Sujata Parashar’s first collection of poems ‘Poetry Out & Loud’ offers a wide range of poems. She often writes as if on an assigned subject, examining it in depth and engages the readers in a subtle way by flying kites with strong tails.
Her poems are lively, imaginative, witty yet no-frill type, more about people and life and the rhythms and play of her words are always laced with clarity and candidness. She writes with a keen eye coupled with alertness and sensitivity; never indulge in writing over the head of the people to earn some intellectual brownie points. She questions perhaps herself in ‘My thoughts’ poem, ‘Are you trying to make a fool of yourself and us’?
Her poems are clear in topic and language, but her playfulness (a poem starts with the words ‘Tomatoes and Beans’) and tendency to be verbose yet create punch line at the end is equally interesting. Lack of strangeness and mysticism in her poems are amply compensated by empathy and sheer presence. Her poems are snapshots of life and the surrounding events as she points out in her poem ‘Masquerade.’
‘My frozen heart, life will be back again
The happy ending of a Masquerade.’
In Artwork’ poem, the last two lines are,
‘ the world; a cobweb
One’s a spider; the other its prey’.
A succinct pieces of writing is the poem in ‘Words and expressions’ where the poet is hitting the right tone at the end,
That words and Expressions are powerful things
They can start a war or gift you peace’.
She is a well known fiction writer already and some of her poems are woven in a narrative style reflecting her overriding inclination towards lucid prose, e.g., ‘She and her beautiful dreams’ and ‘That classical lady named Madam Bovary’.
The pressures and the pleasures of life are well reflected in the poems ‘Soulless soul’, ‘Goodbye dear friend’, ‘Beat the odds….I will ’where she addresses the readers in her inimitable style. Rarely, the dark night of the soul is evident in her telling thoughts,
‘Of course the trees…
They were slowly turning brown’.
‘The stranger and his son’ and ‘What is love?’ are the shining poems that express powerful surges of emotion. She has sympathy for the wounded soul and deprived people. But she is perhaps at her best in the poem ‘In a boat without oars’ where she is happy to listen to her own thoughts,
‘A Dream, a Wish, a Smile, a Tear,
A Dance, a Romance, a Life well lived
When I have floated well and far,
A gentle push, and a rough pull,
Will ensure I reach my shore’,
The poet wants to create a poetic state in her readers, but also to tell them things they know before but never get around to thinking about.'' One of her finest poem ‘Freedom’ catches the reader up and sweeps him/her along the path of freedom. The poet loves to drop her mask of pretention and talks directly to her readers.
When looks are exchanged without biases
Hands greet each other minus prejudices
Vanity does not affect the senses,
Heart reaches out like true friends
That is freedom.
Her poems truly live in the present wafting an aroma of freshness and show a striking way of looking at ourselves with love and pretension.
Poetry Out & Loud is an endearing collection of poems which will keep the poet and the reader get in touch with each another in the mental plane. The cover design of the book and the various illustrations on the pages are attractive. The price is affordable.
Poetry Out & Loud by Sujata Parashar
Jyotichandra Publications
Paperback, IBN 978-81-909640-9-8
Printed by THE GRENADIERS Association of Printing Press.
Jabalpur, India
Price- Rs 75/-
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment