Songs of a Coward: Poems of Exile

by Perumal Murugan, பெருமாள் முருகன், Aniruddhan Vasudevan (Translator)

A king decrees that all humans be skinned alive. A man runs from words that hound him like a pack of wolves. A legion of white snakes sweeps across a land blighted by drought. A beleaguered soul laments the loss of a homeland. A coward's many virtues are lauded to disturbing effect.
By turns passionate, elegiac, angry, tender, nightmarish and courageous, the poems in Songs of a Coward weave an exquisite tapestry of rich images and turbulent emotions. Written during a period of immense personal turmoil, these verses are an enduring testament to the resilience of an imagination under siege and the liberating power of words in one's darkest moments.

Genres: Poetry

325 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 15, 2017

About the author

Primary profile for this author.

Do NOT merge author profiles in different languages/spelling.

Per GR policy, books published in another language/script should have the name on that book as secondary author, with Perumal Murugan as primary author.

Perumal Murugan is a well-known contemporary Tamil writer and poet. He was written six novels, four collections of short stories and four anthologies of poetry. Three of his novels have been translated into English to wide acclaim: Seasons of the Palm, which was shortlisted for the prestigious Kiriyama Award in 2005, Current Show, and most recently, One Part Woman. He has received awards from the Tamil Nadu government as well as from Katha Books.

Reviews

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 4 out of 5]

He is a better poet than as a writer.

One thing for sure - he is a poet rather than a short story writer.
I have read three of his books so far. This collection of poems, a novel called 'The Current Show' (which I couldn't enjoy much) and a short story collection called 'The Goat Thief' (which failed to impress me).
This one turned out to be the most memorable one for me.

However, this one is a huge change regarding his writing style.
These are not just poems!
His poetry has a way of nudging my innermost thoughts and wake them up.
I was literally transferred to a land of South India where there is an imaginary home where I was comfortable watching him do all the things he described in the lines.
In this book, he describes about growing up, facing life, the joys and the prejudices he kept facing, the dilemma of being a writer, his innermost thoughts and appreciation of everything good or bad that keeps happening in his life.

Some lines are difficult to follow yet when I read twice they tell me a lot more than I can think of.

His way of playing with words is simply amazing, closest to being magical!

When I picked up this collection, I thought he would talk about the times of partition and some patriotic poems. But how wrong I was!
All this book talks about is how a person sees his world in his own special ways.

I highly recommend you to pick up this collection of poems from one of the most prolific writers of our time.

Did I say Perumal Murugan is more of a poet?

[Sonali Dabade · Rating 3 out of 5]

I want to say I'm neutral about this one but I really don't want to comment on this.

[Aishwarya Sharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

In this poem collection by Murugan, there are numerous traces of best works of Perumal all over. Flowing from brutally and mercilessly expressing the loathe he has faced by society, he adds a tinge of accepting the same with pungent love. In a long time, someone had not articulated the feeling of loneliness, self-acceptance and the shunning-down hatred that society has to offer.

[Sharayu Gangurde · Rating 3 out of 5]

I ardently wished I could read Tamil while reading this collection. The translator seems to have fell short of a little something. Sometimes the meter wasn't right and I know we can't expect it in poems such as the ones written here by Mr. Murugan. Some of the poems like the one dedicated to Kalburgi and another titled, bitterness touched various despair nerves within me. I feel the intensity of his poetry must definitely be greater than the translation here. It somehow felt inadequate. Or maybe my love for him gravitates more for his novels.

In any case, I am still his fan.

[Nitish Chandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Mr. Murugan wrote these poems when he was facing outrage from certain groups against one of his books. He says that he had completely lost his interest in writing. But when you hit the rock bottom you can only move upwards. And that exactly what he has done. 'Songs of a coward' if a brave attempt towards finding yourself and thus poems of exile have achieved excellence! Becoming a voice for the people, for yourself in never easy. But seldom have artists taken an easy way out!

[Pacha · Rating 4 out of 5]

Painful, depressing, loss of all hope, anger, desperation, going into a shell, hibernation - it was a very difficult read let alone understanding what Perumal must have gone through... its melancholy from start and only keeps going down and down and down...

[Pratik Wavare · Rating 5 out of 5]

हृद्यभेदक

[seriy moon · Rating 4 out of 5]

im surprised by how much i actually enjoyed this

[Janani Prabhuvasan · Rating 5 out of 5]

he made the mundane life sound intriguing. laughed, smiled and sympathized with many of these.

[Ann Jacob · Rating 5 out of 5]

But
in my language
silence squats firmly
in all those places
meant for my words

[Cade Turner-Mann · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5-3
I just don't know about this collection. I'm not sure if it was the translation or my lack of cultural understanding, but I found this book fairly underwhelming. There were some moments of brilliance which kept me going but there were often times I felt the poems were very same/same or just lacking emotionally, for me at least.

[Jayashri R · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has given me a week of emotional peaks that I could have missed even if I were to live a thousand years :)

[Gayathri · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was curious when I picked up this book. In fact, this is not my usual genre, but I was pulled in by his interview published in a weekly shortly after the book's release. Of course, reading it in its original form in Tamizh would have been very different. So, about the book, the author to put in his own words had written these poems for himself. To give a leeway to that constant voice that was once booming within but then later subdued by the so called moral cries of the community, to vent the hurt & the pain, to heal or even to hope, I guess. Few of the poems quite naturally pass his pains of hurt and anger onto the reader. Of course, sometimes it did feel repetitive, but then when looked at as a chronicle of the author's mental journey through pain, hurt, and anger, every single poem in here felt important and significant to me. For someone, who wants to understand the consequences of controversies such as madhorubagan, this book is a suggestive read.