Why Sergei Parajanov and His Films Matter - Silhouette Magazine

Why Sergei Parajanov and His Films Matter - Silhouette Magazine

Why Sergei Parajanov and His Films Matter - Silhouette Magazine

Why Sergei Parajanov and His Films Matter - Silhouette Magazine

Duane's PoeTree: A. V. Koshy writes

Duane's PoeTree: A. V. Koshy writes: Elegy for the Dead in Paris.  May your blood, O slain, cry out to the sky;  for an end to our endless pain.    --Yanito

reuel prize

A Review of The Significant Anthology - Learning and Creativity

A Review of The Significant Anthology - Learning and Creativity

The Roseate Sonnet: An Experience in Learning the Art of Poetry (with a CONTEST & PRIZES!) - Learning and Creativity

The Roseate Sonnet: An Experience in Learning the Art of Poetry (with a CONTEST & PRIZES!) - Learning and Creativity

Interview with Reena Prasad

https://incrediblewomenofindia.wordpress.com/2015/09/02/reena-prasad-in-conversation-with-the-members-of-rejected-stuff/

A review of THE SIGNIFICANT ANTHOLOGY - PART ONE by LALIT MAGAZINE.

PART ONE of a review that is going to do justice to The Significant Anthology by Lalit Magazine who is in his own right a great writer!

REVIEW OF THE SIGNIFICANT ANTHOLOGY

Divided into three parts: Prose, poetry and a long poem, Oh Hark!, this
anthology of more than 300 pages is indeed a treat for bibliophiles.
Bringing out an anthology of this magnitude where young and old,
veterans and amateurs, Indians and foreigners rub shoulders, is indeed
a very significant achievement. Allow me to add my voice to that of
Dr. Ampat Koshy, who says:

“The best thing about the anthology is that it stands for peace. Here,
Pakistani and Indian, young and old, man and woman, black and white,
Muslim, Christian, Jew and Hindu, and people from all professions and
walks of life or ones without jobs as well as from places as far flung
as Ghana or UK or Australia, all nestle together in the pages of the
same book, with no wars amongst them.”

As Reena Prasad so poetically puts it in the introduction:

As submissions kept pouring in, “Opening the mailbox was like
opening the clinic door, and finding graceful birds, comic bears,
erudite foxes, and angry cheetahs waiting in orderly chaos …….”this
line itself is a scintillating piece snipped from a literary gem
which glints and shines with the brilliance of 176 writers from all
over the world . Poems- big and small, prose pieces, stories and a
play, all set an example of peaceful co-existence and orderly chaos
.Tragedy and comedy, satire and surreality all coming together to form
a heady brew , leaving a taste which lingers and lingers, wanting one
to go back and again have a second and third helping, without the fear
of indigestion. ".Some books should be tasted,, some devoured , but
only a few should be chewed and digested thoroughly ."
And this book, is one such book, which is meant to be digested.
Francis Bacon would have surely remarked thus about this book.
All the prose pieces offer something, but some pieces tugged
at the heartstrings with their tragic intensity. The Keepsake by
Namrata Privy Trifles, from India, Father and daughter, by Animesh Ganguly, tire by
Michele Baron from U.S. A were some such pieces. The effortless ease
with which Michele Baron’s prose flows is indeed amazing.

The boy who wished for rain, by Ushnav Shroff from India, I found
exceptionally well- written, and touched a chord in the heart. So did
Pamposh Dhar’s reminiscences about her father. Shriya Pant’s Cauldron
of Dreams, poetic in expression, with its refrain,” the wispy dark
woods have secrets of their own”, was another piece which gripped me
completely. Tearful Memories, by Sajini Chandrasekera, from Srilanka,
a poignant piece about tragedy and devastation in the aftermath of
Tsunami, made me cry unashamedly at the injustice of it all. Tribhawan Kaul’s piece The Present left a lingering smile on my lips.

Let me hasten to add, that all the pieces are commendable pieces of
art, and I feel pathetically small in the face of such greatness to
review all pieces. You need to grab your copy soon to partake of
these literary delicacies.

