Book Review (work in progress) of Poem Continuous: Reincarnated Expressions

Book Review (work in progress) of Poem Continuous: Reincarnated Expressions

I have read four books that can be ascribed as being primarily the work of Kiriti Sengupta. They are "My Glass of Wine" which is a genreless mix of his poetry, thoughts on translation, autobiography, spirituality and criticism, the "Unheard I," "My Dazzling Bards" and "Poem Continuous: Reincarnated Expressions." I liked the first one best as its structure resembled what some of my books also offer, apt for the times, one that can be read in fragments or as a whole, in a linear or discontinuous way, or maybe I liked it most because it was the first one of his that I had read. The others books stick to the same structure and hence appealed to me slightly less.

Don Martin often collaborates with Kiriti by editing and writing forewords etc. I enjoy reading Don Martin as he writes in a clear manner and makes a lot of sense. However, in the book under review, I take exception to his talking at length on the Bengali language in his introduction, a language of which I suspect he knows as little as I do. My own approach to this work would thus be that of one who is looking at it not to find out if it is a successful translation or a happy "transition" from one language to the other which is what Kiriti calls it in his translator's note but simply from a text centred and reader/critic centred point of view, of one who does not know anything about the original language but uses literary criticism and theory as tools to look at the book or work, after reading it carefully.

Having read the book certain adjectives came to my mind like 'simple', 'enjoyable' at times and in parts, 'readable' ( being brief), 'affordable' etc. The meat of the book consists of thirty poems by Bhibas Roy Chowdhury. The brief bio at the back of the book tells me he is a distinguished poet of the 90s and an established poet by now in contemporary Bengali literature. I would like to say that the collection gripped me and made me echo these sentiments of his being distinguished and eminent as a winner of many awards, but the truth is I found the whole collection curiously dissatisfying, unable to trigger off in me the desire to read the poet again and again or to find more of his work and read it. Several things impeded me. The main thing was the use of English that, while trying to be different, ended up only being inexact, or so it seemed to me.

I explain by looking at the first two quotes.

"I swam across the river while
my mortal floated away in the water..."

Why the elision which attempts to be metonymic is made, by dropping a word after mortal in the second line, is something I am unable to figure out, try as I may. I see no corresponding gain in poetic intensity created by such a gap.

"I'm nowhere
the life-less frame is but the 'poet', they refer...

The second sentence is again so odd as to puzzle me exceedingly.

The whole book goes on like this, as a series of hits and misses; on this curiously unsatisfactory note...
I go to the first poem.
It is titled "The People." It makes for a good choice as the first poem in the collection. Starting from the article I would omit in the title to line seven where again the odd elision occurs, we come to the inexact use of the word 'some' in line 9 and two closing lines that bewilder me completely. The poem personifies the word "sorry" and probably deals with the poet's irritation with people who hurt you and then keep saying sorry but the last four lines read -

"How can I depart?
His words fail to cease!"

("His words" here means the words of the man or people who is/are summed up by the word/personification "Sorry.")

"Better I keep some wound
beside the coming tune..." -

and sound so inconclusive that one feels totally let down.

Poetry is supposed to be music, figures of speech, intention, effect, language, style, imagery and meaning (themes), not to mention structure and form. Reading a collection should give me a good idea of the poet's ability in all this. Collections of translations I have read recently seem to settle nowadays primarily for a poet or translation slightly better than those around - or so it seems - but cannot really compare with translations done by masters in the past like Walter Lippmann's of Rilke (Duino Elegies), Constance Garnett's of Dostoevsky, Beckett's of Beckett etc. I say this for a reason. The mark of a good translation for me is either my wanting to read it again or wanting to read more of the same poet or translator. An exceptional translation would even make one want to study the original tongue to read it in the original. In this context Bina Biswas's and Sayantan Gupta's translations and Ravi Shankar's are better in their choice of poets from Bengali or Urdu or Hindi or Malayalam respectively, or so it seems to me, albeit in a qualified way, meaning that their works impressed me more than Kiriti's but this does not mean that it can automatically be deduced that therefore the poets they choose or the poems they chose can be placed on the same level as the ones I mentioned like the Rilke and Rimbaud (sonnets) translations by Lippmann or Beckett translating himself from French to English, in the case of poetry. As for Bengali poetry, the only Bengali poet I have read recently who has really held my interest is Atindriyo Chakraborty, in his English poems. If I know anything about poetry and I do know a considerable lot, his poems and Michael Madhusudan Dutt's Meghnad Badh Kavya epic in its recent avatar/translation by Bina and Sayantan will last considerably longer than the Naseer Ahmed Nasir translations that are of poems by a poet who is unfortunately still writing Romantic poetry that would have been considered wonderful or great or world class/classic 175 years ago (- despite what Gulzar says about it, Gulzar himself being as hopelessly and quaintly outdated in his lyricism in his poetry as NAN, as opposed to his (Gulzar's) song lyrics that are apt and praiseworthy for/in their scenic, cinematic contexts - ) and only those who are caught in the miasma of wanting to be in a nostalgic, sentimental, weepy, soppy, imaginary, feudalistic monarchy of a pre- Independence world, one of what it was supposed to have been like in the past, in the glories of the heyday of Urdu and Hindi poetry, would still want to read and enjoy them. I can understand liking them and translating them but to think they are important enough as poems or translations to rival poets like Eliot or Yeats who won the Nobel is stretching it a bit too far.I listened to a play recently by Jawaid Danish and the hard-hitting cutting contemporary political edge in it which held me glued to listening to it despite my being deficient in the language is unfortunately missing in the poetry of these two elderly respectable and highly respected folk. You can note the same 'edge' in a poet like Serkan Engin , from Turkey, though he seems to suffer from collaborating with horrible translators. The real problem seems to be that some of these ye oulde writers or translators seem to have no awareness that post - Poundian Modernism that includes poets like Geoffrey Hill has happened.

To sum up: I am not sure whether the poet in question, namely Bibhas Roy Choudhury, is worth reading again but being kindly disposed to both the dynamic Kiriti who is enterprising, a poet, talented, a best selling writer and now a publisher to boot and to poets in general I would like to say that I will give them the benefit of the doubt, as I - remember? - know next to nothing of the Bengali language.

This review is negative because we live in a world where translations can actually be transcreations that are as good as and/or even better than the original nowadays, being set free by theory to not having to be tied down to the text of the original, and that is what one feels the lack of here; but on the positive side I want to thank Kiriti for making me aware of such a poet and his works and of a bustling scene of new Bengali poetry. I wish more such collections come out till new masterpieces emerge.

This is not to say that there are no riveting lines or images or even stanzas in these poems or that there are no good poems in the collection. There are but one feels their magic, even to the extent that it is there in them, has not yet been fully brought out.

(c) Dr A.V.Koshy, July 2014