"You are the Storm to my Quiet'', imagine how genius, soulful, and vulnerable the entire compilation of poems in this book would be if a single phrase from the second page sounds like this! "Jasmines in her Hair" comes out as a brilliant Anthology of Poems divided into seven basic segments, that make you go through the various stages of love, starting from the first instances of seeking your soulmate, to the language of love, loss, pain, reconciliation, dilemma, rediscovery, serendipity, and Alchemy. The poems get an upgrade as you embark on a new segment as if the poet walks you through his own journey of first hints of love, wounds of heartbreak, reconciliation, self-discovery, and finding love again. "Love Language, and Lilith", were two of my favorite poems from the prelude segment. The next segment "Yesterday Ember's" may stir a chord in your neck, if you feel the intensity of words between his couplet and quatrains of heartbreak, loss, and void. "I've run out of Alibis", is a poem that needs to be framed separately and presented. The entire segment is RAW & BRUTALLY REAL!
Sharing one poem:
"Maybe, I'm not too much.
Maybe, you've just been used to too little.
Much like those
Who walk with a crutch, find the ground too fickle"
.
The reason why I have sheer respect for the poet is because he didn't defame any gender, he was very subtle and disciplined with his use of language and verbose. I often find people taking out their angst on a particular person by generalizing an entire gender, and I kept on searching if the poet had made any such remarks, but he was chivalrous with his poems, and nor did he end up blaming anyone in the tricky situations of life. "Save me from me", and "It was Time", etched their words around my soul, they were so profound with their meaning of pain and heart-clutching anxiety expressed majestically. In the segment of Rediscovery, the author tries to mend the broken hearts by weaving a new journey of self-consciousness, higher awareness, and stability to hold, setting oneself free from the old rotten roots of hurts and upsets, while looking at the road ahead. "She is Art", has to be one of the literary masterpieces for me. I consider a book heavily successful when the author accomplishes his desire by transforming and weaving his words into meaningful prose or phrase, that hits the reader at a peculiar point. If a book doesn't touch you, connect with you at some point, or leave you with something to ponder upon, or something meaningful indeed, then how would you describe the success of that book?
.
This is one of the best poetry books I have been through, and believe me, I have read quite a lot of good ones. The author has refrained from using any kind of gender agenda, on the contrary, he has tried to seek a clearer and more stable version of love, and instead of leaving his readers with broken hearts and moist eyes, he has taught lessons that he has embarked on, the wisdom that comes with pain, and a journey of renewing ourselves for self-discovery, and then he leaves you with a sight of beautiful hope. With one of his poems of his last segment "No matter what", he said it all. As you make your way through the last pages of the book, you'll realize that the poet has left you in a state of solace, and reminded the young, old, the ones in love, the ones yearning for love, the ones caught up in a fight, all about the 'universal code of love', it's fate and struggle, and by the end, he leaves you refreshed, as his book rekindles a new hope inside you, and thereby, you know that a seasoned poet must have carved his soul out with his bleeding pen throughout the years, to form this anthology with well-divided segments, that take a linear pathway of the flow of love, it's end, and a new beginning. Now that is what you call mature poetry.