Indian Literature
A Sahitya Akademi
Bi-Monthly Jounal
New Delhi, India
Indian Literature , A Sahitya Akademi Bi-Monthly Jounal :..Naik articulates in section 3 , “Making a Poem”, the process whereby the creation of a poem is felt and understood, the poet’s experiences are taken into his poems , to the extent that the poet simultaneously opens and expands to describe his sensations : “How about making a poem within / a poem ?” “She gave me a bunch of papers / to write an Epic about her.” “She became a gazal in return. / First silence is poetry than words.”
Of course , Naik is not unaware of the drift towards self-generative rhetoric. His poems , particularly in the collection’s next section, “A Poem Comes Alive” , often ironically invert the push towards total knowledge and experience. Naik reminds us that all forms of knowledge require some form of measurement , that against the possibilities of code there is also the fact of the single instance : that observation , language and description fold all events back into history. For example , in the poem “The Pen” he writes , “Now that the words / have come to an end / You search your poem / in the silence of death.” Making a Poem is deepened in effect by the humility of such lines , and the fact that many poems in the collection trace the impact of personal history , the many and varied moments of creating a poem and the poet’s greater understanding of his craft. For example , in the fine poem “A Poem Comes Alive” , Naik maps out the way in which a poem instills life into words …
The final section , “A Poet” , when only death can silence the poet , rob him of his words , and bring an end to experience , is a pattern of anger , memories and observations that work together both to collapse and extend historical time , forward and back, across the space of the poet’s intuition…
…In the “Making of a Poet” , he questions himself and his process, asking “did you instruct your hand to move / or make a poem?” But in the final poem “A Poet” , he is able to come up with something he sees as far from perfect : “a blotted / image / a poem.” This final poem in the collection returns us to the conceptual and emotional moment of the book’s beginning , in which the poet cannot be separated , and the breach between the world and language can be managed by attunement, relaxation , the flux of emotion , event and perspective. In this collection Naik shows us that alongside discourse, art and a desire to know , creating poetry is also a form of knowing.
- Patricia Prime ( Born in London and migrated to New Zealand - editor of the American magazine Slugfest )
Patricia , Prime . Rev. of Making A Poem , by Vihang Naik . Ed. Nirmal Kanti Bhattacharjee , New Delhi , India : Indian Literature - Sahitya Akademi's Bi-Monthly Journal : Published by A. Krishna Murthy , Secretary ,Sahitya Akademi , ( jour issue ) , Vol.L , Nos . 4 ; July - August 2006. p.191 - 193.
