull read. Lynne Truss however, makes an entire book about colons and full stops, and what a mess people make of it all, into a funny and entertaining read, while being instructive. (I'm sure I got all my punctuation wrong in that sentence!)

Now I will admit to the misuse of the semicolon, among others, every now and then. But there's a difference between genuine confusion and complete and utter disregard for punctuation altogether. It is the latter that gets on my nerves. Countless, are the number of times I've wanted to leave swear words as comment on some people's status updates on Facebook because of this.

But I'm no stickler. I have no qualms when one has to drop the apostrophe in 'I'm' to fit a 140 characters on Twitter. My argument is that, that's ok. As long as you don't do that when you don't have that kind of restrictions, like for Facebook or a blog post or your school essay!

What I felt was a good line of argument for punctuation presented in the book, was that it is both good manners and good communication. Without the proper punctuation in place, the sense of a sentence can be dramatically altered. You also owe it to your audience to be coherent and not waste their time. Truss draws from the past to illustrate historic blunders in punctuation and how meaning can be significantly altered in a piece of communication as a result of it; at times becoming an issue of life and death! Another argument for punctuation is that it's an Art. Truss illustrates with wit and simplicity how punctuation can adorn syntax. It's beautiful stuff really.

While I'm all for freedom of expression, linguistic evolution, experimental writing and all that, I find that Lynne Truss has a very valid argument for the Art of punctuation. One I, and I suppose most of us, need to be reminded of; particularly at a time of great linguistic upheaval caused by technology and new media.

My Goodreads Rating: 4/5 stars

Could appeal to: Linguists, Grammarians, Writers. But ideally everyone should pick it up and give it a read.

Read it with: a pencil and notepad.

Taster Quote: "Brackets come in various shapes, types and names:
1 round brackets (which we call brackets, and the Americans call parentheses)
2 square breackets [which we call square brackets, and the Americans call brackets]"

Published by: Profile Books

Sounds Like: Pride & Prejudice/Single Ladies

2011-07-17T04:44:00.000+05:30

"Marriage" is the big theme in Jane Austen's Pride & Prejudice and if there ever was a classic for "all the single ladies" this would be it. I like to think of it as vintage chick lit. With brains. I wanted a song that's upbeat and fun, because essentially, P&P is an absolutely fun read! So Beyonce's Single Ladies in my opinion is a pretty good match. Albeit, Mrs. Bennet would probably re-word the lyrics to go something more like, "if you like it, PLEASE put a ring on it Mr Bingley!"

But, there you go, if this is one of the classics you've been reluctant to approach, go for it. See, it's not half as daunting as you think it is.

Literary Links of the Week

2011-07-16T20:35:00.000+05:30

A little on the late side I know, considering it's the weekEND. But here we are: this week's 3 recommendations!

Orwell Diaries

A blog for hardcore Orwell fans who would like to get to know the man through his diary entries. The entries are posted real time, exactly 70 years later from the original diary entry.

Letters of Note

I have no idea how they find these stuff but it is a site full of fascinating postcards, letters, telegrams, memos and so on by and addressed to some noteworthy people.

Infloox

Ever wondered what your favourite authors' have been reading and what books have influenced their work ? Infloox seems to have figured all this out.

Hope everyone's had a great week!

day 30 - a poem you'd read to your children

2011-07-11T17:46:00.001+05:30

Ladies and gentlemen it is a bittersweet moment: the end of my 30 Day Poetry Challenge. I know it hasn't been exactly a back-to-back 30 day affair but it has been 30 days of 30 poems. I hope you've found something new to take from them, I know I have.

For this last post, I've picked a poem (quite aptly) about goodbyes and the life lessons that come with it. I find that growing up means saying a lot of goodbyes and for me this poem has really been a comfort in those times. A good friend of mine e-mailed it to me once and I promptly went on and posted it on Tumblr, so the chances are some of you've already read it.

Learn with Every Goodbye (by Veronica A. Shoffstall)

After a while, you learn the subtle difference
between holding a hand and chaining a soul,
And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning
And company doesn’t mean security,
And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts
And presents aren’t promises,
And you begin to accept your defeats
With the grace of a woman,
not the grief of a child,
And learn to build all your roads on today
Because tomorrow’s ground is too uncertain for plans,
And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight
And after a while, you learn
That even sunshine burns if you get too much.
So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul,
Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.
And you learn that you really can endure…
That you really are strong
And you really do have worth
And you learn and learn…
With every goodbye, you learn.

I will continue to share poetry on this blog, of course. If you do take up this 30 Day Poetry Challenge, do post a link wherever in the blogosphere you maybe because I'd love to follow. Here are some of the other blogs I know where the poetry challenge is still going on. Check them out for more awesome poetry!

Delilah Says

Dance in a Triangle

Purple Socks is All Mine

A Life of Saturdays

If you want to re-visit all the poems I posted under the 30 Day Poetry Challenge go for it here!

The Boy Who Lives On

2011-07-08T17:39:00.000+05:30

Yesterday, saw the final installment of the Harry Potter film franchise draw to an end with the release and world premier of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. The world premier took place in London's Trafalgar Square and I joined 3000 Potterheads in the hope of seeing the film's stars, but most importantly the lady who started it all: J.K. Rowling.

My vantage point wasn't ideal, it was raining, I had had nothing to eat all day except cereal bars, and I was on my feet for well over eight hours. But that's absolutely nothing compared to what half those fans had gone through. Some had camped out at Trafalgar Square since Monday!

There were suitcases and luggage, which leads me to assume that some people have come straight from the airport to the square and been there since I don't know when. There were placards with statements like "It will Never End", there were lightning bolts drawn on foreheads, people in Wizard robes, and the works.

The fanatic paraphernalia aside, it was clear that everyone was here to partake in a giant farewell to a beloved bunch of characters and pay homage to the author that brought them to life. So I think perhaps, this premier was a lot more than just about the red carpet or the stars, although I must admit seeing the likes of Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes, Michael Gambon, Alan Rickman, Rupert Grint and Emma Watson in the flesh (although for me this at times meant miles away or just the back of the head) was quite a high in itself!

Rupert Grint plays Ron Weasley

At the final stage of the premier, Rowling, the director, producers and Emma, Daniel and Rupert gave some very emotional speeches, and as I looked around me I saw a lot of tear filled eyes.

My camera's 'Zoom' function isn't ideal. Sorry guys.

But the most emotional moment that evening was how everyone started chanting "Thank You. Thank You." to J.K.Rowling. What a gesture! While I don't have a 'How Harry Potter Changed My Life' story, I completely understand this gratitude. Those books transported me in to a world that was at once the stuff of dreams and also oddly familiar. There are a handful of books that I have felt so involved with and the Harry Potter books are right up on that list. I remember making my father drive me to the Nugegoda Sarasavi bookshop, the first morning when a Harry Potter book was released. I would come home, shut myself up in my room and not budge until that last page was turned. That kind of almost obsessive captivation is rare. It's a captivation , going by the book sales reports, 400 million (!) would identify with.

As the film rolled in cinemas and the red carpet premier drew to an end, the feeling was that of an era having come to a close. But is it the last we've seen of Harry Potter? The news of Pottermore, a whole new Potter experience on the web, rekindles hope in the hearts of fans who just aren't ready to let go; and will perhaps find new audiences and reach out to new readers. So the world it seems, is yet to see the end of Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived, lives on.

Literary Links of the Week

2011-07-06T15:37:00.000+05:30

I spend insane amounts of time on the web and come across some awesome stuff. As and when I find them, I bookmark and share them on my Tumblr. Follow me! But I thought a weekly update on this blog, with three recommended links might be useful. Of course the links are "literary" and if you spend as much time browsing online as I do, the chances are you may have probably come across some of them anyway.

Here are this week's recommended three:

For the stickler in you: the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks

For the voyeur in you: Hot Guys Reading Books

For the cover lover in you: The Book Cover Archive

Enjoy!

day 29 - a poem from your childhood

2011-07-05T19:53:00.001+05:30

The poem I've chosen for this post goes way back then to those famous "Elocution class" days. I never particularly liked it back then and can't say I have found new appreciation for it now either. But what memories this poem brings: my first foray in to reciting poetry in that elo-cu-ted way, with OTT facial expressions and hardcore RP (which quite thankfully I have managed to not maintain!). I remember being asked to express despair and frustration all at once when I got to "But I can not tell from where/He is calling out for aid!"; I could never quite nail it. I did pass that elocution exam though, with Distinction and all, FYI.

The Snare (by James Stephens)

I hear a sudden cry of pain!
There is a rabbit in a snare:
Now I hear the cry again,
But I cannot tell from where.

But I cannot tell from where
He is calling out for aid!
Crying on the frightened air,
Making everything afraid!

Making everything afraid!
Wrinkling up his little face!
And he cries again for aid;
- and I cannot find the place!

And I cannot find the place
Where his paw is in the snare!
Little One! Oh, Little One!
I am searching everywhere!

Did any of you ever go through the elocution class phase? What poems did you have to do?

Sounds Like: We Need to Talk About Kevin/Pumped Up Kicks

2011-07-02T03:11:00.003+05:30

Whether you're a music lover or a book lover or both, this post is for you. Yes, you! (Sorry, I just HAD to do that.)

There is this really fantastic feature that Flavorwire does called Literary Mixtape. To quote their own words:

"If you’ve ever wondered what your favorite literary characters might be listening to while they save the world/contemplate existence/get into trouble, or hallucinated a soundtrack to go along with your favorite novels, well, us too. But wonder no more! Welcome to the first installment of a new feature on Flavorwire, where we sneak a look at the hypothetical iPods of some of literature’s most interesting characters."

They compile some interesting playlists and it's well worth checking out. But the point is, that music and books get along so well together. However, while listening to music is almost a default leisure activity in this iPod age, reading remains, broadly speaking, a niche activity. I move in circles where most people do read during their free-time and enjoy it; but I also have heaps of close friends who haven't read a book since school! Reading for pleasure it seems, is quite tragically still not a mass preoccupation. So like Flavourwire does with their literary mixtapes, I want to bridge music and books by posting a song once a fortnight that to me is representative of a particular book. Maybe, just maybe someone will like the song and be spurred to give the book a go.

So this week I've chosen Foster the People's song Pumped Up Kicks.
It's a fantastic almost unnervingly upbeat song about a high school shooter. Give it a listen...

