Dr Prathap Kamath's review on my book A Treatise on Poetry for Beginners.

I have had a very enjoyable and enlightening read of Ampat Koshy's (Dr. A.V. Koshy) new book A TREATISE ON POETRY BEGINNERS. Being a teacher of literature myself, what has impressed me more is the “Voice” of the critic/teacher in Koshy rather than the fundamentals of prosody he has undertaken to educate the beginners in poetry with. A glance at the table of contents would mislead students of literature into taking the book to be too elementary : Mnemonics, Rhyme, From Rhyme to Rhyme Schemes, Sound and Imagery, Figurative Language, Form and Structure, Form and Voice, Voice and Style. But those who are familiar with him through his ever variegated posts on FB would never be misled to think that he is one who would fill his pages with basics except with a turn of novelty. As I said earlier, therefore, it is his Voice that has engaged me with its deep and resounding originality in the guidance that he has provided to beginners in poetry. He has laid down his views on Voice in his book: it is the stamp of individuality in language and treatment of ideas evinced by a writer. The example he gives is of T.S. Eliot: "A Voice is different. I capitalized the v on purpose. After reading a hundred or thousand Eliot feel-alike poems and sound-alike and look-alike poems by aspirants to his throne I began to understand that one could hate Eliot if he wanted to but he had what no other poet had - a Voice that was not only unmistakable but seemingly easy to imitate! Seemingly easy! But no one can catch that strange Voice, so unique that it haunts every new poet a hundred years after ‘Prufrock’ and destroys many permanently." Koshy’s book is the product of a mind that is restless and vibrant, with a microfine sensibility, down to earth humility despite its mind boggling scholarship and an eye that sees a detail always left unnoticed by others. It draws from its immense wealth of reading experience that spans over four decades without ever making a show of it, and this wealth of intertextuality alone would provide its readers ample justification to their effort in reading it. It puts poetry on FB in the right perspective for the poets who write in it and may be carried away by the customary praise they get from friends. He fruitfully disillusions them here, but only with the benign intention of wanting them to do better instead of being complacent in self admiration. However Koshy’s greatest objective is to find poetry its true eminence in the heart of readers when he says: "What is poetry? My aim is not to be prescriptive. I have been a little descriptive previously but I would like to repeat certain metaphors like the body of poetry is a kingdom with many mansions and it extends across all of time, all of space and runs like a golden thread through all the languages living and dead." Dr Prathap Kamath is UGC Associate Professor in SN College, Kollam, and author of Ekalavya, a collection of superb poems published by Cyberwit.