Winter Poems
Poems were inspired by the relatively mild season that prevails in Kolkata following the season of festivities, the Durga and Kali Puja, and portray myriad shades of human life. Some of them deal with the imaginations of death and home while still others the idea of loss and coming to terms with gradual wasting of life.
The poems contained in this collection, Winter Poems, by Sabarna Roy were inspired by the relatively mild season that prevails in Kolkata following the season of festivities, the Durga and Kali Puja, and portray myriad shades of human life. Some of them deal with the imaginations of death and home while still others the idea of loss and coming to terms with gradual wasting of life. Many aspects of human life and commonplace human impulses are examined and brought to life through a range of imaginations and varied metaphorical associations. The poems are sure to delight the readers and generate a whole range of emotions among them.
Selected Excerpts
Winter Poems 2010 – 10
They forgot to put my body on fire On freshly chopped logs of wood On oil cracking and boiling They forgot the charm of cotton ball plugs, the sight of wetted white petals of fecund flowers, the absent-minded twirl of smoke chains, incense sticks, the sonorous trail of holy hymns, crackling sounds of earthen pots and above all, the communal mourning around a corpse Instead they hurled me down inside a pit – laboriously excavated, dark and deep And, instantaneously covered it up with fast-setting slurry With a sleight of hands that can be defeated only by mystic magicians at work So, I exist there frosted miles below From where you are waging your philosophical wars on trains against commuters struggling to reach their office on time, commissioning ecstatic cocaine soirees on yachts and rafts, executing orgies with strangers on a plane, stealing antiquity from private museums of nouveau billionaires For you had told me once: I will blow up my life Indoctrinating me with the scent of your body and introducing me to the nucleus of this explosive club: Death rattle Clan What holds me here is an intricate web of undefined silence and darkness – so pure in form – In this marsh of soil, water, plant roots and rotting flesh You worry sometimes, don’t you; struggling in sleep: Do I remember your face and touch as I crossed over the perimeter of life? Do I know that your face is one among their faces? Do I remember all their faces as distinctly as I should? Do I remember our plot of blowing up our lives? Might I end up sharing it with a fellow corpse? Remembering and forgetting are complex phenomena even otherwise; more so after you’ve crossed the gate Sometimes – nowadays – I will to laugh at our words – words crafted out of beliefs – mostly non-beliefs – yet preached with so much intensity, precision and timing – a way of time passing for all of us at this explosive club, Death rattle Clan.
Winter Poems 2012 – 2
This black girl in black short skirts and black flapped collar top Swam in the sea like a lethal fish – eerie silence all about her I watched her from the scorching shore Then she ran a long mile – miles – through the rubber woods Almost crazy dancing to Dido songs I chased her panting for air Through my apartment’s eastern window I saw her steel razor in hand foaming her dying dad’s head and then shaving off like a skilled barber She hardly talked to anybody in the community Smoked Wills in chains This petite black girl one day went to the terrace of her tower Shoved off her clothes and stood naked in the moonshine looking up in the sky And then as I adjusted my binoculars well Found beads of shining teardrops streaming down her cheeks.
Book Reviews
This small book of around 60 pages is a collection of 38 poems which were influenced by the fairly significant season following the Durga and Kali Puja festivities in Kolkata. It's that kind of season that produces lethargic mornings to reflect on your existence and feel the misty sky, when the sun refuses to rise, just like when we don't feel like getting out of bed. Some of them grapple with ideas of demise and home, while others also deal with the concept of suffering and a erratic depletion of time.
Winter is a season which gives time to all forms of life, to stop for a moment, reflect on your past and restart your life. It is also a season that encourages us to be warm and compassionate towards each other in such cold and chilling times filled with death, detachment and mourning. Hence, the author has intelligently titled this collection as "Winter Poems" which aptly describes the commonality in all the poems. All the poems portray the duality of such contrasting topics in a beautiful style which is loaded with metaphorical references.
All the poems have so many feelings that the I truly felt personally connected with them. They invoke a unique sense of nostalgia. I guess, it is more so, since I too reside in Kolkata and everything seemed unusually familiar. Each poem is special, and the author wrote every verse indeed very genuinely.
My favorite quote from the book has to be this :
Another Sabarna Roy book!! The book has two sets of poems. The first set, winter poems-2010. It as 12 poems and all deal with, in author's words, " the imaginations of death and home". Now thats something! As the author says, "What would the pleasure of living be without the imagination of death?"
They are quite different though, got me suprised at places and taken aback at some other.
As usual Sabarna Roy will give you wha5 you expect of his works for sure. So go shead and give this one a go!
Winter poems is a collection of poems, written by Sabarna Roy. As I loved his book, the etchings of the third quarter, i knew i had to read this one. The theme of this book is winter as every poem I read gave me chills down the spine and the beauty of the nature and the climate that was explained gives us the nostalgia that winter is already here. unless, you're in mumbai, it's really hot here. :P These poems come with different messages and situations like relationships, deaths, bisexual friend, some more deaths. What I always love about his poems are his metaphors in relation to the feelings explained in the nature's way. The way he pens down his poems gives you some realizations and one may even grow little sensitive because they subtly yet intriguingly express the feelings. some people might find the poems very jargony but I enjoyed them thorougly as they remind of the times I used to speak out all my feelings in a poem and this motivates me pick up the pen and start writing again. A really touchy book. Excellently written.