Poetry Reads: First Fig by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The oft-quoted lines of this particular poem first appeared in the 1920 poetry collection A Few Figs from Thistles. So much is said in these lines - that to truly live is to burn and dazzle each day with one's free will and wish. 

The poet doesn't need to write an autobiography to get the message across. Instead, as if addressing all the people known to her, probably from an imaginary stage, she accumulates her entire life in four lines of verse.

First Fig
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light.

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(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Fiction Reads: Coming Through Slaughter by Michael Ondaatje

First published in 1976, this is a remarkable debut by Ondaatje, for Coming Through Slaughter uses jazz music, multiple narrator-perspective, selection of factual records and the gift of flowing yet cropped prose to add bones, veins, blood, skin, myth, poetry and soul to Buddy Bolden's largely unknown life.

Buddy Bolden was for real. From whatever little is known about him, and dissipating the myths that have cemented themselves, one thing is certain - Bolden was a famous cornet player at New Orleans in his band from 1900 to 1907. He is considered to be a jazz pioneer, a musician who constantly improvised as he played, consistently touching high decibel levels. Unfortunately, Bolden was never recorded.   

Bolden - second from left, standing. The sole surviving photograph of Bolden's band is used to strengthen 'the truth within the lie', as good fiction is often referred to.   

Ondaatje gives us an enjoyable, tragic myth, breathing in characters, jazz lyrics, shackles of fame, fear and destruction. In this fictional novel, Bolden is a barber, publisher of gossip by day, drunkard by afternoon and musician by evening. 

He was the best and the loudest and most loved jazzman of his time, but never professional in the brain. Unconcerned with the crack of the lip he threw out and held immense notes, could reach a force on the first note that attacked the ear. He was obsessed with the magic of air, those smells that turned neuter as they resolved in his lung then spat out in the chosen key. The way the side of the mouth would drag a net of air in and dress it in notes and make it last and last, yearning to leave it up there in the sky like air transformed into cloud. (COMING THROUGH SLAUGHTER / PAGE 11)

Other characters Ondaatje conjures to create a mysterious haze around Bolden include Nora Bass as Bolden's wife, Webb - his close friend, now cop; Bellocq - a photographer specialized in taking pictures of whores; and Robin - the other woman in Bolden's life. The non-linear arrangement also keeps us hooked. A little gem of a book, raw in some ways, yet astonishing for the control a debutant novelist (Ondaatje was 33 then) displays. 

Recommended Edition
The image displayed below is the front cover of the concise Bloomsbury Classics edition - handy to carry around, the hardcover ensures durability.

(Article by Snehith Kumbla) 

Book Excerpts: Narcopolis by Jeet Thayil

An opium filled opus if there was one, Narcopolis has Thayil take the garb of fiction to document a time of hallucination, ennui and quiet decay through a motley group of characters, covering three decades in old, derelict Bombay.  But what stands out in remarkable swing to the rest of the conventionally written content is the prologue titled Something for the Mouth. In the hardcover edition, the sole prologue sentence stretches for six and half pages. It is a breathtaking piece of literature - telling of a drug addict's delirium, brilliance and also his doom. Here is an excerpt of the first few lines: 

Bombay, which obliterated its own history by changing its name and surgically altering its face, is the hero or heroin of this story, and since I'm the one who's telling it and you don't know who I am, let me say that we'll get to the who of it but not right now, because now there's time enough not to hurry, to light the lamp and open the window to the moon and take a moment to dream of a great and broken city, because when the day starts its business I'll have to stop, these are night-time tales that vanish in sunlight like vampire dust - wait now, light me up so we do this right, yes, hold me steady to the lamp, hold it, hold, good, a slow pull to start with, to draw the smoke low into the lungs, yes, oh my, and another for the nostrils, and a little something sweet for the mouth, and now we can begin at the beginning with the first time at Rashid's when I stitched the blue smoke from pipe to blood to eye to I and out into the blue world - ....