So what's the book? Easy peasy. Lionel Shriver's We Need to Talk About Kevin. The nonchalant, matter-of-fact vibe of the song captures perfectly Kevin's attitude to his actions and the tone of the novel has shades of dark irony, much like the upbeat tune and lyrics. Read it.

day 28 - a poem that makes you feel guilty

2011-06-29T03:24:00.000+05:30

Been pretty stumped for this one; and quite furious with myself for not having realised sooner that I had already included "guilty pleasure" which this sort of overlaps with. Anyway, instead of changing it, I thought I'd just post something that vaguely evokes guilt (or something like it). I suppose the reason why this sonnet by Shakespeare makes me feel guilty is two-fold. One is due to the fact that while most people love it, I can not stand it. It irritates me. I know I should LOVE it but there you go, I don't. The other reason folks, is better kept to myself. I know, bit of an anti-climax there no?

Sonnet 116 (by William Shakespeare)

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixèd mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;
It is the star to every wandering bark,
Whose worth's unknown, although his height be taken.
Love's not Time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
Within his bending sickle's compass come:
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,
But bears it out even to the edge of doom.
If this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

day 27 - a poem that you wish you'd written

2011-06-22T01:22:00.000+05:30

Of course every time I read something utterly brilliant I can't help but wish I had half the talent to produce something close to it. So the choices for this post are endless. But I'm going to go with one that's fresh on my mind, having recently re-visited it after watching this film.

There are poems that are just born of the moment, in a heatwave of immediacy and I feel this is one of them. It is raw, crass, violent and rather bizarre to be quite honest.

I doubt I've still fully grasped it but the words, the abstract imagery, are so powerful I almost feel ambushed at the end of it; and I mean that in a good way. It's a long poem, in three parts. I'm only posting part one here, which in itself is rather long but I assure you it's worth persevering. In fact do give the whole thing a read, if you haven't already.

Howl (by Allen Ginsberg)

For Carl Solomon

                           I

       I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
              madness, starving hysterical naked,
       dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
              looking for an angry fix,
       angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
              connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
              ery of night,
       who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
              up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
              cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
              contemplating jazz,
       who bared their brains to Heaven under the El and
              saw Mohammedan angels staggering on tene-
              ment roofs illuminated,
       who passed through universities with radiant cool eyes
              hallucinating Arkansas and Blake-light tragedy
              among the scholars of war,
       who were expelled from the academies for crazy &
              publishing obscene odes on the windows of the
              skull,
       who cowered in unshaven rooms in underwear, burn-
              ing their money in wastebaskets and listening
              to the Terror through the wall,
       who got busted in their pubic beards returning through
              Laredo with a belt of marijuana for New York,
       who ate fire in paint hotels or drank turpentine in
              Paradise Alley, death, or purgatoried their
              torsos night after night
       with dreams, with drugs, with waking nightmares, al-
              cohol and cock and endless balls,

       incomparable blind; streets of shuddering cloud and
              lightning in the mind leaping toward poles of
              Canada & Paterson, illuminating all the mo-
              tionless world of Time between,
       Peyote solidities of halls, backyard green tree cemetery
              dawns, wine drunkenness over the rooftops,
              storefront boroughs of teahead joyride neon
              blinking traffic light, sun and moon and tree
              vibrations in the roaring winter dusks of Brook-
              lyn, ashcan rantings and kind king light of mind,
       who chained themselves to subways for the endless
              ride from Battery to holy Bronx on benzedrine
              until the noise of wheels and children brought
              them down shuddering mouth-wracked and
              battered bleak of brain all drained of brilliance
              in the drear light of Zoo,
       who sank all night in submarine light of Bickford's
              floated out and sat through the stale beer after
              noon in desolate Fugazzi's, listening to the crack
              of doom on the hydrogen jukebox,
       who talked continuously seventy hours from park to
              pad to bar to Bellevue to museum to the Brook-
              lyn Bridge,
       lost battalion of platonic conversationalists jumping
              down the stoops off fire escapes off windowsills
              off Empire State out of the moon,
       yacketayakking screaming vomiting whispering facts
              and memories and anecdotes and eyeball kicks
              and shocks of hospitals and jails and wars,
       whole intellects disgorged in total recall for seven days
              and nights with brilliant eyes, meat for the
              Synagogue cast on the pavement,
       who vanished into nowhere Zen New Jersey leaving a
              trail of ambiguous picture postcards of Atlantic
              City Hall,
       suffering Eastern sweats and Tangerian bone-grind-
              ings and migraines of China under junk-with-
              drawal in Newark's bleak furnished room,
       who wandered around and around at midnight in the
              railroad yard wondering where to go, and went,
              leaving no broken hearts,
       who lit cigarettes in boxcars boxcars boxcars racketing
              through snow toward lonesome farms in grand-
              father night,
       who studied Plotinus Poe St. John of the Cross telep-
              athy and bop kabbalah because the cosmos in-
              stinctively vibrated at their feet in Kansas,
       who loned it through the streets of Idaho seeking vis-
              ionary indian angels who were visionary indian
              angels,
       who thought they were only mad when Baltimore
              gleamed in supernatural ecstasy,
       who jumped in limousines with the Chinaman of Okla-
              homa on the impulse of winter midnight street
              light smalltown rain,
       who lounged hungry and lonesome through Houston
              seeking jazz or sex or soup, and followed the
              brilliant Spaniard to converse about America
              and Eternity, a hopeless task, and so took ship
              to Africa,
       who disappeared into the volcanoes of Mexico leaving
              behind nothing but the shadow of dungarees
              and the lava and ash of poetry scattered in fire
              place Chicago,
       who reappeared on the West Coast investigating the
              F.B.I. in beards and shorts with big pacifist
              eyes sexy in their dark skin passing out incom-
              prehensible leaflets,
       who burned cigarette holes in their arms protesting
              the narcotic tobacco haze of Capitalism,
       who distributed Supercommunist pamphlets in Union
              Square weeping and undressing while the sirens
              of Los Alamos wailed them down, and wailed
              down Wall, and the Staten Island ferry also
              wailed,
       who broke down crying in white gymnasiums naked
              and trembling before the machinery of other
              skeletons,
       who bit detectives in the neck and shrieked with delight
              in policecars for committing no crime but their
              own wild cooking pederasty and intoxication,
       who howled on their knees in the subway and were
              dragged off the roof waving genitals and manu-
              scripts,
       who let themselves be fucked in the ass by saintly
              motorcyclists, and screamed with joy,
       who blew and were blown by those human seraphim,
              the sailors, caresses of Atlantic and Caribbean
              love,
       who balled in the morning in the evenings in rose
              gardens and the grass of public parks and
              cemeteries scattering their semen freely to
              whomever come who may,
       who hiccuped endlessly trying to giggle but wound up
              with a sob behind a partition in a Turkish Bath
              when the blond & naked angel came to pierce
              them with a sword,
       who lost their loveboys to the three old shrews of fate
              the one eyed shrew of the heterosexual dollar
              the one eyed shrew that winks out of the womb
              and the one eyed shrew that does nothing but
              sit on her ass and snip the intellectual golden
              threads of the craftsman's loom,
       who copulated ecstatic and insatiate with a bottle of
              beer a sweetheart a package of cigarettes a can-
              dle and fell off the bed, and continued along
              the floor and down the hall and ended fainting
              on the wall with a vision of ultimate cunt and
              come eluding the last gyzym of consciousness,
       who sweetened the snatches of a million girls trembling
              in the sunset, and were red eyed in the morning
              but prepared to sweeten the snatch of the sun
              rise, flashing buttocks under barns and naked
              in the lake,
       who went out whoring through Colorado in myriad
              stolen night-cars, N.C., secret hero of these
              poems, cocksman and Adonis of Denver-joy
              to the memory of his innumerable lays of girls
              in empty lots & diner backyards, moviehouses'
              rickety rows, on mountaintops in caves or with
              gaunt waitresses in familiar roadside lonely pet-
              ticoat upliftings & especially secret gas-station
              solipsisms of johns, & hometown alleys too,
       who faded out in vast sordid movies, were shifted in
              dreams, woke on a sudden Manhattan, and
              picked themselves up out of basements hung
              over with heartless Tokay and horrors of Third
              Avenue iron dreams & stumbled to unemploy-
              ment offices,
       who walked all night with their shoes full of blood on
              the snowbank docks waiting for a door in the
              East River to open to a room full of steamheat
              and opium,
       who created great suicidal dramas on the apartment
              cliff-banks of the Hudson under the wartime
              blue floodlight of the moon & their heads shall
              be crowned with laurel in oblivion,
       who ate the lamb stew of the imagination or digested
              the crab at the muddy bottom of the rivers of
              Bowery,
       who wept at the romance of the streets with their
              pushcarts full of onions and bad music,
       who sat in boxes breathing in the darkness under the
              bridge, and rose up to build harpsichords in
              their lofts,
       who coughed on the sixth floor of Harlem crowned
              with flame under the tubercular sky surrounded
              by orange crates of theology,
       who scribbled all night rocking and rolling over lofty
              incantations which in the yellow morning were
              stanzas of gibberish,
       who cooked rotten animals lung heart feet tail borsht
              & tortillas dreaming of the pure vegetable
              kingdom,
       who plunged themselves under meat trucks looking for
              an egg,
       who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot
              for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks
              fell on their heads every day for the next decade,
       who cut their wrists three times successively unsuccess-
              fully, gave up and were forced to open antique
              stores where they thought they were growing
              old and cried,
       who were burned alive in their innocent flannel suits
              on Madison Avenue amid blasts of leaden verse
              & the tanked-up clatter of the iron regiments
              of fashion & the nitroglycerine shrieks of the
              fairies of advertising & the mustard gas of sinis-
              ter intelligent editors, or were run down by the
              drunken taxicabs of Absolute Reality,
       who jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge this actually hap-
              pened and walked away unknown and forgotten
              into the ghostly daze of Chinatown soup alley
              ways & firetrucks, not even one free beer,
       who sang out of their windows in despair, fell out of
              the subway window, jumped in the filthy Pas-
              saic, leaped on negroes, cried all over the street,
              danced on broken wineglasses barefoot smashed
              phonograph records of nostalgic European
              1930s German jazz finished the whiskey and
              threw up groaning into the bloody toilet, moans
              in their ears and the blast of colossal steam
              whistles,
       who barreled down the highways of the past journeying
              to each other's hotrod-Golgotha jail-solitude
              watch or Birmingham jazz incarnation,
       who drove crosscountry seventytwo hours to find out
              if I had a vision or you had a vision or he had
              a vision to find out Eternity,
       who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who
              came back to Denver & waited in vain, who
              watched over Denver & brooded & loned in
              Denver and finally went away to find out the
              Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,
       who fell on their knees in hopeless cathedrals praying
              for each other's salvation and light and breasts,
              until the soul illuminated its hair for a second,
       who crashed through their minds in jail waiting for
              impossible criminals with golden heads and the
              charm of reality in their hearts who sang sweet
              blues to Alcatraz,
       who retired to Mexico to cultivate a habit, or Rocky
              Mount to tender Buddha or Tangiers to boys
              or Southern Pacific to the black locomotive or
              Harvard to Narcissus to Woodlawn to the
              daisychain or grave,
       who demanded sanity trials accusing the radio of hyp
              notism & were left with their insanity & their
              hands & a hung jury,
       who threw potato salad at CCNY lecturers on Dadaism
              and subsequently presented themselves on the
              granite steps of the madhouse with shaven heads
              and harlequin speech of suicide, demanding in-
              stantaneous lobotomy,
       and who were given instead the concrete void of insulin
              Metrazol electricity hydrotherapy psycho-
              therapy occupational therapy pingpong &
              amnesia,
       who in humorless protest overturned only one symbolic
              pingpong table, resting briefly in catatonia,
       returning years later truly bald except for a wig of
              blood, and tears and fingers, to the visible mad
              man doom of the wards of the madtowns of the
              East,
       Pilgrim State's Rockland's and Greystone's foetid
              halls, bickering with the echoes of the soul, rock-
              ing and rolling in the midnight solitude-bench
              dolmen-realms of love, dream of life a night-
              mare, bodies turned to stone as heavy as the
              moon,
       with mother finally ******, and the last fantastic book
              flung out of the tenement window, and the last
              door closed at 4. A.M. and the last telephone
              slammed at the wall in reply and the last fur-
              nished room emptied down to the last piece of
              mental furniture, a yellow paper rose twisted
              on a wire hanger in the closet, and even that
              imaginary, nothing but a hopeful little bit of
              hallucination
       ah, Carl, while you are not safe I am not safe, and
              now you're really in the total animal soup of
              time
       and who therefore ran through the icy streets obsessed
              with a sudden flash of the alchemy of the use
              of the ellipse the catalog the meter & the vibrat-
              ing plane,
       who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Space
              through images juxtaposed, and trapped the
              archangel of the soul between 2 visual images
              and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun
              and dash of consciousness together jumping
              with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna
              Deus
       to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human
              prose and stand before you speechless and intel-
              ligent and shaking with shame, rejected yet con-
              fessing out the soul to conform to the rhythm
              of thought in his naked and endless head,
       the madman bum and angel beat in Time, unknown,
              yet putting down here what might be left to say
              in time come after death,
       and rose reincarnate in the ghostly clothes of jazz in
              the goldhorn shadow of the band and blew the
              suffering of America's naked mind for love into
              an eli eli lamma lamma sabacthani saxophone
              cry that shivered the cities down to the last radio
       with the absolute heart of the poem of life butchered
              out of their own bodies good to eat a thousand
              years.