The solo short play by Jawaid Danish, from Canada, is indeed the tour
de force, short in structure, but monumental in its message – a power
punch of a play .One lives the emotions of the mother of the autistic
child- the narrator- with every printed word. Through this intensely
moving play, I could sense the magic in the child’s eye, and “his
sweet smile, the spark in his eyes, his unblemished innocence, his
playfulness”.

Reena Prasad further says:

“To read an international anthology of poetry is to glimpse how life
treats people in different parts of the world. Each time the twenty
six letters of the English alphabet are rearranged into silences, into
music and thrown into dance moves using a refreshingly unusual grammar
and unique structure, our limits of ‘English’ imagination expand a bit
more - till all images foreign seem to communicate effortlessly with
more rustic, close to-home voices, literarily yelling to each other
over neighborly walls.” Yes, indeed, this anthology with its varied
themes, carries fragrances from all over the world and they waft
across to us singing the tune of peace and love.

The second part of this anthology focusses on poetry, and has some
immensely great poems, which refuse to leave the mind, even when one
has finished reading the poem. One such poem is by Christopher
Chiwanza, from Zimbabwe. This sensitively written poem touches one to
the core. In one stanza he says:

“And I’m going to teach our son

Not to be man first but to be human first with women

And I’m going to teach our daughter

Not to let patriarchal pretenders usurp her greatness

I’m going to wring apologies from every patriarchal man in this world

Until they ring in the echoes of truth and sincerity

Because woman, you deserve to be deserved

You deserve to be served

A buffet of love, respect and honour”.

The poem which completely bowled me over was A Boy and a Girl Sat By A
River, by Joanna Sarah Koshy, India. Its narrative style transported me
back to the classical poets, and I found myself reading it aloud.
.Here is one poem which enchants by its mellifluous strains, and
here is one young poet all set to create waves in the literary world.

I read the almost hundred page prize winning poem Oh Hark ! with a
finger –in – the mouth awe. Intrigued by its weird characters, I found
myself chanting with the three witches and the selfie scene had me in
splits.

Let me congratulate the indomitable editors, Dr. Ampat Koshy, Reena
Prasad, and Michele Baron for enriching the literary world by this
praiseworthy effort. It has something to suit all sensibilities.
Soothing and sensuous, sublime and stunning, it is pregnant with the
promise of proving a wonderful companion in long journeys, and a
permanent part of one’s book-shelf. The poems enthuse and energize,
initiate and inspire, stimulate and stir, throb and titillate, they
caress the emotions and soothe frayed nerves. The stunning use of
imagery and metaphor is indeed praiseworthy. Some poems with their
gut-wrenching intensity are like a poetic squall sweeping right
through the literary world rearing to knock down retrograde beliefs
and skeptical mindsets. One has to read the anthology thoroughly to
believe what I, with my pathetic vocabulary , am trying to convey.

Taking into consideration the high quality of the literary pieces
here, it would indeed be gratifying to see this book adorning the
shelves of college and university libraries. The publisher
George Korah, Morph Books, Bangalore, also deserves hearty congratulations
for this stupendous effort.

Hoping to see more such literary magic, some more sleight of hand and
heart from the invincible editorial team of Dr. Ampat Koshy, Reena
Prasad and Michele Baron in the future .

(to be continued.....)!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! - with Santosh Bakaya

Worldwide Launch of The Significant Anthology - Learning and Creativity

Worldwide Launch of The Significant Anthology - Learning and Creativity

The Significant Anthology - Michele Baron, A V Koshy, Prasad Reena - Bok (9789382759096) | Bokus bokhandel

The Significant Anthology - Michele Baron, A V Koshy, Prasad Reena - Bok (9789382759096) | Bokus bokhandel

Writing, Theory and the Making of Verse. - Learning and Creativity

Writing, Theory and the Making of Verse. - Learning and Creativity

Samuel Beckett’s English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language - Learning and Creativity

Samuel Beckett’s English Poetry: Transcending the Roots of Resistance in Language - Learning and Creativity

Curating Micro-narratives: The New Creativity - Learning and Creativity

Curating Micro-narratives: The New Creativity - Learning and Creativity

Reading, the Reader and Readers.