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(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Poetry Reads: Perfume by Arthur Symons

The arrival of a new bookshelf at my den has led to arrangement, alignment and reappearance of what was previously scattered and stacked away to temporary oblivion. For there was a time when I used to scrawl out in notebooks any kind of gripping literature that I chanced upon. The poem featured below is a reproduction from one such notebook.

Teenage years; a time of titillation; carnal desires were at their wild, uncontrolled zenith. Browsing the Internet was an expensive affair then, limited to rare visits to cyber cafes. Books, magazines and newspapers were thus my source fountain. This poem is a remnant of those bubble dream days, wasted as they were, wound in the most natural of yearnings.

Perfume

by Arthur Symons

Shake out your hair about me, so,
That I may feel the stir and scent
Of those vague odours come and go
The way our kisses went.

Night gave this priceless hour of love,
But now the dawn steals in apace,
And amorously bends above
The wonder of your face.

'Farewell' between our kisses creeps,
You fade, a ghost, upon the air;
Yet ah! the vacant place still keeps
The odour of your hair.

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(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Non-Fiction Reads: Death and the Magician: The Mystery of Houdini by Raymond Fitzsimons

Once upon a time in the 19th century, a 17 year-old Hungarian immigrant by the name of Ehrich Weiss was still undecided whether magic will take him places.Ehrich then chanced upon the memoirs of French magician Jean-Eugene Robert-Houdin and his decision was made. Inspired, the teenager borrowed 'Houdin' for his stage name and added an 'i' to it. 

Among magicians, Houdini (24th March 1874 - 31st October 1926) is still considered to be among the best that ever lived. Death and the Magician tells an extraordinary tale of an exceptional talent and also of a life shrouded in strangeness and mystery. Houdini's relationship with his mother played a major part in his life. It is said that as a child Houdini never cried and if he ever was troubled, his mother's heartbeat soothed him.Over the years, the fear of losing his mother only grew in him.

The methods behind many of the legendary magic tricks are revealed here, yet the amazement persists. From the substitution trick, the water can trick to the classic handcuff release, Houdini was relentless in his pursuit for speed, deception and perfection. A curiousity-driven visit to a lunatic asylum led him to view the use of the straitjacket on the inmates. Houdini bought an old one and put it on. He then struggled for seven days with it (His wife Bess was convinced that he had gone mad), before - bruised and bloody, he finally succeeded in setting himself free. Such was Houdini.

Beyond death

As intriguing as the magic was Houdini himself. The news of his 72 year-old mother's death (Houdini was 39 then, a traveling magician) crushed him. His wife was witness to him waking up from sleep and calling out his mother's name in vain expectation that she would return. He visited her grave frequently, bending down, begging her to tell him what her last words were. 

Houdini's interest then veered to seeking answers beyond death.Desperately wanting to reach out to his dead mother, he started attending seances and interacting with mediums, things he had once thought to be fake. This is where the biography gets even more intriguing, and at the end of it we are left wondering as much as Bess, as she writes to Houdini's friend Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on a letter dated December 16, 1926: "He buried no secrets. Every conjurer knows how his tricks were done - with the exception of just where or how the various traps or mechanisms were hidden.      

" It was Houdini himself that was the secret." 

(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

 

Poetry Reads: Auria by Snehith Kumbla

Ahoy, Wolf here. It gives me unabashed joy to present before you, dear readers, a poem written by me, titled - Auria.This poem first appeared in the May-June 2012 issue of the Reading Hour magazine.

Evening has long descended and fortunate circumstances have led to a rendezvous between lovers. The poet wishes for the world to be reduced to a hush, night to blanket every intruding light, such that two beings dwell calmly in their cocoon. Gentle, unhurried, cosy, velvety - in the cloud cover of these feelings does the poet meet the woman he adores. Eternity prevails.