Review: Chinaman by Shehan Karunatilaka

2011-06-19T00:29:00.003+05:30

Cover of Jonathan Cape edition

My head is still spinning, and I'm still grappling with a gastric-induced headache after what has been nothing short of a chaotic literary roller-coaster ride with this book. I myself am surprised that I got through it in a matter of a few days considering its thick spine and subject matter. However, like its alcoholic, hugely dubious narrator's obsession with a legendary mysterious bowler-of-many-tricks (Pradeep Mathew), I found myself pursuing him and his friends, enemies and family in what is essentially a tall-tale of madcap anecdotes that lead to...well, I'll leave you to find that out yourself.

The reviews for Chinaman are raves for the most part and even those who usually like to tear apart Sri Lankan English fiction has given it many a positive adjective. It has won the Gratiaen Prize (which isn't really saying much these days), won a publishing contract with Random House imprint Jonathan Cape and is now one of this year's Waterstone's 11 ; so all in all not bad for an originally self-published title.

Some books aren't worthy of their hype. Chinaman isn't one of those books. It's a book some might want to read but won't because it comes across as a 'cricket book'. For them I have to say, it is a 'cricket book'. In fact, it's a cover to cover obsessive ode to cricket (and alcohol). But anyone who's grown-up in Sri Lanka, or any cricket-loving nation, knows that cricket is never just about the cricket. In Chinaman, cricket is tied-up in a web of politics, war, economics, corruption, race issues, sex, love and religion. In other words, pretty much everything you can think of under the subcontinent sun.

The narrative, like the narrator, is all over the place and this is part of its charm. It is fact confusing fiction and fiction confusing fact. You know you're being played with but you don't know to what end and by whom. Shehan Karunatilaka has peopled the novel with the wierd and the wonderful, the real and the imaginary. They're the kind of characters you find yourself talking about like they were some old friends--"Remember, how WG did this" or "Wasn't it funny when Ari said that?"

If there is anything I did question, it is the end. WG says at one point in the novel that "a good captain knows when to declare". I feel that Shehan Karunatilaka had his moment 'to declare' an end but it seems he got a little too ambitious. There's so much you can twist an already-twisted story without undoing at least a little bit of its effect.

But all in all the book was riveting, hilarious, down-right sincere and has plenty of fantastic witty quotable-quote type stuff to go back and savour over and over again. Definitely going in to that all-time favourite list.

My Goodreads rating: 4/5 stars

Could appeal to: All cricket and sports lovers, anyone who likes South Asian fiction, alcoholics... Even if you're none of these, I'd reccomend you give it a go. You might surprise yourself.

Read it with: A glass of Old Reserve and failing that, your favourite alcoholic beverage. Non-alcoholics are recommended thambili (Baby King coconut water). (This is a joke. You'll get it once you've read the book. I don't advocate drinking while reading.)

Taster quote: Sri Lanka is considered the land of long names, long waits and long promises. Contrary to popular belief, most pages of Colombo's phone book are taken up by shorter Portugese derivatives like de Silva, Perera and Fernando. That said, Sri Lanka has produced leg-spinner Ellewellekankanange Asoka de Silva and Kurunegala first class player A.R.R.A.P.W.R.R.K.B. Amunugama. I was going to type out his entire name, but life is too short, mine especially.

Published by: Jonathan Cape

NOTE: I read the originally published edition (see image below). The new Jonahtan Cape edition has been edited and is apparently 100 pages less and therefore probably a much tighter novel.

First edition

day 26 - a poem that you wish someone would put into music

2011-06-16T22:10:00.000+05:30

This was a hard one for me and after much contemplation I think I'm going to go with this poem by Philip Larkin. I think Noah and the Whale could make this into a great song. Charlie Fink are you listening?

When First We Faced (by Philip Larkin)

When first we faced, and touching showed
How well we knew the early moves,
Behind the moonlight and the frost,
The excitement and the gratitude,
There stood how much our meeting owed
To other meetings, other loves.

The decades of a different life
That opened past your inch-close eyes
Belonged to others, lavished, lost;
Nor could I hold you hard enough
To call my years of hunger-strife
Back for your mouth to colonise.

Admitted: and the pain is real.
But when did love not try to change
The world back to itself--no cost,
No past, no people else at all--
Only what meeting made us feel,
So new, and gentle-sharp, and strange?

word wars

2011-06-15T18:02:00.000+05:30

collateral
I suppose it is
a useful word to wield
when it isn't your own
mother
father
brother
daughter
son
sister
friend
lover
it would be a different word then
like
death
like
loss
like
injustice
like
pain you just can't get over

even though a nation
keeps on insisting.

day 25 - a poem that makes you laugh

2011-06-14T05:37:00.001+05:30

Pick-up lines and invitations for sex, when they don't warrant a slap or a punch in the face, are always funny, whether it is because they're so bad or effectively witty. Apparently when 19th Century English poets wanted to sleep with someone, they didn't resort to a line or two, they wrote whole poems like these. I'm sharing two popular ones by John Donne and Andrew Marvell, two of my favourite poets. Both metaphysics at that. These two poems are laugh out loud funny for the sheer audaciousness of their arguments! But I must admit, also very clever!

To His Coy Mistress (by Andrew Marvell)

Had we but world enough, and time,
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 winged 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 am'rous birds of prey,
Rather at once our time devour,
Than languish in his slow-chapp'd 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.

The Flea (by John Donne)

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,
How little that which thou deniest me is ;
It suck'd me first, and now sucks thee,
And in this flea our two bloods mingled be.
Thou know'st that this cannot be said
A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead ;
    Yet this enjoys before it woo,
    And pamper'd swells with one blood made of two ;
    And this, alas ! is more than we would do.

O stay, three lives in one flea spare,
Where we almost, yea, more than married are.
This flea is you and I, and this
Our marriage bed, and marriage temple is.
Though parents grudge, and you, we're met,
And cloister'd in these living walls of jet.
    Though use make you apt to kill me,
    Let not to that self-murder added be,
    And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since
Purpled thy nail in blood of innocence?
Wherein could this flea guilty be,
Except in that drop which it suck'd from thee?
Yet thou triumph'st, and say'st that thou
Find'st not thyself nor me the weaker now.
'Tis true ; then learn how false fears be ;
Just so much honour, when thou yield'st to me,
Will waste, as this flea's death took life from thee.

Review: One Day by David Nicholls

2011-06-12T01:57:00.003+05:30

The first time I read one of David Nicholls' books was only quite recently and that was Starter for Ten. I loved it and couldn't have raved enough about it! It was one of the funniest books I'd read in a long time.

So obviously I was expecting some good stuff from his latest novel One Day. But I approached it a little nervously because I was almost certain that I will end up not liking it. The fact that it was a sort of 'love story', the whole 'one day' thing, the cover (I can see the justification for it from a marketing pov though), and the cheesy voiceover at the beginning of the trailer for its upcoming film adaptation--all of which heightened my anxiety that this writer who I had fallen in love with at first read might have produced something veering in the direction of a Nicholas Sparks novel (no offense to anyone in to Sparks' novels).

