Wani Nazir
Publisher: Book Street Publications, October 2021
Price: ₹ 200 INR
This collection of eighty sensitively penned poems, by Wani Nazir, brims with spine-chilling metaphors and soul-stirring imagery, which brings about a never-ending churning in the reader's heart. The poems make you wring your hands in impotent rage, gnash your teeth in indignation, and unbeknownst to you, a silent tear trickles down your cheek, which you try to furtively brush away.
I have seen Nazir make diligent strides in the realm of poetry from the
time he wrote his first book of poetry, ‘...and the Silence Whispered’, to the present where he has created a niche
for himself in the field of contemporary poetry. His
spell-binding imagery, the exquisite interplay of metaphors, and dark emotions
show us how meticulously he has honed his poetic skills.
In the Acknowledgements, Nazir says “my parents are the ones whose syllables
and syntax I wring and pound to form poetry.” And let me maintain, that
those parental syllables and syntax have wrung out some remarkable poems from
the innermost recesses of his heart, where we find grief and hope jostling each
other for space, and hope trying to put the healing touch on a bruised and
battered heart.
In many a poem, we find the sensitive poet swirling in a miasmic haze, where a
'thousand memories burrow a hole in my chest ‘crushing them under my pen
into scraps of aborted metaphors’, [Ruins, p 28]. What a
visceral punch the following line is: ‘Ruins never make homes for dead
bones.’!
Since Kashmir is my
homeland too, I cannot but add my voice to that of the poet and exclaim,
‘Mouth of my nights
opens up,
and, a thousand demons
prowl around to devour
green and raw dreams.’
‘I am Kashmir –
an Eden whose Adam
has been long exiled to uncertainty’. [Kashmir, p 62]
Not unlike the poet, you find yourself writhing
with the ‘pain of loss’
[Writing a Poem, p 116], and with his eyes see,
“The eyes of the
Jhelum
jet out a deluge of tears
Streaming pain and suffering
Down her crinkled cheeks”
[Seasons in Kashmir: Spring, P2]
The imagery in most of the poems stuns with its
intensity:
“The tree has grown new leaves-
green
and full of spring dreams.
But, the veins turbulent with
the bitter memory of the fallen leaf,
ooze out threnodies
through the hole-
green and raw,
and spill them all over
the lexis of my canvas.” [The Fall Pp 9- 10]
“My innards will be eaten away too
till the sun sprays
salt of pain
through a hole in my tongue [Way back Home, p 111]
In his back page
blurb, Yuyutsu Sharma, Himalayan Poet, editor, translator, and author of Annapurna
Poems and A Blizzard in my Bones: New York Poems, says, that the
book is
‘dotted with stains of innocent blood, shed along the banks of Rive
Jhelum’, and indeed,
Kashmir being my homeland
too, I have often found myself bleeding at the plight of Kashmir- at the
disfiguration of a paradise- at its mutation into something unimaginable.
Is it really no longer the land of the Sufi saints, of babbling brooks,
cascading streams, back-slapping bonhomie, cheerful camaraderie which has long
been etched in memory? Such images of a glorious, not a gory past, cry to be
resurrected from the palimpsest of time.
At times his poems make us reel
under the powerful impact, and his words which seem to erupt from an
overwhelming heart - Decomposed and shriveled veins of desiccated leaves,
gnarled boughs, whimpering laments, bruised and putrid corpses, scalding sobs,
skewed strokes of fatigue, threnodies, unrealized dreams, hangman’s noose,
frozen molecules of the snow – all speak of the immensity of loss and longing.
And we are left with the image of a distraught poet, sitting hunched in
desolate surroundings of cold winter months in his backyard waiting for spring,
trying to exorcise ghosts that haunt him,
‘And twirl the long spools of life
Through my fingers
Trying to rediscover
My lost history down Adam. [Rediscovering my History, pp 86 - 87]
As you close the book's pages, the chill finally settles in your bones too, and
you find yourself waiting for those sun rays that will thaw that seemingly
eternal chill.
You grind down ‘the last morsels of hope’, [Pain and Memory 115 ], not
unlike the poet, plowing forth with a fistful of prayers, and a heart full of
hope, wondering, like the poet
‘ if dreams can change the world
or lay heavy on the eyelashes?’ [Dreams, P 5]
The poet has made deft use of similes and metaphors which appeal highly to the
poetic sensibilities.
“The day frowns like the shallow furrows of
my brow
The night grins like the burrows of some broken vow” [The cathartic Morph, p 77]
The book also has nine very well-crafted ghazals,
which the reader wants to read again and again. The underlying pathos and
the sense of yearning refuse to leave one, long after one has finished reading
the book and wiped that silent tear.
I wish some stars could gild them bright this night
His words are drenched so much in grief, yearning, and sense of loss, that
they keep hammering on your head, and despite the verdant greenery, that you
are surrounded with, the eyes of your soul see only a desolate terrain
enveloped in an elegiac silence, and a heartbroken poet slowly disappearing
into ' a graveyard of memories. ’
It is not hyperbolic when I say that this is a book to be read – re
–read, chewed and discussed, kept on the shelf; pulled out again, this
time to peel off the myriad layers and nuances to look for new meanings in
them.
Hoping that this sensitive poet will ‘stitch a new poem from the
tattered pieces.’
A poem that sparkles and shimmers with notes of resurrection.
A poem that throbs with rejuvenation. A poem about soothing poetry, where
guns no longer burrow in the marrow of the night, but ‘carve light out of
its darkness’ [Guns and Poems, p 96] no demons prowl around with the
malevolent intention of gobbling up embryonic dreams, where there is no exile and no
uncertainty, and a thaw has ushered in, seeping warmth into
long chilled hearts, and an angel blows the trumpet to resurrect the corpses
strewn around.
And only harmony and peace reign.
Here is wishing the poet all the best in his pursuit of enriching the poetic
world with his meaningful poetry.
***
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| Santosh Bakaya |
Bio: Acclaimed for her poetic biography of Mahatma Gandhi, Ballad of Bapu, Dr Santosh Bakaya, a poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, Tedx speaker, has written more than twenty books across different genres. Her latest book is Runcible Spoons and Pea green Boats [Poems, 2021]. She runs a regular column Morning Meanderings in Learning and Creativity. Com. Her collaborative e-books From Prinsep Ghat to Peer Panjal with Gopal Lahiri and Vodka by the Volga with Dr. Ampat Koshy [Blue Pencil] have been # 1 Amazon bestsellers, and her latest e-book with Ramendra Kumar, M├йlange of Mavericks and Mutants [Blue Pencil, July, 2022] is winning laurels.
