November 2018

Paperback: 86 pages Publisher: Five Oaks Press (August 13, 2017) Language: English Price: $14.00 ISBN-10: 1944355367 ISBN-13: 978-1944355364 Reviewed by: Pramila Tripathi The Temple She Became by Rachel Custer is the poet’s debut book, consisting 61 poems. Going through her poems will present the readers before a world of her time spent in Indiana, which she...

Nikita Parik Caked in mud caged in faith prayers keep me alive 108 names but I recognize none (“Devi 2.0”) The binaries of personal and public must be subverted when seemingly personal concerns voiced through personal expressions transcend to achieve a universality of sorts. In her debut poetry book, Apostrophe, Barnali Ray Shukla’s versification of seemingly...

Publisher: Red River (2018) ISBN-10: 8193613066 ISBN-13: 978-8193613061 Price: 300 INR Reviewed by: Koushik Sen Namrata Pathak’s book of poems, that’s how Mirai eats a pomegranate, although has myriad patterns, raises itself in a kind of impasto, that has the jump scare effect by a behemoth. Sometimes, this figure is invoked with an uncanny...

Publisher: Dhauli Books (2018) ISBN-10: 8193604741 ISBN-13: 978-8193604748 Price: 350 INR Reviewed by:Koushik Sen The first thing that would catch your eye while you leaf through the pages of this book is the sharp, post-apocalyptic images that have been ruthlessly painted by the poet with a dash of his uncanny wit. When you read...

A Unique Blend of the Familiar with the Experimental   When you undress a poem with dignity, delicately like a lover, it will disrobe you of excess, accessing your inner feelings (“Conduction”)   In the fifty-one poems included in his much-acclaimed third collection of poetry titled This Summer and That Summer (Bloomsbury 2015), Sanjeev Sethi manages...

Kiriti Sengupta I forget the poems I write. I don’t blame memory. Thanks to the two molar teeth I lost in spite of being a dental surgeon. They were badly broken. I had excruciating pain and did not listen to the consultant who had advised Root Canal Therapy. I wanted...

Not Garden-Variety In dirge of desires fear transacts with hedge of hesitancy to keep pace with striptease of tides. Come-on by tits or tattoo on hineys stir intuitively. Primer of pomology has other clauses some read some unread. Fruition isn’t for everyone. Prescription Towels loll in the sun after mopping wet bodies, you and I wipe each other with our skins in lambency in another episode of linkages. Equipping...

REFLECTIONS Those Who Pass Slowly , slowly they pass by Those who breastfed and put us to bed who worked hard to send us to schools and colleges those who scolded and punished us who revered and envied us, hugged and desired us, those who longed for our death, one by one, slowly, slowly. Slowly ,slowly A part of us too...

RENDEZVOUS poems no longer emerge out of some verdant soil like lilies reflexively spreading their pink cheer they don’t happen as they did twisting out of a gnawing gut... glow worms on the screen shedding light in dark corners words tapping themselves out of their own accord have lost their easy fluidity stanched like blood from a wound they want me to...

BLACK IN GRAY AMERICA (in memory of Sam Cornish) You recalled a city of stinks: the shabby breath of yellow teeth, filthy socks on crusty feet, blood-spill dried on the sidewalk. The dirt-floor basement room your mother tried to sweep clean rustled all night as rodents named and renamed you in dreams. The sorry carcass of Baltimore coughed up feverish...

suicide paula’s weak moment leaving me early sad lonely feeling nightly she returns softly whispering her lost love still in my heart bliss alone in library empty used bookstore roaming shelves sacred experience like attending church feeling hopeful promise quietly turning pages becoming dreamer again freedom waking to birdsong before first light building small fire boiling water from stream instant coffee oats in tin cup ready for journey picking way over deadfall brushing aside cobwebs escaping...

Balasan I’ve met the river before, but this is a new setting— like meeting a parent in their office. Bala—sand, san—stone: a river baptised for spitting its monsoonal gifts, like calling a girl Khushi, to bait happiness. The mountains that fight the grease of dust when we look at it from Matigara, they are here now, my...