But David Nicholls is no Nicholas Sparks and thank heavens for that! One Day is not a story, it's a saga; a witty, thoughtful, nostalgic, and tender one at that.

It's about two people, Emma Morely and Dexter Mayhew, who were in college together but only actually meet and ~~intercourse~~ interact on the night of their graduation. We are introduced to them the morning after, 15th July, in Emma's apartment, with Dexter trying to sneak out while she slept. But the day turns out different and an unexpected friendship forms between politically-conscious, bookish Emma and playboy, rich kid Dexter. I know how this sounds at first. They sound like stereotypes and this kind of two people coming together, a cliche. But I assure you, you're in the hands of a witty, intelligent narrator, and if there are cliches, they're meant to be tongue-in-cheek, and when he streotypes he does so with a purpose, if only to remind us, quite cleverly that these stereotypes, of people, places, moments, exist despite our most desperate attempts to avoid them.

From this day when their friendship is formed onwards, we journey along with them both, meeting them on that same day, 15th July, through the rest of their lives, finding out how they're lives have changed or not changed since the previous encounter of the same date. Nicholls, who also writes for film and television, has brought some of those cinematic techniques on to the page, with flashbacks, one scene taking off where where another leaves, etc. which works really well as narrative devices for such an expansive story as this. For the most part it did feel like I was watching it all on a screen in my head. So vivid were his details, so spot-on are his insights, and so utterly brillaint are his dialogues. The characters are memorable, and you find yourself getting more and more involved with them as the pages turn.

I'll not say anymore about it, for fear of giving anything away and really it just wouldn't do if you knew how it all ends. But here's a tip for anyone who's not read it but wants to, don't watch the film when it comes out. Read. the. book. first.

My Goodreads rating: 4/5 stars

Could appeal to: Readers of Nick Hornby are likely to enjoy Nicholls 'wit. Emma is a kind of modern day Elizabeth Bennet, or at least she tries very hard to be, and so anyone who likes to read a book with spunky women in them but with a doze of realism infused in, will enjoy it. Also anyone who likes modern day love or coming-of-age type stories.

Read it with: the sun on your face and a tissue at hand.

Taster quote: "Sometimes, when it's going badly, she wonders if what she believes to be a love of the written word is really just a fetish for stationary. The true writer, the born writer, will scribble words on scraps of litter, the back of a bus tickets, on the wall of a cell .Emma is lost on anything less than 120gsm."

Published by: Hodder

day 24 - a poem that you want to be read at your funeral

2011-06-10T17:18:00.000+05:30

The previous time I posted a poem by Wordsworth for this challenge was not in praise. But I like Wordsworth and today's topic immediately reminded me of a poem of his I love and have instructed on several occasion to my younger sister, the second verse must go on my tombstone. It's one of his well-known Lucy poems.

She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways (by William Wordsworth)

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove,
A Maid whom there were none to praise
And very few to love:

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky.

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and oh,
The difference to me!

day 23 - a poem that you would like to read at your wedding

2011-06-10T01:55:00.000+05:30

Perhaps this might be an apt poem to read at my hypothetical wedding. Also I don't think I've posted anything of Maya Angelou's have I?! :)

Touched by an Angel (by Maya Angelou)

We, unaccustomed to courage
exiles from delight
live coiled in shells of loneliness
until love leaves its high holy temple
and comes into our sight
to liberate us into life.

Love arrives
and in its train come ecstasies
old memories of pleasure
ancient histories of pain.
Yet if we are bold,
love strikes away the chains of fear
from our souls.

We are weaned from our timidity
In the flush of love's light
we dare be brave
And suddenly we see
that love costs all we are
and will ever be.
Yet it is only love
which sets us free.

The 2011 Orange Prize

2011-06-09T15:57:00.000+05:30

The Orange Prize winner was announced last night and it went to the youngest (aged 25) of the shortlisted authors (and the youngest ever author to win the Orange Prize in 16 years), Téa Obreht who's debut novel The Tiger's Wife (published by Orion) was apparently not considered a top runner for the prize during the days leading up to the big night and came as a surprise win. There's a good piece about Obreht's win here on The Guardian.

The Orange Prize, which began in 1996, is an award that's intention is to celebrate and recognize original women's writing across the world. The winner receives £30,000 and a limited edition bronze named 'Bessie'. The prize has it's fair share of critics, and has even been called 'sexist'. I suppose the jury is still out on that!

Of this year's shortlisted titles I've only read Room by Emma Donaghue, a book I can not rave enough about and highly recommend anyone and everyone to grab! It's original, relevant and so haunting and I am convinced I haven't come across a book quite like it. So obviously I was rooting for it.

I had also heard rave reviews about The Memory of Love by Aminatta Forna (apparently she maybe appearing at next year's Galle Literary Festival so anyone planning to go for it might want to get a headstart on reading it) and going by the first page which I skimmed through and loved, I plan on making it my next read.

The other shortlisted titles were Grace Williams Says it Loud by Emma Henderson, Great House by Nicole Krauss, Annabel by Kathleen Winter.

You can read synopses, sample chapters from each book and bios of the authors here.

Review: The Last Gift by Abdulrazak Gurnah

2011-06-08T17:34:00.001+05:30

I really had high hopes for this book, and it did start off promisingly. But midway it started being a bit of a drag and I was battling the urge to skip a chapter or two. It's not that Gurnah hasn't got a story here. He has. It's just one I found a bit, for a lack of a better word, blah. There are moments of brilliance, when a characters dwells on something insightful or thought provoking but on the whole I found they really had nothing much to offer except a tried and tested immigrant story of parents trying to come to terms with their past exiles and their offspring trying to accept their 'roots'. There are themes of post-colonial anxieties, racism and some 'aha' moments about the immigrant experience in England. But on the whole, in this journey of multiple self-discoveries I didn't really find anything for me.

My Goodreads rating: 2/5 stars

Could appeal to: Anyone interested in migrant writing. Probably to readers of authors like Jumpa Lahiri. Although Gurnah is in fact an author of African origin, his writing felt very 'South Asian' to me, for some reason.

Read it with: Low expectations.

Published by: Bloomsbury

day 22 - a poem that you want to read when you’re having a bad day

2011-06-07T05:02:00.000+05:30

When I'm having a bad day what I want is some empathy. There's lots of poems I find that empathy but since I haven't posted anything of Frost's I'm going to go with this one.

Acquainted with the Night (by Robert Frost)

I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain -- and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.

I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.

I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,

But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
A luminary clock against the sky

Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.

day 21 - a poem for a happy day

2011-06-06T04:35:00.001+05:30

I can't think of anyone better to read on a happy day than Wendy Cope. I discovered her work thanks to the GLF and a tip-off from a friend. Poetry tends to be intense and serious most of the time and it's refreshing to have the works of poets like Cope, who have a bit of fun with the medium, maybe even parody it every now and then. I can't help but sneak in two here which are doing exactly that!

An Attempt at Unrhymed Verse (by Wendy Cope)

People tell you all the time,
Poems do not have to rhyme.
It's often better if they don't
And I'm determined this one won't.

Oh dear.

Never mind, I'll start again.
Busy, busy with my pen...cil.
I can do it if I try--
Easy, peasy, pudding and gherkins.

Writing verse is so much fun,
Cheering as the summer weather,
Makes you feel alert and bright,
'Specially when you get it more or
less the way you want it.

Strugnell's Sonnets (iv) (by Wendy Cope)

Not only marble, but the plastic toys
From cornflake packets will outlive this rhyme
I can't immortalize you, love - our joys
Will lie unnoticed in the vault of time.
When Mrs. Thatcher has been cast in bronze
And her administration is a page
In some O-Level text-book, when the dons
Have analysed the story of our age,
When travel firms sell tours of outer space
When aeroplanes take off without a sound
And Tulse Hill has become a trendy place
And upper Norwood's on the underground
Your beauty and my name will be forgotten -
My love is true, but all my verse is rotten

day 20 - a poem that you want to read when you’re angry

2011-06-05T00:50:00.000+05:30

I've never really thought about this actually. I don't get angry easily but when I do I either well up into tears or storm off and want to be left alone. So to tackle this one, I thought I'd post a poem on a subject that would generally piss me off. Nothing irritates the life out of me more than alpha male types, particularly when driving or at work. They are it seems, unavoidable. In such times, this poem which I came across yesterday might have been an ideal companion. While it's rather simple, I don't think its simplistic and I really like the cheeky tone of it. There's also that exasperation and disgusted frustration that I could totally identify with.

Please Fire Me (by Deborah Garrison)

Here comes another alpha male,

and all the other alphas
are snorting and pawing,
kicking up puffs of acrid dust

 while the silly little hens
 clatter back and forth
 on quivering claws and raise
 a titter about the fuss.

 Here comes another alpha male--
 a man's man, a dealmaker,
 holds tanks of liquor,
 charms them pantsless at lunch:

 I've never been sicker.
 Do I have to stare into his eyes
 and sympathize? If I want my job
 I do. Well I think I'm through

 with the working world,
 through with warming eggs
 and being Zenlike in my detachment
 from all things Ego.

 I'd like to go
 somewhere else entirely,
 and I don't mean
 Europe.

day 19 - a poem from your favorite anthology/collection

2011-06-04T01:24:00.000+05:30

Like most good things I suppose, I came across this collection of poems almost unexpectedly while browsing a stall at last year's book fair (yes, it seems book fairs are how I stumble on unexpected titles the most). It was a bit of a gamble because not only were they poems by poets I've never heard of but most of them were translations. The collection, titled Interior Decoration (eds Ammu Joseph, Vasanath Kannabiran, Ritu Menon, Volga) is an anthology of poetry by 54 women poets in India, some known and some lesser known. Apart from a section for poets writing in English, the rest of the entire book contains poetry in translation from languages ranging from hindi and tamil to marathi and bengali. I found this collection so fascinating in its diverse viewpoints, emotions and experiences. It also introduced me to Indian poets writing in English like Kamala Das and Gauri Deshpande, whose work I do recommend checking out. It also reminded me of how much of great writing we're missing out on if not for such translations. A lot of the poems in this collection are rather long and I am hardpressed for time today so I'm going to share this one. It's one of my favourites in this and also one of the shorter ones. If you're a poetry enthusiast that is particulary interested in womanist/feminist kind of poetry do keep an eye out for this collection. It's published by Women Unlimited, a part of Kali for Women press which ought to give you a sense of the high editorial quality of the book.

