Jonahwhale

by Ranjit Hoskote

Jonahwhale, in three beautiful movements, takes on very current themes in its playful, mostly aquatic scope, moving from the ocean to the river Ganges to Marine Drive itself. It raises the narratives of Biblical eight century prophet Jonah, who escapes death by spending three nights in the belly of a whale, and the more recent Moby Dick, whose obsessive Captain Ahab chases the eponymous whale who bit off his leg; even as it resurrects the diverse figures who ran ships along the global trade routes of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the themes of the city at war with itself, among many other concerns. The whale is different things at different moments, in this work, as is the ocean. For, ultimately, Moby Dick is about perception and understanding or not understanding, and the whale is that which we all struggle to pierce; it is also, perhaps, that which swallows us whole and lets us live, sometimes ignorant of what it signifies. Are we within the whale, or without it? Does it always matter? For, in 'A Constantly Unfinished Instrument', Ranjit Hoskote tells us, 'Stay the course until you've caught / the quick, true surge of the ocean / that's felt the fire harpoon pierce its the ocean itself is the whale.At the heart of the broad, wide-ranging canvas Hoskote puts into play is the idea of synthesis, which he raises in this poem and which generates and regenerates life, in any case. 'If only I'd harpooned this monster on a page,' he teases us, in 'Ahab'; this is exactly what he is attempting to do, and often does. Jonahwhale is remarkably cosmopolitan in its reach; one poem ('As It Emptieth It Selfe') is inspired by the note to the copper engraving of a map of Bengal and parts of Odisha and Bihar prepared by official hydrographers to the East India Company. Another, 'Lascar' adapts a bit of a Sherlock Holmes story, set in 'Bombay-Liverpool-London, 1889', and calling up the wonderful spectre of a sea-cobra the narrator is sailing, with its 'phana' or hood.A sophisticated project in anamnesia, Jonahwhale retrieves fragments and episodes from the multiple pasts that we inherit; it makes an inquiry into the unregarded legacies of the colonial encounter at sea rather than on land. Ambitious, accessible and rejoicing in the language and beauty of the many stunning connections it makes, this new book establishes Hoskote as one of our most gifted contemporary poets.

Genres: Poetry

120 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 29, 2018

Reviews

[Joseph Schreiber · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went to a great deal of trouble to get a copy of this book. I tried to locate one when I was in India, the first one sent seems to have drifted off course in its global journey and, finally, a second attempt proved successful. Worth the wait in every way. This is a masterful collection, one that has accompanied me through the second half of the year. Engaging a wide variety of styles and forms these poems trawl history, art, modern music, and ocean imagery to explore themes of growth and crisis on the individual, community and planetary level.
A longer review can be found here: https://roughghosts.com/2018/12/20/th...

[Jayaprakash Satyamurthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I reread this in anticipation of Hoskote's new book, HUNCHPROSE, currently on its way to me.

This remains, in my opinion, one of the most accomplished Indian works of English poetry of the last decade. In the three sections of the book, Hoskote comes to grips with the ocean-going history of colonialism, evokes the chaos and layers of an Indian city - Poona in this case, but much could stand for other cities - and engages in a variety of responses to history and art, employing a wide range of techniques and forms. My only complaint is that Hoskote is an inveterate list-maker, and sometimes the list supercede the narrative, leaving me with variations but not enough theme.

[Chris Lynch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extraordinary. One of the best collections I've ever read. Taking some time to absorb, but it deserves its gorgeous dust jacket and the praise on the back. Combines lyric force and diversity of form with critical vision. Hoskote wears his learning lightly; the poems both delight and intrigue. A collection that orbits the earth and zooms to the street—I feel like I understand the world better for having read this book.

[Forrest Gander · Rating 5 out of 5]

Even if poetry’s “words saved no one,” they preserve a living human voice, they rescue a distant name “that comes to you like the light/ a star began transmitting a million years ago.” Ranjit Hoskote’s deeply affecting new book of poems chronicles the passions of displaced men and women (and animals) digging through history for their own traces, desperate to hoist some flag of themselves before “the stoplights changed/ without recording [their] passage.” Before travelers send only “their names home/ to be stitched into the family quilt,” before emperors and queens are forced to dig their own graves, before we become just another “phantom in the archive,” who will carve the meanings of our lives into a clay that will harden in the fires to come? Who will sing of the hominid who first engraved a bird into bone, of the man who tried to extract a beetle from his ear with a knife, of an animal’s epic journey across glacial moraine? What of your own life, reader, will wash up into the future? The great Chilean poet Vicente Huidobro said his understanding of poetry altered when an old Aymara man advised him: “Don’t sing to the rain, poet, make it rain.” Hoskote, too, charges the poet with responsibility. Because history remembers what is sung by poets like Hoskote who have “stropped/ [themselves] into a voice/ that could call down rain.”

[Prem · Rating 4 out of 5]

a gorgeous, stunningly realized vision of worlds, shifting and decentering who one might assume to be the narrator in surprising and evocative ways. the words are revelatory, the images a vision, and the ambition awe-inspiring. requires patience, but a rewarding read

[Prachi · Rating 3 out of 5]

someone else might love this better - there were moments where i loved it so much, there were moments where i thought why am i reading this? as with most poetry, needs to be reread of course, and a goodreads rating doesn't mean anything

[Michelle D’costa · Rating 5 out of 5]

These poems need to be re-visited. Re-readings offer many revelations. Brilliant poems.

[Tanuj Solanki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always at my desk, in case I feel like traveling. A masterwork.

[Sumith Chowdhury · Rating 4 out of 5]

Jonahwhale is a brilliant book of powerful poems on the landmass of history. It's the poet's wisdom, with a masterly touch with the sea that manifests into dramatic layer upon layer of eruditionary verses. The poems connects with civilizations, colonisations, urban alienations - mainly with magical seas/oceans where all life forms sustains itself. The various forms, exquisite lyrics, philosophical insights, prose, poems, epics with pure simplicity, traditional shape-shifting just like the transcendental waters makes this book an astonishing achievement. The imagistic, complex, imaginary, dazzling, poems crafted with grounded intelligence, form, lineation, takes reflection upon meditations. It has been written with utmost precision, innovative, social, ethical, sensitive, filled with knowledge & existence.

The heart fixes on nothing in this wasted province.
Whoever made anything of a kingdom of shadows?
Go find another home, my smothered hopes.
This stained heart has no roof to offer you.

Jonahwhale, in three beautiful movements, takes on very current themes in its playful, mostly aquatic scope, moving from the ocean to the river Ganga to Bombay's Marine Drive waterfront. It invokes the narratives of Biblical prophet Jonah, who escapes death by spending three nights in the belly of a whale, and Melville's Moby Dick, whose obsessive Captain Ahab chases the eponymous whale who bit off his leg. These poems resurrect the diverse figures who ran ships along the global trade routes of the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Hoskote reflects on the city at war with itself, and a planet embattled by ecological and political crisis.

At the heart of the rich, wide-ranging canvas, Hoskote puts into play the idea of cultural confluence. A sophisticated project in anamnesia, Jonahwhale retrieves fragments and episodes from the multiple pasts that we inherit; it makes an inquiry into the unregarded legacies of the colonial encounter at sea rather than on land. Ambitious, accessible and rejoicing in the language and beauty of the many stunning connections it makes, this new book establishes Hoskote as one of our most gifted contemporary poets.