“ A Life Lived Later “ (Poetry) by Anurag Mathur,Penguin Books,2005,Price Rs 150.Reviewed by Dr Karanam Rao.
Poetry ,if at all it needs to surpass, must ‘surprise the reader with a fine excess’, and if it’s labored and disingenuous, it’s better not come at all. I don’t want sound too harsh or too cynical in censuring all new poetry that is being churned out constantly in India I’m sure, it has lost its definitive edge of sharpness of focus or intent, especially when compared to poetry that is practiced and written in the west. Where’s the much- needed punch and verve in the professedly postmodern Indian English poetry? Anurag Mathur’s new anthology of poems titled “A Life Lived Later”, seems to me the corrective in the metaphorical and literal.sense.His metier seems to have found a peculiar niche in the diasporic theme where he writes of his temporary displacement, his nostalgic memories of the past relationships with the land and the people, and of his childhood and of his coming of age. In all this splendid oeuvre, there’s freshness and ingenuity in the idiom of expression and splendid ease in the communication of the felt
experience. Here is an example where perception and metaphor mingle into a syncopated layers of meaning. He moon brings memories Tossing them like clinking coins Through a window golden. Sun-striped rooms With canvas easels The wind and the grass On an Okalahoma plain.A perfect blend of the landscape and the seascape ,metaphor and meaning.where the poet succeeds in effortlessly fusing the flurry of emotion into crystalline experience. In yet another of his poem called “Poetry” ,Mathur plays on the image where thought becomes subservient, nay superfluous.It acts like a sparkle of light in which the whole experience is assiduously communicated. Words like little children Playing hide and seek in the dark Succumb to the convulsing animal 2.. In the flame.But when Mathur endeavors to be consciously importing Indianness into his poems, they turn out to be bald and disingenuous. Whether in the evocation of the milieu or the ethos of change and permanence, or in translating theemotional content into the spontaneity of a metaphor or a symbol, the vigor seems to have been lost in the mere whiff of confabulated discourse. And the rhythm seems to falter. Along some dusty road My
ancestors used to live, See how the world has changed, But the dust remains the same. (“ Dusty Ancestors “)It’s more a statement of facticities than a genuine poetic effusion, moreinanity than an opulent repository of the past that’s being recrudesced. In fact, I find Mathur slipping into flippant uncertainties most of the time where the interest palls and rhythm gets mired but when he tries to follow the main stream American literary tradition ofwriting, the result is an exuberant fusion of theme and form, text and context. Here is the superb instance where he dexterously showcases his potential to shore the meaning into a metaphor. In the burning temple of desire The red ash of memory Draws designs of momentsWe spent together. (“ Desire and Memory”)