The Female of the Species (by Gauri Deshpande)

Sometimes you want to talk
about love and despair
and the ungratefulness of children.
A man is no use whatever then.
You want then your mother
or sister
or the girl with whom you went through school,
and your first love, and her
first child--a girl--
and your second.
You sit with them and talk
She sews and you sit and sip
and speak of the rate of rice
and the price of tea
and the scarcity of cheese.
You both know that you've spoken
of love and despair and ungrateful children.

day 18 - a poem that you wish you heard being read by its poet

2011-06-02T21:36:00.000+05:30

There's one poet I've always wanted to hear read out loud his own work and it is the one poet perhaps who's been recited, time and time again by so many. Yes, I am talking about none other than the Bard and if I had one wish to hear a poet read out loud from his own work, it would most definitely be him, William Shakespeare. I'd make him read out this, the soliloquy that's so iconic of him and his writing...

To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.

day 17 - a poem that you would like to read out loud to the world

2011-06-01T03:19:00.000+05:30

No, I have not abandoned the challenge but as I warned it would get stalled every now and then when life (or in this case leisure) gets in the way. But here we go. Day 17. A poem I would like to read out loud to the world. I love this poem because it puts so plainly how we 'know' and yet choose to ignore certain truths not just in our lives but in the world at large. This apathy, this knowing and choosing not to know I feel is our biggest undoing. Be sure to watch the video below the poem. In the vein of John Lenon, Leonard Cohen's one of those amazing poet/singer/song-writers. Note that he credits Sharon Robinson at the end of the video as a co-writer of the song.

Everybody Knows (by Leonard Cohen)

Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that the boat is leaking
Everybody knows that the captain lied
Everybody got this broken feeling
Like their father or their dog just died

Everybody talking to their pockets
Everybody wants a box of chocolates
And a long stem rose
Everybody knows

Everybody knows that you love me baby
Everybody knows that you really do
Everybody knows that you've been faithful
Ah give or take a night or two
Everybody knows you've been discreet
But there were so many people you just had to meet
Without your clothes
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

And everybody knows that it's now or never
Everybody knows that it's me or you
And everybody knows that you live forever
Ah when you've done a line or two
Everybody knows the deal is rotten
Old black Joe's still pickin cotton
For your ribbons and bows
And everybody knows

And everybody knows that the plague is coming
Everybody knows that it's moving fast
Everybody knows that the naked man and woman
Are just a shining artifact of the past
Everybody knows the scene is dead
But there's gonna be a meter on your bed
That will disclose
What everybody knows

And everybody knows that you're in trouble
Everybody knows what you've been through
From the bloody cross on top of Calvary
To the beach of Malibu
Everybody knows its coming apart
Take one last look at this sacred heart
Before it blows
And everybody knows

Everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Oh everybody knows, everybody knows
That's how it goes
Everybody knows

Everybody knows

day 16 - a poem that you love seeing performed

2011-05-11T05:13:00.000+05:30

I spent a good few hours trying to look for a transcribed text of this but the ones I did come across were done like prose, which doesn't do justice to this poem. Nevertheless, Staceyann Chin's work is best experienced in performance. Apart from Mayda del Valle, Suheir Hammad and Bassey Ikpi, Staceyann Chin is another performance poet I love. The poem below is one of my favourites of her work. I like how she starts off with a question of sexuality and broadens out into questions of diversity and categorisation, cleverly encompassing Feminism within a wider framework. She's got fire, this woman.

Feminist or a Womanist (by Staceyann Chin)

day 15 - a poem that describes you

2011-05-08T23:15:00.000+05:30

Both Sides Now (by Joni Mitchell)

Rows and flows of angel's hair
And icecream castles in the air
And feathered canyons everywhere
I've looked at clouds that way

But now they only block the sun
They rain and they snow on everyone
So many things I would have done
But clouds got in my way.

I've looked at clouds from both sides now
From up and down, and still somehow
It's cloud illusions I recall
I really don't know clouds at all.

Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels
That dizzy dancing way you feel
As every fairy tale comes real
I've looked at love that way.

But now it's just another show
You leave them laughing when you go
And if you care, don't let them know
Don't give yourself away.

I've looked at love from both sides now
From give and take, and still somehow
It's love's illusions I recall
I really don't know love at all.

Tears and fears and feeling proud
To say "I love you" right out loud
Dreams and schemes and circus crowds
I've looked at life that way

But now old friends are acting strange
They shake their heads, they tell me I've changed
Well something's lost,and something's gained
In living every day.

I've looked at life from both sides now
From up and down
And give and take
And win and lose,
But still somehow
It's life's illusions I recall
I really don't know life at all.

day 14 - a poem that no one would expect you to love

2011-05-07T22:01:00.000+05:30

I suppose considering that I am not much of a religious person, let alone Christian, religious poems aren't expected to be my cup of tea. Which for the most part it isn't. Except for the occasional works of John Donne, like this one and George Herbert. I grew to appreciate their religious poems more as a result of taking a Metaphysical Poetry class and being compelled to write an essay on the dilemma of the carnal man vs the religious man in Donne and Herbert's poetry. The following poem by Herbert is a poem that I've grown to love. Herbert was a priest himself, and this poem reflects the inner struggle of such a life dedicated to God. The use of some intriguing imagery, the poet's child-like rebellion, and his final submission...I think it's quite something really.

The Collar by George Herbert

I struck the board, and cried "No more!
I will abroad.
What, shall I ever sigh and pine?
My lines and life are free; free as the road,
Loose as the wind, as large as store.
Shall I be still in suit?
Have I no harvest but a thorn
To let me blood, and not restore
What I have lost with cordial fruit?
Sure there was wine
Before my sighs did dry it; there was corn
Before my tears did drown it.
Is the year only lost to me?
Have I no bays to crown it?
No flowers, no garlands gay? all blasted?
All wasted?
Not so, my heart: but there is fruit,
And thou hast hands.
Recover all thy sigh-blown age
On double pleasures: leave thy cold dispute
Of what is fit, and not. Forsake thy cage,
Thy rope of sands,
Which petty thoughts have made, and made to thee
Good cable, to enforce and draw,
And be thy law,
While thou didst wink and wouldst not see.
Away; take heed:
I will abroad.
Call in thy death's head there: tie up thy fears.
He that forbears
To suit and serve his need,
Deserves his load."
But as I raved and grew more fierce and wild
At every word,
Methoughts I heard one calling "Child!"
And I replied "My Lord".

day 13 - a poem that is a guilty pleasure

2011-05-04T02:41:00.000+05:30

For this post I'm going to share two naughty poems. The first is one I recently discovered, the second is a classic.

The Missing (by Essa Elan Aja)

Weeks later
she would resign she'd lost her silk red thong forever.
While answering work e-mails, she imagined the airy crimson
victimized by crazy fates; [1] an unrealized bookmark
between pages
of Cancer
dusty
below an abandoned bed
[2] flapping the flagpole of devout Communists
[3] deconstruction at the mouths of feral dogs, in an alley,
ruined;
but the montage gave way to a hope he still had it
its entirety enveloping his long fingers
and maybe while contemplating
its biography and the origin of the world
he closes his eyes
inhales.

Come Slowly Eden! (by Emily Dickinson)

Come slowly, Eden!
Lips unused to thee,
Bashful, sip thy jasmines,
As the fainting bee,

Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums,
Counts his nectars--enters,
And is lost in balms!

Feeling hot anyone? No, just me then? Ah well.

day 12 - a poem you don't understand a word of

2011-05-04T00:46:00.000+05:30

This was a toughie because I couldn't recall any poems, although I know there have been plenty that have left me just dazed and confused. After a bit of browsing I stumbled on this poem which I think is sufficiently representative. Reading it was kind of like how I feel when standing in front of a rather random inscrutable piece of abstract art. I mean, it makes sense here and there, a line or two but on the whole I'm thinking WTF is this??? The author's note didn't help matters either. Apparently this is a Dada poem (no wonder!) and uses a technique called Chance Operations. It's quite long, so three cheers if you make it to the end and kudos if you've made sense of the whole thing and actually like it. I tried but my brain hurt. Also, is it just me or does it read in your head like Yoda is reciting it?

Stein 100: A Feather Likeness of the Justice Chair (by Jackson Mac Low)

A feather table: reckless gratitude.
It is that-there that means best.

White the green grinding trimming thing!
The disgrace, like stripes.
More selection, slighter intention.

Rosewood stationing is use journey: curious dusty empty length.
Winged cake: the cake, the plan that neglects to make color certainly.
Time long could winter: elegant consequences monstrous.
So much and guided holders garments are--and arrangements.
Staring then that when sudden same time's necessary, that circular
     same's more necessary, not actually aching.

And why special?
Not left straw, the chain's the missing, was white winningly and
     occasion's entirely strings.
Reason is sullenness: it's there that practices left when six into
     nothing narrow, resolute, suggests all beside that plain seam.
Pencils, mutton, asparagus: the table there.
There reddening is not to change that in such absurd surroundings.
Considering clearly, a feather's large second heat is there.
There that thing which smells that whistles that there's denial,
     difference, surfeit-dated choices--everything trembling
    imitation.

Imitation?--imitation is a joy gurgle.
Best bent, likely disappointed.
Cake season's not more than most.
That cake makes no larder likely.
Not a single protection is even temporarily standing.
Sugar and lard there are sudden and shaming.
That single set comes orderly.
There the remarkable witness made no more settlement than
     blessing.
Increase the way steak colored coffee.
Wheatly that music half-noisy.
Reason's decline is not a little grainy.

This means taste where toe-washing is reasonable.
Salmon carriage?--action hanging.
Scene bits and this nervous draught don't satisfy elevation,
There is no change.
Much was temporary behind that center and much was formerly
     charming.
Then the then-triumphant showed their disagreeable hidden worries.
The chair asked the speech be repeated, supposing
     attention-resemblance.
It is just summer.
Another section has a light likeness to pedestrianism.
Which is light?
That used this there.
The chair's justice: nothing-colored mercy.
No, perhaps some is likely.

