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States of the Body Produced by Love
Love is a many-headed snake in Nisha Ramayya's debut poetry collection, twisting its way through devotion, sacrifice, and bliss. Seeking a way home, Ramayya discovers that homecoming - the impossible return - is a process of make-believe and magical thinking across Britain, India, and the infinite expanse.
Ramayya's visionary poetry traces an opalescent, treacherous world by way of heritage, ritual, and myth. Thousand-petalled lotuses bloom inside skulls, goddesses with dirty feet charm honeybees, strains of jazz standards bleed into anti-national anthems. Meditating on diasporic identity and relationships, her writing roams the Indo-European language family, finds consolation in genealogies of decolonial and anti-racist resistance, and roots itself in the movements between ancient Sanskrit texts and contemporary feminist prose poems.
In Ramayya's hands, the body assumes many forms as love produces many attraction and repulsion, excitement and exhaustion, selfishness and the dissolution of self. Desire, eroticism, and care contain the possibilities of shame, fury, and destruction. Moving towards and away from love, being translated and transformed by love, suffering under love and refusing its power - the poems in this book never leave love's hold.
Ramayya's visionary poetry traces an opalescent, treacherous world by way of heritage, ritual, and myth. Thousand-petalled lotuses bloom inside skulls, goddesses with dirty feet charm honeybees, strains of jazz standards bleed into anti-national anthems. Meditating on diasporic identity and relationships, her writing roams the Indo-European language family, finds consolation in genealogies of decolonial and anti-racist resistance, and roots itself in the movements between ancient Sanskrit texts and contemporary feminist prose poems.
In Ramayya's hands, the body assumes many forms as love produces many attraction and repulsion, excitement and exhaustion, selfishness and the dissolution of self. Desire, eroticism, and care contain the possibilities of shame, fury, and destruction. Moving towards and away from love, being translated and transformed by love, suffering under love and refusing its power - the poems in this book never leave love's hold.
220 pages, Paperback
Published November 1, 2019
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397 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
February 5, 2020
Don't think I'll every finish reading this, and all the best books are like that.
June 25, 2020
This is a truly special hybrid collection of essay and poetry. Centred around The Mahavidya, States circumnavigates, questions, and dissects the narratives of the goddesses through a stunning, innovative and complex play with language. Parallel to this strand, Ramayya shares her experiences of learning Sanskrit, an experience entwined with a lyrical undressing of India's colonial history as well as an interrogation of lexicography. This book exists on multiple dimensions. As this context threads through each section of the book, the pieces also uniquely inhabit their own, individual stories and moods. I loved the sequence at the end ("Love's Future is Death") for its nuanced approach to inheritance, shame, love, and empowerment -- how all of that subverts but also upholds the "representational" body. This book is complex, tender, and empathetic. I am surprised at how much I learned about myself in the journey of reading it.
March 3, 2021
This poetry book is phenomenal. It centers around the Mahāvidyās (literally; it begins with five of them and ends with the other five), weaving in current events, feminist critique of myth and ritual, and deeply moving personal reflections. Probably the best poetry book I've read in a while.
April 29, 2021
i loved this!
March 16, 2020
I think Nisha Ramayya might be a genius. This is a combination of essay, poetry and prose on myth, ritual, feminism and the body. Beautiful, all-encompassing, full of questions; the sort of book that stays with you, unlike any other.
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March 21, 2021De instuckna dikterna var för mycket fluff för mig, men jag uppskattade essäerna mycket, deras plock ur det koloniala Indiens politiska och religiösa historia. Essäerna flackade dock lite olyckligt mellan poetiskt (invokationshärmande imperativ) och resonerande språk (typ Konstfackprosa om den egna konstnärsgärningen).