There are several direction one can go in as a reader.

There is that of reading the text carefully and taking into consideration what it signifies or refers to or means and also taking into consideration the author's intentions and motives, as well as what critics have said on a text and its historical context. This is the traditional method and it is one where the reader acts like a truth seeker, trying to please himself as a reader of his analysis that he has got it 'right,' regarding the conclusions he has drawn.

There is that of looking at a text in terms of placing it in different contexts. This is how literary theory comes in. Here we can read a text  by framing it with or by feminisms, Marxisms, psychoanalysis, culture studies, new historicism, modernism, post-modernism, ecocriticism, structuralism, post-structuralism, super-structuralism, formalism, lemon squeezer criticism or close reading, reader response theories, narratology, stylistics, linguistics, discourse analysis, post-colonialisms etc.

There is that of the intra- and inter and transdisciplinary methods of reading whereby we can connect a text not only to itself within or to other texts but also to other disciplines like branches of philosophy of which aesthetics is one, psychology, sociology, eco-aesthetics, theology, eco-spirituality, comparative literature, anthropology, the sciences, new disciplines like design etc.

There is that of studying it in terms of literacies where one compares medium to medium which is really a new approach where, to take but one instance, one would learn to 'read' a book and then 'view' the film based on it in two entirely different ways, and compare the two not in terms of better or worse but on new methodologies of interpretation that are only evolving but are worth following. The beginnings of such an approach can be found in Marshall McLuhan, to some extent.

Jacques Derrida, Franco - Jewish philosopher, deconstructionist, thinker and writer.

In a film on Jacques Derrida made in 2002, the world famous deconstructionist and philosopher was asked about his extensive personal library by Amy Ziering Kofman. She asked him if he had read all those books. He replied 'no, but I have read about four of them carefully, very, very carefully,' or words to that effect. This is similar to T.S. Eliot who once denied having read Marcel Proust as he had not read it with pencil in hand and paper to make notes on etcetera, meaning 'very carefully,' to repeat Derrida again. This also reminds us of Ezra Pound's refusal to read Wallace Stevens and vice versa as it would take too much time. This is true, that great writers and books demand a lifetime of reading from us and it can be very taxing and strenuous, but the gain is immeasurable as ultimately it is the reader who gains most, more even than the writer who often does not know the full significance of his work, of both what it means and what all it may come to mean or stand for.

The reader and the readers are the real kings. Readers make writers great and keep them alive or consign them to oblivion or the trash cans and garbage bins of history. It thus matters that the writer learns to write in such a way that readers come to love his writing enough to want to keep it alive.

To give an example of how to read one can turn to this poem by Barva Paramaz, a Laz poet from Turkey known for being a poet, writer, novelist and writing a manifesto on what world socialist poetry should be like, being anti- Islamic, working with Diamanda Galas, working for the Armenian Christian genocide survivors, criticizing even Marx though he says he is a Marxist  etc. As he told me once in response to my telling him I am a peace loving anarchist, his heart is anarchist but his mind is Marxist. However, this poem of his fits best into psychoanalytic criticism, as a framework for it to be interpreted.

Love Fucked My Mom, Baby

My heart is a swear-word ever after
Which I spit at Love
I vomited my youth to Pain's atlas

Love fucked my mom, baby

My long hopes crumbled up
Mountains tumbled down on my dreams
I kiss Death from its lips

Love fucked my mom, baby

Now shoot me from my verses
Crucify all my syllables
Barbarian cavalcades of my tongue are at full gallop

Love fucked my mom, baby

(c)Barva Paramaz, 2007
(from "Men's Heartbreak Anthology" published in USA, collected by Karineh Mahdessian.)

The love that 'fucked' the poet's or narrator's mom is obviously the Freudian father figure who castrates and that haunts him all his life. This also has biographical overtones. The poem contains in it barely suppressed images of violence towards the end that both historically refer to, perhaps, the poet's own empathy for the Armenian Christians who were killed by Islamic fanatics as well as to an anti-Freudian peace loving desire to be killed rather than to commit the crime of killing the father-figure, though the father figure is hateful. This is the poetry of the quintessential rebel who stands against all forms of authority and tyranny who has a long list of forebear-poets in this like Rimbaud and more recently, the late great Jim Morrison.

In the lyrics of the song found in Francis Ford Coppola's famous American film Apocalypse Now (that is based on Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and T.S. Eliot's Hollow Men and the Vietnam War)  in a song called The End, Morrison - the lead singer for the cult rock band The Doors who died mysteriously probably of drug overdose at the age of 27 -, puts it more blatantly, from the point of view not of the castrated 'son' who tries not to kill the father but of the one who does not repress or suppress the libido or the ego.

Jim Morrison, American singer, songwriter and poet and the lead singer of The Doors

"The killer awoke before dawn, he put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall
He went into the room where his sister lived, and...then he
Paid a visit to his brother, and then he
He walked on down the hall, and
And he came to a door...and he looked inside
"Father" 

"Yes, son?"
"I want to kill you."
"Mother...I want to...**** you.

(Morrison screams)"

Sigmund Freud

Those who have read Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams and his reading of the play Oedipus Rex by Sophocles will easily understand both Barva Paramaz's poem and what Morrison is writing. Freud can surely and definitively be called the father of psychoanalytic literary criticism.

This is why it pays to learn how to read. It makes texts easily accessible to us and also explains why certain kinds of art fascinate us. Here what holds us is the expression in the language of poetry of the irrational or subconscious/unconscious sides of ourselves that deal with sex and violence or Eros and Thanatos, which also find an echo in us as they deal with primary and primal relationships and urges, desires and drives that all of us do not speak of but none of us can deny, as they appear in fractured forms in slivers like broken glass that can cut our hands in our dreams and - yes - in our nightmares and from our past wounds, bleeding but transformed and bringing us (at times, salvation) through their re-making into art and poetry.

http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/doors/theend.html (Lyrics of The End)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_JHeHcjrIg (The video from the movie of The End.)

Canons | Literature DIY | Dr Ampat Koshy

Canons | Literature DIY | Dr Ampat Koshy

How To Enjoy a Poem: Taking the example of Langston Hughes' 'Harlem' or 'A Dream Deferred .' - Learning and Creativity

How To Enjoy a Poem: Taking the example of Langston Hughes' 'Harlem' or 'A Dream Deferred .' - Learning and Creativity

Indian English Literature, Literary Criticism and Theory - Learning and Creativity

Indian English Literature, Literary Criticism and Theory - Learning and Creativity