That is not a genuine bargain.
There preparation so suits white bands' singing and redness that the
     same sight's a simpler splendor.
No, not the same.
Wishing the same is not quite the same as a different arrangement.
Any measure washed is brighter than an occasional string set.
A precocious nothing discolors that extract sooner than showing its
     starting.
A bag place chain room winningly reasons with shining hair.
What with supposing without protection, no wound is sudden.
Coloring sullenness rushes bottom reason in gilded country.
What if it shows?
Necessarily, the whole thing there is shining.
Is that anything?
More single women stitch tickets.
To show difference exudes reliability.
Inside that large silver likeness, Hope tables thick coal.
Coal makes morning furnaces darker,
Joy and success are exceptions.

Four suggest a sadder surrender.
Pretence and cheaper influences are staining tender Pride there.
Sort out that little sink.
Why is the size of the baking remainder something that resembles
     light more than cutting?
This cheese is more calm than anything solitary.
It is still an occasion for bottom anticipation.
Reason's season cracked that which was ripe.
Nearly all were neglected by blessing, not without nervous actions.
He's readily beginning to seed the cheese and estrange the Whites.
The celery curled its lashes at the slam.
Not-so-heated reason will be little able to satisfy another.
This was formerly much used as a charming chair.
Pedestrianism showed itself triumphant and disagreeable.
That which was hidden worried them.
They asked that her speech be repeated.
Summer light bears a likeness to justice.
Then the light is supposing attention.
That section has a resemblance to light.
Is it a likeness of the justice chair?

Author's Note:
Eight strophes initially drawing upon the whole text of Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons.
I sent the entire text through DIASTEX5 (Charles O. Hartman's 1994 update of DIASTEXT [1989],
his automation of one of my diastic text-selection procedures [1963], using as a seed text
the fifty-third paragraph of the book (exclusive of titles, etc), which begins, "A fact
is that when any direction is just like that, . . ." I selected the paragraph by random-digit
chance operations using the RAND Corporation's table A Million Random Digits with 100,000 Normal
Deviates. (The Free Press, 1955).

My source and seed texts came from the first edition of Tender Buttons, issued by Donald Evan's
publishing house Claire Marie (1914), as posted online in The Bartleby Archive (1995) and The New
Bartleby Library (1999), both edited by Steven van Leeuwen, with editorial contributions by Gordon
Dahlquist. However, I incorporated in my file of Tender Buttons fourteen corrections written
in ink in Stein's hand, which Ulla E. Dydo found in Donald Sutherland's copy of this edition,
now owned by the Special Collections of the University of Colorado at Boulder.

I "mined" the program's output for words which I included in 117 sentences (several elliptical
and each one a verse line) by changes and/or additions of suffixes, pronouns, structure
words, forms of "to be," etc. and changes of word order. Initially, in making these sentences,
I placed lexical words' root morphemes near others that were near them in the raw output--in fact
I included many phrases, and even whole verse lines, of unedited, though punctuated, ouput,
mostly in early strophes--but I was able to do this less and less in the course of writing the poem.

While composing the 117 verse-line sentences, I divided them into eight strophes that
successively comprise numbers of sentences corresponding to the prime-number sequence
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19.

New York: 20 September 1999

day 11 - a poem from your favorite poet

2011-04-30T17:06:00.002+05:30

I have a bunch of favourites, ranging from Emily Dickinson, Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Frost, Pablo Neruda, Stacey Ann Chin to our very own Vivimarie Vanderpoorten. However the poet I want to share with you today is one I discovered quite by chance. A few years back there was this book sale at the Shalika Hall and I came across a collection called I Speak for the Devil by a poet named Imtiaz Dharker. It was the title that caught my eye and although she isn't an obscure poet as far as the rest-of-the-world was concerned, she was pretty obscure to me at the time. I devoured that collection and would re-visit it hungrily again and again. Her poems are interspersed with black and white sketches she has done herself, which adds an interesting dimension to the book.

I'm going to be a little cheeky and sneak in two of her poems. I wish I had my copy of I Speak for the Devil with me, it had so many poems I would've loved to share but I had to be very selective with the books I brought with me here due to baggage concerns, so I eventually opted to bring ones I had not got around to reading. Anyway, I managed to find some of them online, thankfully. They're both from I Speak for the Devil. The first one resonates all the more with me now more than ever. The second one I thought is a good example of the way she entwines the personal and the political in her poetry, something she does quite a lot of and quite well I think.

AT THE LAHORE KARHAI (By Imtiaz Dharker)

It’s a great day, Sunday,
when we pile into the car
and set off with a purpose –
a pilgrimage across the city,
to Wembley, the Lahore Karhai.
Lunch service has begun –
‘No beer, we’re Muslim’ –
but the morning sun
squeezed into juice,
and ‘Yaad na jaye’
on the two-in-one.

On the Grand Trunk Road
thundering across Punjab to Amritsar,
this would be a dhaba
where the truck-drivers pull in,
swearing and sweating,
full of lust for real food,
just like home.

Hauling our overloaded lives
the extra mile,
we’re truckers of another kind,
looking hopefully (years away
from Sialkot and Chandigarh)
for the taste of our mothers’
hand in the cooking.

So we’ve arrived at this table:
the Lahore runaway;
the Sindhi refugee
with his beautiful wife
who prays each day to Krishna,
keeper of her kitchen and her life;
the Englishman too young
to be flavoured by the Raj;
the girls with silky hair,
wearing the confident air
of Bombay.

This winter we have learnt
to wear our past
like summer clothes.

Yes, a great day.
A feast! We swoop
on a whole family of dishes.
The tarka dal is Auntie Hameeda
the karhai ghosht is Khala Ameena
the gajjar halva is Appa Rasheeda.

The warm naan is you.

My hand stops half-way to my mouth.
The Sunday light has locked
on all of us:
the owner’s smiling son,
the cook at the hot kebabs,
Kartar, Rohini, Robert,
Ayesha, Sangam, I,
bound together by the bread we break,
sharing out our continent.

These
are ways of remembering.

Other days, we may prefer
Chinese.

MAKING LISTS (by Imtiaz Dharker)

The best way to put
things in order is
to make a list.
The result of this
efficiency is that everything
is named, and given
an allotted place.

But I find, when I begin,
there are too many things,
starting from black holes
all the way to safety pins.

And of course the whole
of history is still there.
Just the fact that it has
already happened doesn’t mean
it has gone elsewhere.
It is sitting hunched
on people’s backs,
wedged in corners
and in cracks,
and has to be accounted for.
The future too.

But I must admit
the bigger issues interest
me less and less.

My list, as I move down in,
becomes domestic,
a litany of laundry
and of groceries.
These are the things
that preoccupy me.

The woman’s blouse is torn.
It is held together
with a safety pin.

day 10 - a poem that you wished your mother/father read to you

2011-04-29T04:20:00.002+05:30

I'm thinking this would have been a fun little addition to bed-time story telling.

THE WOLF'S POSTSCRIPT TO 'LITTLE RED RIDING HOOD' (by Agha Shahid Ali)

First, grant me my sense of history:
I did it for posterity,
for kindergarten teachers
and a clear moral:
Little girls shouldn't wander off
in search of strange flowers,
and they mustn't speak to strangers.

And then grant me my generous sense of plot:
Couldn't I have gobbled her up
right there in the jungle?
Why did I ask her where her grandma lived?
As if I, a forest-dweller,
didn't know of the cottage
under the three oak trees
and the old woman lived there
all alone?
As if I couldn't have swallowed her years before?

And you may call me the Big Bad Wolf,
now my only reputation.
But I was no child-molester
though you'll agree she was pretty.

And the huntsman:
Was I sleeping while he snipped
my thick black fur
and filled me with garbage and stones?
I ran with that weight and fell down,
simply so children could laugh
at the noise of the stones
cutting through my belly,
at the garbage spilling out
with a perfect sense of timing,
just when the tale
should have come to an end.

day 09 - a poem that you want to read in bed to your lover

2011-04-28T04:38:00.000+05:30

There are so many fantastic love poems around so choice was not something I was stuck for. I wanted to go the Pablo Neruda route, with one of his love sonnets, which would've fitted perfectly with the scenario but since most people are familiar with his poems I decided to go in a different direction. So technically speaking the roles are the other-way round in this one, but it's an achingly beautiful poem that is as romantic as it is erotic, or at least I think so. And I swear to you, while reading it I caught a whiff of cinnamon in the air!

The Cinnamon Peeler (by Michael Ondaatje)

If I were a cinnamon peeler
 I would ride your bed
 and leave the yellow bark dust
 on your pillow.

 Your breasts and shoulders would reek
 you could never walk through markets
 without the profession of my fingers
 floating over you.  The blind would
 stumble certain of whom they approached
 though you might bathe
 under the rain gutters, monsoon.

 Here on the upper thigh
 at this smooth pasture
 neighbour to your hair
 or the crease
 that cuts your back.  This ankle.
 You will be known among strangers
 as the cinnamon peeler's wife.

 I could hardly glance at you
 before marriage
 never touch you
 - your keen nosed mother, your rough brothers.
 I buried my hands
 in saffron, disguised them
 over smoking tar,
 helped the honey gatherers...

 When we swam once
 I touched you in the water
 and our bodies remained free,
 you could hold me and be blind of smell.
 You climbed the bank and said

          this is how you touch other women
 the grass cutter's wife, the lime burner's daughter.
 And you searched your arms
 for the missing perfume

                      and knew

            what good is it
 to be the lime burner's daughter
 left with no trace
 as if not spoken to in the act of love
 as if wounded without the pleasure of a scar.

 You touched
 your belly to my hands
 in the dry air and said
 I am the cinnamon
 peeler's wife.  Smell me.

day 08 - a poem that you know by heart

2011-04-27T03:06:00.000+05:30

My memory has always failed me, even when it comes to remembering fond things so naturally memorizing poems doesn't come easy. Nevertheless I did have to memorize quite a bit of them over the years but I can only fully recall, by heart, a handful. I'm choosing this one, because a) Macbeth is my all-time favourite Shakespeare play b) this is quite possibly my all-time favourite Shakespearean soliloquy and it never ever gets old c) everyday I am more and more convinced of the beauty and truth of these lines, and last but not least d) you can point a gun at me and I'd still be able to quite confidently recite this by heart, although that's no achievement because so can pretty much EVERYONE else! But anyway for what it's worth, here we are...

To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day,
To the last syllable of recorded time;
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!
Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more. It is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury
Signifying nothing." ---Macbeth (Act 5, Scene 5, lines 17-28)

day 07 - a poem that reminds you of a certain event

2011-04-26T04:29:00.003+05:30

I couldn't think of a poem that reminded me of a personal event so instead I thought I'd make this a good excuse to share this poem again (I've shared it before on the other blog). It marks an event in our history. One we sometimes like to glide over. The first time I heard it was at The Galle Literary Festival 2010. The video of Sivamohan Sumathy reading it can be watched here. It's my recording, so the quality is a bit poor. The poem is about the burning of the Jafna Library. I remember getting goosebumps while sitting there listening to it. It was shocking in its use of Buddha as a metaphor and yet so apt. The first time I went to Jaffna, which was early last year, I went to visit the now re-constructed Library. This poem came to mind that day.

Murder (by M.A. Nuhman)

Last night

I dreamt

Buddha was shot dead

by the Police,

guardians of the law.

His body drenched in blood

on the steps

of the Jaffna Library

Under cover of darkness

came the ministers.

“His name is not on our list,

why did you kill him?”

they ask angrily,

“No sirs, no,

there was no mistake.

Without killing him

it was impossible

to harm a fly –

Therefore… ,” they stammered.

“Alright, then

hide the corpse.”

The ministers return.

The men in civvies

dragged the corpse

into the library.

They heaped the books

ninety thousand in all,

and lit the pyre

With the Cikalokavadda Sutta.

Thus the remains

of the Compassionate One

were burned to ashes

along with the Dhammapada.

Translated by S. Pathmanathan (from Lute Songs, edited by Chelva. S. Kanaganayakam).

day 06 - a poem that reminds you of somewhere

2011-04-25T00:20:00.002+05:30

Being away from home, naturally I wanted to recall a poem that reminds me of our little island. Ideally a poem that talked of 'home' in positive ways, that didn't sound like nationalist propaganda, or corny mumbo jumbo about our natural landscape, but I couldn't find one worth sharing. Perhaps it is just as well because often my relationship with home has always been one of loving it with a critical eye. The sordid politics and the infuriating apathy of our people aside, home is home. That is why I love this poem by Vivimarie Vanderpoorten, which perfectly captures on occasion, the daunting experience of talking about 'home' to a foreigner. I find my self in caught in similar moments every now and then.

Visiting Giants (by Vivimarie Vanderpoorten)

On the first outing that summer
To Giant’s Causeway
Remnant of an ancient volcanic eruption
Ascending those perfect
Octagonal stones
Contemplating precision
Of shape
Full of wonder at the natural world,
I was asked by a
Perfectly beautiful
family-of-four,
- tourists from America
where I was from:
I answered.

“Which part of Africa is that?”
So I explained
That it’s the island
Shaped like a teardrop
off the coast of India:
I didn’t say
That it has a splendid past
But no future
That its rich soil
Is drenched in blood
And that there’s hopelessness
In the eyes
of its children.
When they asked me
“So what’s it like”
I only said
“It’s home”

For those who don't know her work (I assume that's far and few), you can find some on her blog here. She has two collections: Nothing Prepares You and Stitch Your Eyelids Shut, the latter you can buy online here.

day 05 - a poem that reminds you of someone

2011-04-22T04:26:00.000+05:30

To all the boys I’ve loved before (by Mayda del Valle)

part 1:
we are not your mothers
and are not meant to be
it is not our responsibility to raise you into respectful beings
you have been weaned from the breast of a woman for years
yet you come to us
wounded and half filled with promises you can only keep half the time
trying to suckle our sense of self dry
we’ve become much too accustomed to sleepless nights and damp pillows
have become accustomed to waiting for our empty beds
to be weighed down with the bodies of men heavy with the scent
and the hands of other women
mornings with swollen puffy eyes are becoming routine
and we simply wanting to be loved
simply wanting to be able to love ourselves unconditionally
simply wanting to be held and feel safe
simply wanting the truth of whether you can really love us or not
play Hester Prynn
wear scarlet letters on our chests
become adulteresses
cheating ourselves out of what we truly deserve
willing to settle for less
willing to act like a little less than a goddesses
willing to sleep with the enemy
men too scared to stop acting like boys
thinking we can love away their scars
so we take the lashes of the insecurities they pour on us
and lick our wounds in quiet mourning for the little girls we lose by the minute
fast fading memories of playing hopscotch
and skippin’ rope
we now play freeze tag with each other’s hearts
play hide and seek with our love
if we just don’t breathe maybe we won’t get caught
up in the spider’s web we weave while waiting for what we give away to be returned

part 2:
you said you had a photographic memory
but apparently you forgot that honesty
begins by being real with yourself
and the ones you claim you love
should have never wasted my time
and just acted like the man you claimed and told the world you were
made a production of setting my folks at ease with tales of how you’d do all it ever took
to never break my heart
I guess you thought you were talking to a roomful of the deaf and blind
figured they didn’t hear you
coz I never saw it coming
but the truth cannot be hidden
what’s clouded in darkness will always come to light my love
you shoulda known that
claiming you saw my light so clearly and brightly
so I left
chasing paper trails of promises you’d already set on fire
left with nothing but the ashes of who you’d written that you were
and singed fingers from trying to grasp the impossible
and the only thing I’ve really lost
are lukewarm kisses
that for too long I kept trying to tune the beat of my heart, a few lies, and stories
about honesty and truth
I guess shit happens
I just wish it wasn’t me
and I guess
it’s so much better to have loved and lost
than never to have loved at all
I know that’s some easy shit to say
but I’m still gonna try to live by it
I’m still gonna try to put my faith to rest in it
I will sleep on dry pillows now in a bed big enough to love myself in
I will awake these coming mornings with my eyes dry and shining
full of the knowledge I am priceless and worth nothing but honesty
I will remove the scarlet letter from my chest and hold the hand of the little girl I used to be
and say I’m sorry to her
I’m sorry for cheating you out of the joy you have always deserved
and I will wait
for a man
to come along
that can give me the truth of how much he can really love me

She's a Def Poet and the video of her performing this poem can be watched here.

day 04 - a poem that disturbs you

2011-04-21T04:33:00.002+05:30

It's late and I'm really exhausted tonight so can't really think of something other than the obvious right now. I'm also rarely disturbed or unnerved because I revel in the morbid and the dark so I was kind of stuck for choice. Daddy just about managed to disturb at first reading so voila...

Daddy (By Sylvia Plath)

You do not do, you do not do
Any more, black shoe
In which I have lived like a foot
For thirty years, poor and white,
Barely daring to breathe or Achoo.

Daddy, I have had to kill you.
You died before I had time--
Marble-heavy, a bag full of God,
Ghastly statue with one gray toe
Big as a Frisco seal

And a head in the freakish Atlantic
Where it pours bean green over blue
In the waters off beautiful Nauset.
I used to pray to recover you.
Ach, du.

In the German tongue, in the Polish town
Scraped flat by the roller
Of wars, wars, wars.
But the name of the town is common.
My Polack friend

Says there are a dozen or two.
So I never could tell where you
Put your foot, your root,
I never could talk to you.
The tongue stuck in my jaw.

It stuck in a barb wire snare.
Ich, ich, ich, ich,
I could hardly speak.
I thought every German was you.
And the language obscene

An engine, an engine
Chuffing me off like a Jew.
A Jew to Dachau, Auschwitz, Belsen.
I began to talk like a Jew.
I think I may well be a Jew.

The snows of the Tyrol, the clear beer of Vienna
Are not very pure or true.
With my gipsy ancestress and my weird luck
And my Taroc pack and my Taroc pack
I may be a bit of a Jew.

I have always been scared of you,
With your Luftwaffe, your gobbledygoo.
And your neat mustache
And your Aryan eye, bright blue.
Panzer-man, panzer-man, O You-- 

Not God but a swastika
So black no sky could squeak through.
Every woman adores a Fascist,
The boot in the face, the brute
Brute heart of a brute like you.

You stand at the blackboard, daddy,
In the picture I have of you,
A cleft in your chin instead of your foot
But no less a devil for that, no not 
Any less the black man who

Bit my pretty red heart in two.
I was ten when they buried you.
At twenty I tried to die
And get back, back, back to you.
I thought even the bones would do.

But they pulled me out of the sack,
And they stuck me together with glue.
And then I knew what to do.
I made a model of you,
A man in black with a Meinkampf look

And a love of the rack and the screw.
And I said I do, I do.
So daddy, I'm finally through.
The black telephone's off at the root,
The voices just can't worm through.

If I've killed one man, I've killed two--
The vampire who said he was you
And drank my blood for a year,
Seven years, if you want to know.
Daddy, you can lie back now.

There's a stake in your fat black heart
And the villagers never liked you.
They are dancing and stamping on you.
They always knew it was you.
Daddy, daddy, you bastard, I'm through.

day 03 - a poem that comforts you

2011-04-20T04:06:00.000+05:30

There have been far too many moment in life that have made me wonder if I truly am the master of my fate. Nevertheless, this poem (very well known thanks to One Tree Hill and the movie Invictus) hasn't lost its effect on me, whenever I've felt the need for some kind of reassurance.

Invictus (by William Ernest Henley)

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

"bludgeonings of chance" - how fantastically apt is that imagery?!

day 02 - your least favourite poem

2011-04-19T02:41:00.000+05:30

Now I love pretty flowers in bloom as much as (and possibly even more than) the next person. But will I write a whole poem about them and how awesome they made me feel, that too in retrospect, in an effort to relive that moment of first sight, I don't think so! I like the Romantic Poetry movement and I get their poetic agenda but REALLY WORDSWORTH????! "Emotions recollected in tranquility" or not, Daffodils is just one of those poems that I can't appreciate. It's a pity of all his poems it was this that had to go into our O/L poetry anthology!

Daffodils (by William Wordsworth)

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

The waves beside them danced; but they
Out-did the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed--and gazed--but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:

For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils.

30 Day Poetry Challenge

2011-04-18T02:55:00.001+05:30

I was almost about to pull the plug on this blog today and came up with an idea to keep it going. I don't think there will be much poetry coming out of me in the near future (thank heavens right?!) but I don't see why I can't continue to share and talk about poetry here. It might occasionally veer to other literary genres like fiction and stuff and most likely will evolve into a book blog but I will try and maintain the focus on poetry.

