Not Far from the River: Poems from the Gatha-Saptasati

by David Ray (Translator)

ancient Sanskrit poetry, tr David Ray

Genres: Poetry, India

160 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1990

Reviews

[Md. Shahedul Islam Shawn · Rating 2 out of 5]

not for me

[Ty · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book has 356 of the 700 poems that make up the Gāthā Saptaśati, which was compiled in India about 2,000 years ago. All the poems are four lines long, and most of them are about love or sex but none of them gave me a boner. In the introduction Ray says that he decided to eliminate those verses that would require footnotes; I had no desire to explain pantheistic notions or faith that 'the moon pours out ambrosia when it falls into the mouth of the god Rahu in an eclipse.' I didn't want to deal with archaic lore, e.g., certainty that throbbing in the left eye of a woman was considered auspicious for a seducer. Both of those examples sound like they could be really good poems and I wish he would have included them and more like them instead of being content to translate 200 poems about boobs. There are a lot of pretty good ones in here though, and I typed up some of my favorites right here, and also right here:

Their son's first teeth marks
on an apple, and she runs all the way
to the field where he's plowing.
She yells, but he hardly looks up.


Though the entire village burned down
we had the pleasure of seeing each other
still alive, our faces all flushed,
passing that scorched jug around.