Keralite Writing in English-II | Literature DIY | Dr Ampat Koshy

Keralite Writing in English-II | Literature DIY | Dr Ampat Koshy

Poetry and Keralite Writing in English - 1 - Learning and Creativity

Poetry and Keralite Writing in English - 1 - Learning and Creativity

Written on August 18, 2012

The diary of leaving Leaving is not leavings. The landscape of a childhood with its plantain trees yams and creeping bitter gourd vines is the richest source for one's future discovered much later. The language unlearned is a loss. Living in books, printed pages and far away realms of the imagination is not enough, dear Breath Looking at the 'kaduvas' from a distance and not knowing what the others were up to, not being sunk in native soil as if they were oddments, all of it was something that added up to and increased my losses. Not that I don't hate the culture terrorists or the moral police and the religious fanatics but the broadening, widening canvas of colours also loses much specificity. Search for essence makes one lose all sense of belonging. The child now forever floats in an empty sky like those winged seeds, tiny parachutes in which unseen fairies cuddle my 'appooppan's thaadi' with its silvery gossamer filaments so ethereally beautiful, but searching desperately for crannies, places to lodge, safe catchment areas, sheer and mere good ground to call home and flourish but all that's left is the nature of the 'udumbu' Won't you love me? We are different and most of what you are or what I am will never be known by each other separated by languages and customs and rituals and rites and a million other things of strangeness and differences. Yet love me, please - sex is not a construct and touch, taste and smell can create memories - a new his and herstory that can overlay if assiduously pursued an eternity of palimpsests and give us for a while or ever , if destined, a feeling of completeness but even that is not real anymore in these new whorls where the voice I hear is once removed from reality as is the moving image I see, the words are not material; your hands made no paper want to make you blush and the writing is deflected as if by the lack of calligraphy that might have charmingly hid more than it revealed. So, as in under the water experiments for seismic disturbance from a great distance I hear the earthquake faults being plumbed and if everything collapses like the new games that thirst more for destruction than alleviation or value, brownling, my Breath, let us close our eyes and return to our childhood gardens, a little kanthari will spice up our poor man's meal of kanji and salt and a few button onions balance it off while the swing awaits and your ribboned pleats fly in the air already in anticipation of the hands that will push you up up up unreachable into the infinity of the blue sky and the spinning green up there and the white clouds and sunlight dazzling in the summer with crow pheasant calls and kuyil songs the leaves falling down occasionally under the mango on your hair and blouse and skirt. Still the heart beats with restless questions. Who am I? Why born? When to die? What is life? Like the pulse and breath and heartbeat, air, water, food and the other unanswered because unasked question Do you love me? Did you ever really love me? Will you, forever? Eternally? Village girl, can't you see it was that in you that I loved and that imaginary imagined child that usurped my heart leaving me and you helpless, bleeding silently mutual this suffering but endless now my wandering leaving leaving leaving... walking endless roads alone. Is this leaving like leavings? I refuse to acknowledge it.

Organic

Not just the size
the shape
the form
the feel
the colour
the smell
the texture
the taste
the contours

all -
matter

Earthshake

Earth, you are killing
unreasonably
not where you should
but where you want
Have you also turned
human like us?
Please return
to your goddess-ness

It hurts me

It hurts me
only when I think of you
trapped in a body
wordless

Maybe it hurts me more than it does you?

The tears fall from my eyes
like torrential rain
thinking of how
when I go away
you cannot express -
I cannot ever know -
what you feel, then
and when I return
you cannot express -
I cannot ever know -
what you feel, again
and then, thinking of that one day
when one goes away to stay
my chest constricts more
my tears fall faster
even as I pray
that I will not be the one to, first
or you
or she or them
but it may all happen together
though I know such prayers are not answered
so I hope again, that it may happen the other way
you first, then she and then I
but if it  goes the way of nature
then I know it will go thus
I first, then she, then you

Thinking of that
I get upset
but do not know what to do
except to wipe my eyes
go on
as if
there is a choice
when there never was one.

War Plane

War is over
but it is never "Happy Christmas"
anymore, on earth
Copters still fly overhead
Border skirmishes continue
Last night a bomber flew overhead
loud and thunderous
penetrating into my sleep
so deeply
that war seemed  real, its price as steep
as ever, and night its only natural keep.

http://www.rankopedia.com/CandidatePix/35396.gif

Reuel

Can you understand God?
Do you need to? No
For to you He is not the Word.
Is He the Image?
You do not need to understand God
You "live and move and have
your being in Him."
He is for you beyond word and image
in love, in deed and being.

Earth, make me move, under my feet

As earthquakes have an epicentre
so are you mine

Wild, the tremors rip through me
in increasing magnitude
The last one was 7.6
on the Richter scale

The bed was shaking
the lights swaying
though the time was day
and the windows, closed

I wondered if it was Exorcist
and you had come to possess me
lovely in your disheveled state

You are my earthquake
but I cannot stay away
anymore
though the panes are rattling
the pots and pans
haunted by your sway

Whether the tremors subside
or you kill me
I want you there, to make us quake
I want  you, to stay.

Breaking the Rules

When I said she should pay
she went away.

The Significant Anthology