December 28, 2022
Sleeplessness
Past versions of you
Past versions of me dreaming past versions of you
Inherited dreams of you
Inherited qualities of me inherited from dreams of you
Inherited qualities of me you
Inherited qualities and strings of pearls and lightly wearing me you
Places where your pearls were lightly worn were like me unlikely you
Places where your loved ones were born you were born like-minded
you me you
Places where your loved ones die in all likelihood you die you me you
Places where you'd die you would die your like-mindedness would
die you you you
Singular moments of laughter you
Plural moments of laughter with you with you with you
Singular moments of fear of you of me of you
Plural moments of fear of walking with without these moments with
you
Desiring to walk home to leave home to leave you
Desiring to leave home with you without you without you
Cleaning the room as if that's all you can do you
Cleaning the room cleaning and cleaning and missing you you
Squatting to clean and squatting and sitting and missing you me you
Unseating you are deep-seated within me you you you
Desiring to clean to unseat you to squat you
Desiring do not squat you do nothing you do nothing you
Images and actions are not images and actions you
Becoming visible ink on the walls of the mind you
Becoming characteristic of poetry you
Becoming sensibility of writers and readers of poetry you me you
Becoming visibility of the walls between minds you you you
Visibility of the walls is neither image nor action you me you
Shame at placing this moment beside that moment you me you
Shame at placing this room beside that room me me you
Retching between moments of laughter and fear you
Retching while walking not with you not like you
Retching the lengths between me and you me and you
Measuring lengths between wanting you having you
Measuring lengths between wanting having wanting having you you
you
Finding ourselves in our friends they're like you they’re you they're
not like you
Finding ourselves on the outside we're inside we're like you we're
not you
Finding ourselves wanting we’re having we're not you were
not you
Inheriting your loved ones you are qualified by love you me you
Inheriting rooms I am further and further and further from you you
you
Past versions of you
Past versions of me dreaming past versions of you
Inherited dreams of you
Inherited qualities of me inherited from dreams of you
Inherited qualities of me you
Inherited qualities and strings of pearls and lightly wearing me you
Places where your pearls were lightly worn were like me unlikely you
Places where your loved ones were born you were born like-minded
you me you
Places where your loved ones die in all likelihood you die you me you
Places where you'd die you would die your like-mindedness would
die you you you
Singular moments of laughter you
Plural moments of laughter with you with you with you
Singular moments of fear of you of me of you
Plural moments of fear of walking with without these moments with
you
Desiring to walk home to leave home to leave you
Desiring to leave home with you without you without you
Cleaning the room as if that's all you can do you
Cleaning the room cleaning and cleaning and missing you you
Squatting to clean and squatting and sitting and missing you me you
Unseating you are deep-seated within me you you you
Desiring to clean to unseat you to squat you
Desiring do not squat you do nothing you do nothing you
Images and actions are not images and actions you
Becoming visible ink on the walls of the mind you
Becoming characteristic of poetry you
Becoming sensibility of writers and readers of poetry you me you
Becoming visibility of the walls between minds you you you
Visibility of the walls is neither image nor action you me you
Shame at placing this moment beside that moment you me you
Shame at placing this room beside that room me me you
Retching between moments of laughter and fear you
Retching while walking not with you not like you
Retching the lengths between me and you me and you
Measuring lengths between wanting you having you
Measuring lengths between wanting having wanting having you you
you
Finding ourselves in our friends they're like you they’re you they're
not like you
Finding ourselves on the outside we're inside we're like you we're
not you
Finding ourselves wanting we’re having we're not you were
not you
Inheriting your loved ones you are qualified by love you me you
Inheriting rooms I am further and further and further from you you
you
April 4, 2021
There were some great sections here in this book, and some memorable lines, but I didn't get on with this book on the whole. I knew before reading it that it would be a mix of poetry and essay writing, but the way the two mixed and moved from one to the other came across as pretty disorientating.
I really enjoyed sections that explored ritual, myth and language. But when it moves beyond that in the middle of the book, I found myself a little lost. There were also times when the language came across as a little academic and inaccessible, which I felt was a shame since there were some passages that were really lyrical and beautiful. Perhaps with a little time and experience I'll be able to get a little more out of this with a reread.
I really enjoyed sections that explored ritual, myth and language. But when it moves beyond that in the middle of the book, I found myself a little lost. There were also times when the language came across as a little academic and inaccessible, which I felt was a shame since there were some passages that were really lyrical and beautiful. Perhaps with a little time and experience I'll be able to get a little more out of this with a reread.
June 21, 2021
this book has easily slipped itself into one of my top reads of the year. nisha ramayya’s work is an exploration of language alongside hindu deities, most notably the mahavidyas associated with Śiva. Ramayya uses two poetic essays that blend theory with mythology to try to unearth meaning in sanskrit - her analysis of Samuel Johnson was particularly striking to me. The majority of her book includes poems that reminded me of the poems of Solmaz Sharif - here part dictionary, part cosmology, part memoir, all poetry. Extremely good stuff!!!