I'm going to kick things off in this new direction with a project as a way to ease into a regular blogging pattern here. You know the 30 Day Song Challenge that's been doing the rounds on Facebook and now the blogosphere? Well, I'm going to adapt it to a 30 Day Poetry Challenge. I'm going to try and post every day for the next 30 days but of course life is sure to get in the way at some point and I've already got too many projects going on in a similar vein. But what can I say, I'm a project junkie!

So here are the rules, which I've pretty much taken as is from the Song Challenge but adapted some.

day 01 - the poem you last read
day 02 - your least favorite poem
day 03 - a poem that comforts you
day 04 - a poem that disturbs you
day 05 - a poem that reminds you of someone
day 06 - a poem that reminds you of somewhere
day 07 - a poem that reminds you of a certain event
day 08 - a poem that you know by heart
day 09 - a poem that you want to read in bed to your lover
day 10 - a poem that you wished your mother/father read to you
day 11 - a poem from your favorite poet
day 12 - a poem you don't understand a word of
day 13 - a poem that is a guilty pleasure
day 14 - a poem that no one would expect you to love
day 15 - a poem that describes you
day 16 - a poem that you love seeing performed
day 17 - a poem that you would like to read out loud to the world
day 18 - a poem that you wish you heard being read by its poet

day 19 - a poem from your favorite anthology/collection
day 20 - a poem that you want to read when you’re angry
day 21 - a poem for a happy day
day 22 - a poem that you want to read when you’re having a bad day
day 23 - a poem that you would like to read at your wedding
day 24 - a poem that you want to be read at your funeral
day 25 - a poem that makes you laugh
day 26 - a poem that you wish someone would put into music
day 27 - a poem that you wish you'd written

day 28 - a poem that makes you feel guilty
day 29 - a poem from your childhood
day 30 - a poem you'd read to your children

It's not going to be as easy as finding a song and some of these things I haven't even thought of! But it will hopefully give me the chance to share old favourites and also push me to discover new ones. So here goes.

day 01 - the poem you last read

I watched The Edge of Love last night. It's a movie about Dylan Thomas and the two women in his life. It features some of his poetry and this one in particular stuck in my head. I've revisited it several times today. The scene in the film gave it a context which makes it all the more an intriguing piece of poetry albeit less enigmatic now. Anyways, here we are...

Love in the Asylum (by Dylan Thomas)

A stranger has come
To share my room in the house not right in the head,
A girl mad as birds

Bolting the night of the door with her arm her plume.
Strait in the mazed bed
She deludes the heaven-proof house with entering clouds

Yet she deludes with walking the nightmarish room,
At large as the dead,
Or rides the imagined oceans of the male wards.

She has come possessed
Who admits the delusive light through the bouncing wall,
Possessed by the skies

She sleeps in the narrow trough yet she walks the dust
Yet raves at her will
On the madhouse boards worn thin by my walking tears.

And taken by light in her arms at long and dear last
I may without fail
Suffer the first vision that set fire to the stars.

your songs

2011-03-15T17:48:00.001+05:30

there's a million songs for you
and your broken heart
are they all on your side?
have they never been in
a place like mine
"I'm still here hoping that one day you may come back"
says one
"If time is all I have I'll waste it all on you"
music and lyrics approving
your right
to haunt
to hunt
to never
let
go
celebrating and licking
your battle scars
as if you're some
martyr, or
returning soldier
broken heart
bruised ego
wearing them like medals
of honour
declaring to the world
your victimhood
revelling in the fact
that
"she's gone, gone, gone."

so what of her songs?
where are they?
the songs to salt
her wounds
the songs
that celebrate
her predicament
where are the lyrics
that tell the tale
of her broken heart
the one that began to crack
with time?
where is the music
for these second degree burns
she's got
trying to keep alive
a burning flame?
where are the songs
for where she is?
caught in a strange place
of revenge and regrets

although you and your songs
like to call it
love
or something noble like that.

Silence moves in

2010-09-16T19:49:00.001+05:30

this is the house

that you built

where Silence has come to live

walking its corridors

who brought him home?

he sits with your wife

in tears

over onions (you like to think)

she is chopping for tonight’s dinner.

he has caught your little son

by the tongue

but the words that escape

fill into his little drawing book

scribbled with a tense hand

ceaseless circles

tangled chaos

in black.

he is in bed with your daughter

has been sleeping ever since

she found love at first sight

soon after in a fist fight

and blue bruises inside

a red paper valentine.

he chats with you every evening

while pouring a glass of old reserve

becoming your friend with every sip.

he looks back from the bathroom mirror

he opens the door

he gossips with the neighbours

he answers the phone

he sits for dinner

and sometimes

he likes to shout out loud

as if just back

after a long day

“I’m home!”

for tomorrow

2010-09-11T22:37:00.001+05:30

Tonight

As my hand still recovers

From an all too familiar

Motion from left to right

As my heart searches desperately

To fill new empty spaces

As my stomach attempts to discern

How it must un-knot itself once more

As my mind see-saws

Between despair and hope

I cling to whatever

Truths I know

For tomorrow

I must wake up

I must wake up.

of words and things

2010-09-04T18:06:00.005+05:30

he spoke with things

a pink frilly frock
edged with roses
formed the sylables
of a happy b'day once

a new mobile phone
one evening
for passing an exam

a five hundred ruppee note
next to my butter and toast:
every morning's greeting

a happy meal
spelled out
you're sorry

a chocolate every evening
after work
was a conversation
about how my day was

and that little black maruti
was your blessing
it said you're ready
to let go

your language of things
said more than
the world's greatest orator

and your silence...

it said what i yearned
to hear the most.

for men like you

2010-09-03T19:10:00.008+05:30

i don't know where men like you
get off
get real
get it straight
that a no
means nothing more or less
than a no

that women like us
won't stick around till you decide
to undecide that you're not ready for
commitment
marriage
a real relationship
kids!

that we don't have the patience
anymore to hang on to
the little scraps of attention
you dish out at your will
cos we are single
ready to mingle
in the hope
the faintest glimmer
of that final fairy tale ending.

we have grown up you see
we aren't virgins
we aren't first-time lovers
we aren't little school girls in braids and white
that you can write
your wildest fantasies with.

today we know our bodies
a little better
than we did yesterday
and that little better
goes a long way
in rising above
and beyond the image
we are in your daily center spreads.

we are at peace with our mothers
we will inherit their dreams but not their regrets
we will not cry their same old tears
although we may still have to fight
their same old causes.

we will not be condemned
for our fathers sins
nor be bound to change from
their hand to yours
from their homes
to yours
we would rather be homeless.

we will be human first
before we are wives, daughters
and mothers
we will not however
be your all-in-one
mother, whore and damsel in distress

we will want things
you want
and want it as bad
if not more
we will walk out of homes
as easily as you do
and do so as guiltlessly
as you do
we will feel as entitled
as you
to our rooms
to our clubs
to our bank accounts
to our college degrees
to our promotions
to our names
to ourselves.

we have come a long way
since that day
you flipped us
head over heals
with nothing
but style.

we want substance now
and in return
we offer the same.
can you handle us
now that we refuse
to play your silly games?

horror story

2010-09-03T18:50:00.004+05:30

every time
the cold dark shadow
of a goodbye falls
by my window
i want to draw the curtains
and hide under the bed
until it goes away.

like i did
back then
whenever ammi said
there's a gonibilla
coming our way.

2010-09-03T17:38:00.004+05:30

the atoms
the molecules
that made me
matter little right now
whether i began
from chaos
is irrelevant
the chaos that surrounds me
now, this moment
in this place
that is relevant
i care little
for the before and the after.
i am here.
that is the answer.
why insist
it be a question?

bad timing

2010-07-25T12:45:00.008+05:30

it's one of those days
when murphy is calling all the shots.

the alarm fails to go off
your only smart casual white shirt
is over-starched and robin-blued
already an hour late
you hear on the news
that parliament's in session
every road is chaos
as the horns blare
you curse under your breath
as you see the red line inching closer
to rule you out of a list
that took you years to get in
you look up in desperation-

a big blue billboard
declares in bold impact
"it is the journey, not the destination."

pieces of me

2010-05-22T21:59:00.003+05:30

i am in pieces
it wasn't always the case.

i was one
once.
when you were all around.
when we were young.

and then
i walked into an explosion
a ticking time bomb.

boom.

i became pieces.
pieces spread across continents
stuck under the seat of a london subway
inside the back of a new york cab
amongst the sand dunes of dubai
caught in the wind of the australian outback
i was at once everywhere

yet nowhere.

my name

2010-05-22T21:37:00.004+05:30

loss.
that is one half of my name.
that explains
my knack for it.
to lose
always to lose
things
memories
people
i
love

you.

heart.
the other half of my name.
how apt.
how fatalistic.

tragedy inscribed
in seven letters
that seeya unwittingly
put together.
and you wonder

what's in a name?

letter of request

2010-05-05T14:15:00.005+05:30

dear sir,

i entertain no illusions--

to you

i must be

just another

thirdworld begging bowl

that you like to extend

your charitable arm

every now and then

so you can amp your profile.

i am merely a possible benefactor

of your casual tokenism

a little brown paint

you like to thrown in

for some colour

on your canvass of white.

even so,

i request

your acceptance.

becoming alice

2010-05-05T13:04:00.003+05:30

i walk like an Alice

lost in my own wonderland

of surreal dreams

that shrink and expand

and shrink

till there is nothing but

nothingness.

from the solitude of

a pink wet cocoon

i've emerged through a

black hole

to more blackness.

from bad to worse

to worser to disaster

i am my own

mad hatter encounter.

looking forward

looking through

the looking glass of time

i am growing

and growing

in all the wrong directions.

plenty of keys

to doors

i've no desire to open

worms and weeds

have taken over my garden

poor lost little girl

in someone's schizophrenic imagination

unbirth me

if you can.

not over you

2010-05-04T18:22:00.003+05:30

i'm not over you
so i guess that means
i'm still under you
there's too much
under the bridge
and i am constantly
under the weather
underwhelmed
by what's on offer
feeling a little
underestimated
and undervalued
still under the spell of you

i am not over you.