Auria

by Snehith Kumbla

may the eyes of every

slithering light be blindfolded,

my love is here with me

may the night be

as quiet as a village,

my darling gently dries her wings

let no thought betray

no stone pelt a shiver

my dove goes visiting a dream

hush now, oh deepest

of all fathom, the
world floats on a heartbeat

all things done, undone,

things indelible, leisurely

things, now discarded

a parting feather in flight

descends...

her beguiling bejeweled body

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(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Graphic Novel Reads: Corridor by Sarnath Banerjee

Jehangir Rangoonwala sells second-hand books, plays chess with a customer/friend, hands out tea and unsolicited advice.

Digital Dutta stands for people who live and accomplish great things...in their dreams.

A collector of odd things is too anxious to make use of his priced possessions.

Shintu is newly married, worried to death about his sex life, a fear fueled by a quack with "40 years experience." Old Delhi and Kolkata play as bustling random backgrounds to these bumbling characters. 

First published in 2004, Corridor stands out for its sketched black & white human caricatures, sporadic witticisms and creative whirl of its story-boarding - the flow is unpredictable.

Banerjee starts with promise, introducing us to the characters with verve. The terse use of colour is deliberate and works well for the book.

What begins as jazz on paper meanders to abstractness and a hurried wind up.

After setting up the complexities of urban life in its characters, Corridor needed scale and ambition, and preferably more pages to fulfill its torch of promise.

Instead we are left with characters who we like, but do not get enough time to linger and comprehend.

Also, the use of graffiti and photographs from popular culture work only in a couple of bits. Otherwise the effect comes across as crammed use of digital technology than the work of an artist. 

Yet, for the attempt, oh fans of the graphic novel, Corridor is certainly worth a read.

Banerjee has the potential of sketching out a classic, what he needs is a fortress of a story to hold all his zaniness together.  

(Review by Snehith Kumbla)

 

Poetry Reads: Rat Race by John Agard

Now, I haven't read The Puffin Book of Poetry for Children in its entirety, but a selection of poems from this collection appeared a few years ago in a daily tabloid complete with cute illustrations.

It was an unintentional, ironical moment for a tabloid otherwise known for its scandalous gossip mongering content and colour photographs of beautiful women in swimsuits. Children were clearly not their target audience. Anyway, I had cut out the selection and preserved the published verse in my collage book, which I unearth here. This poem is by John Agard, a Afro-Guyanese poet and children's writer, presently living in Britain.

For starters, rat race is an urban term often used in relation to excessive, fruitless work done either individually or collectively. Positively viewed, it is a term meant to invoke reflection and change from a busy and stressful routine of toiling with the expectation of little reward. An article I had written on the 'I am busy' culture can be read here. 

Meanwhile, here is the poem.


Rat Race
by John Agard

Rat Race?
Don't make us laugh.
It's you humans
who're always in a haste.

Ever seen a rat
in a bowler hat
rushing to catch a train?

Ever seen a rat
with a briefcase
hurrying through the rain?

And isn't it a fact
that all that hurry-hurry
gives you humans heart
attacks?

No, my friend,
we rats relax.

Pass the cheese,
please.

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(Article by Snehith Kumbla)

Poetry Reads: Body, Remember.... by C.P. Cavafy

Ahoy, Wolf here and in this scorching Indian summer I allow myself to go astray in search of sensuous verse. The work presented here is translated from the Greek poetry of Constantine P. Cavafy (1863 - 1933).

A celebration of the body ensues, for the poet speaks to this temple of flesh, bone and soul as if it were a different person.We can thus safely assume that Cavafy is making a conversation with himself in sweet remembrance of his amorous trysts. There is also gratitude for the love made, and the joy of letting go is emphasized in the following lines.      

Body, Remember....
by C.P. Cavafy

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,
not only the beds you lay on,
but also those desires that glowed openly
in eyes that looked at you,
trembled for you in the voices—
only some chance obstacle frustrated them.
Now that it’s all finally in the past,
it seems almost as if you gave yourself
to those desires too—how they glowed,
remember, in eyes that looked at you,
remember, body, how they trembled for you in those voices.

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(Article by Snehith Kumbla)