August 7, 2022
The heart of this book is in the definitions, what it wants to become: a personal extension of ancient Tantric texts. Overall, Ramayya does not convey her struggle in a linear way (which is fine), but her inspiration is overshadowed by the power, majesty and mystery of those Tantric texts that she includes. I felt I was reading two very different books within the same collection.
September 23, 2022
Holy Grail of prose poetry and autotheory.
May 14, 2024
In poetry, nothing is more central than communication. Reading Nisha Ramayya’s collection States of the Body Produced by Love, I was initially lost in the dense, academic prose until I read the titular poetic sequence aloud. At last, I could feel how each line was an argument, a plea or a reflection, and I could appreciate that what makes this collection special is that no two pieces, essay or poem, sit on the page the same way. As experimental poetry, each has its own voice and is brought into conversation with other voices to guide the listener on a journey throught love, belonging and alienation.
In ‘Ritual Steps for a Tantric Poetics’, her lines comment on how we are changed by connecting with ideas outside ourselves:
forgetting you slip into dialect
this is the way to east
the hurting hold of fire
your tongue becomes strange to you
Ramayya’s voice asserts itself, urging us ‘away from above / the warmth of academic contexts’ that have thus far pervaded the essays. Now our tongue is ‘strange’, we can begin to listen to other voices, though the poet does not fully escape the reassurance academic voices give her own voice. She reflects on this seeming dependence in the fourth section, ‘Love’s Future is Death’, as she creates a collage about the death of a woman in India following a sexual assult. She explains her desire to use words ‘which do not belong to me, in place of the words I cannot find’, to ‘find words to move close; I want to risk making contact’. She takes the multi-media, multi-sensory, polyvocal approach of collaging and applies it to her collection to great effect, disrupting assumptions of fixed identity and the necessity of a linear narrative, and simultaneously creating her own voice, finding the words to craft her collection.
Her playful, inquisitive voice is clearest in her poem ‘Death’, last of the states of the body produced by love. Ramayya relishes the opportunity to play with ‘the ripple of definitions’ she has given and been given throughout the book. She anticipates the death of each of the subjects of the collection: family, home, India, myth, ritual, Sanskrit, dictionary, goddess, Tantra and love. In returning to the subjects and voices of her poems and essays only to destroy them, she creates an image that is at once disturbing but also comforting. Her collection ultimately reminds us that we can recreate these manifestations of love ourselves and do not have to be constrained by the opinions of others.
In ‘Ritual Steps for a Tantric Poetics’, her lines comment on how we are changed by connecting with ideas outside ourselves:
forgetting you slip into dialect
this is the way to east
the hurting hold of fire
your tongue becomes strange to you
Ramayya’s voice asserts itself, urging us ‘away from above / the warmth of academic contexts’ that have thus far pervaded the essays. Now our tongue is ‘strange’, we can begin to listen to other voices, though the poet does not fully escape the reassurance academic voices give her own voice. She reflects on this seeming dependence in the fourth section, ‘Love’s Future is Death’, as she creates a collage about the death of a woman in India following a sexual assult. She explains her desire to use words ‘which do not belong to me, in place of the words I cannot find’, to ‘find words to move close; I want to risk making contact’. She takes the multi-media, multi-sensory, polyvocal approach of collaging and applies it to her collection to great effect, disrupting assumptions of fixed identity and the necessity of a linear narrative, and simultaneously creating her own voice, finding the words to craft her collection.
Her playful, inquisitive voice is clearest in her poem ‘Death’, last of the states of the body produced by love. Ramayya relishes the opportunity to play with ‘the ripple of definitions’ she has given and been given throughout the book. She anticipates the death of each of the subjects of the collection: family, home, India, myth, ritual, Sanskrit, dictionary, goddess, Tantra and love. In returning to the subjects and voices of her poems and essays only to destroy them, she creates an image that is at once disturbing but also comforting. Her collection ultimately reminds us that we can recreate these manifestations of love ourselves and do not have to be constrained by the opinions of others.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews