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CITY
TIMES
By Vihang A
Naik
Poems in English. 1st Edition : 1993.
ISBN 81 - 7189 - 566 - 2 ( HB )
ISBN 81 - 7189 - 567 - 0 ( FB )
WRITERS' WORKSHOP ,
KOLKATA, INDIA.
Pages:72. PB.Rs.40. HB.Rs.80 |
POET
:
World Poetry Society ,
Intercontinental
Chennai , India |
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poetry anthologies bibliography |
POET
:
World Poetry Society , Intercontinental
( India ) - The
Journal of A City Traveler :
...City
Times is the collection of English poems by Vihang
A Naik ( b. 1969 ) . The poems are surprisingly mature works
with a rare sense of technique and they even display a
philosophical bent of mind. The echoes of T. S. Eliot and
the major Indian poets in English like A. K. Ramanujan, R.
Parthasarathy and Nissim Ezekiel are frequently heard in the
poems written by Vihang Naik . They reveal the poet's
remarkable grasp of tradition of the modern Indian Poetry in
English as well as Euro- American modernism.
All the poems are remarkable for their brevity and
precision. The poet cleverly uses the line breaks to achieve
minimalist-imagistic effects. The City is the central image
in the collection. It is a metaphor of life, with all its
labyrinthine streets which 'lead you nowhere'. The Eliotian
image of fog and the image of mirror are common motifs in
the poems. The collection astutely charts the poets
allegorical journey through the City in six sections which
stand for the six phases of the journey. 'Love Song of a
Journey Man' contains love poems and the first experience of
love when the protagonist has begun 'to hear wings / in
empty spaces'. 'A song / in the desert / of my heart. / A
first journey.' Love, of course proves illusionary like most
of the things in the city Even the experience of flesh is
deceptive because 'one cannot, / for instance, / gather fog
/ in the fist.'.
'Mirrored Man' is about the other chimeras in the city . The
people in the city are capricious like the walk of a crab or
the colour of a chameleon. They manage to deceive others as
well as themselves. Their hearts are the rooms of 'mere
nothingness' and they have also lost the capability of
introspection.
'The Path of Wisdom' is about the beginning of meditation
and knowledge. The protagonist struggles to find ones own
individual spirituality which of course cannot be the
'public religion'. The poet is aware of the limitations of
language and words in the times of spiritual crisis because
as language is a social institution, a personal and private
spiritual experience cannot be translated into ones
language. One must then, 'leave yourself / with silence / to
be / one with yourself.' The poems even disclose the
protagonist's awareness of ones mortality and unreality of
the life lived. Death may even allow us, 'to enter into life
/ really / lived.' .
In this spiritual anguish and struggle , the poet envisions
in an epiphanic moment, the true nature of ones self when he
wakes up , 'to see my / Self ' 'discovered beyond thought' .
Between 'my self' and 'discovered beyond thought' are five
blank pages. The ineffable epiphany of ambiguous. It may
either suggest the discovery of a transcendental Self beyond
all thought and language or it may suggest the discovery of
an Absence beyond the human thought and speech. The poems
have remarkable quality of multiple suggestions. However ,
the poet refuses to 'over translate' this realization in
human terms simply because it is impossible to do so . This
realization however is no end to the protagonist's agonies
and miseries of desires , distances and 'the venom of fangs
/ lost in the circle / of pleasure'. Particularly 'At the
Shore' records the poet's sense of futility , memory , pain
, exile and alienation at the shore of life. This awareness
of darkness grows deeper and bitter in the section 'City
times'. The poet confronts the bitter memories of childhood
by employing the image of a child playing on the shore. His
sand castles shattered, his toys scattered, 'he would try to
bury / the face in broken / things' . The child had even,
'refused / to learn from men / parting' . The poet sees his
face 'multiplied / in / a broken / mirror'. The memories of
childhood and the shattering of the self are superimposed in
the poet's consciousness. The metaphor of a mirror becomes a
motif in the collection .This last section is particularly
intense in its realization of darkness. The poem 'On
Visiting Grandfather's House' is reminiscent of A. K.
Ramanujan's Small Scale Reflections of a Big House . The
journeyman meditates on the impossibility of liberation -
which is the ultimate end of philosophy - as the train
enters the heart of the night.
-
Dr. Sachin
Ketkar
( Teaches English at The M.S. University of Baroda.
Gujrat , INDIA)
Ketkar, Dr. Sachin. Rev. of
City Times And Other Poems , by Vihang Naik . Ed. Krishna
Srinivas.
Chennai , India :POET : World Poetry Society , Intercontinental (
Chennai , India ) , ( jour issue ) , Feb 2004 .Vol.45.,
No ., 2. p.61 - 63.
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