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Mythmaking: Poems
poetry
153 pages, Paperback
Published May 14, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 20, 2021
what do you remember?
everything
what of it is real and what of it is not?
how do you tell the truth from its echo?
do you trust it, your memory?
Memory is malleable, and so is the story that you make of it. How you narrate this story to yourself characterizes you. A story that is changed, without loss of identity, inspires an inner life that is just as different.
Look back to your childhood. Partially constructed from fleeting glimpses, a puzzle with gaps filled in by the imagined. Soon, a definite picture appears. An image of past experiences and feelings, strikingly real, folding neatly into a memory that becomes you, today.
What does this mean then? Is your story a fiction, a myth? And what does that imply? If memories are myths, are past feelings rendered invalid?
In her third collection, Lakshmi Bharadwaj hints at an answer, but leaves it up to you:
Having set the stage, she architects a labyrinth of records and impressions to be touched, felt.
Every page is splashed with color, every page is a lesson in meaning and metaphor. Feel the sun-kissed warmth of a reading room in Mysore, sit across from Arvind K Mehrotra at Harvard, watch out for strangers in a rickety old BMTC bus, and follow along with an MGR impersonator on the streets of Colombo.
Some memories hold strong, wrapped in intense emotion, while others are coarse:
A story emerges, as the poems stipple together: from migrant laborers in a pandemic and a monsoon's romance to filter coffee and the commotion at Tippu's Palace.
This is a story that is lived abundantly, perhaps these (non-)memories, places and characters are worthy of lore. In words laid bare, beauty flows.
everything
what of it is real and what of it is not?
how do you tell the truth from its echo?
do you trust it, your memory?
Memory is malleable, and so is the story that you make of it. How you narrate this story to yourself characterizes you. A story that is changed, without loss of identity, inspires an inner life that is just as different.
Look back to your childhood. Partially constructed from fleeting glimpses, a puzzle with gaps filled in by the imagined. Soon, a definite picture appears. An image of past experiences and feelings, strikingly real, folding neatly into a memory that becomes you, today.
What does this mean then? Is your story a fiction, a myth? And what does that imply? If memories are myths, are past feelings rendered invalid?
In her third collection, Lakshmi Bharadwaj hints at an answer, but leaves it up to you:
what I feel is more important than what I write
so this does not matter as much as what you take from it
so take from it for the house is serving
and you are already crosslegged before the banana leaf
Having set the stage, she architects a labyrinth of records and impressions to be touched, felt.
she can’t sit still
she has wings and time keeps its seconds
by the rustle of her silk-brocade
she is peacock, serpent, mermaid
sit still now or I’ll bring the broom!
the reprimand prompting a giggle
Every page is splashed with color, every page is a lesson in meaning and metaphor. Feel the sun-kissed warmth of a reading room in Mysore, sit across from Arvind K Mehrotra at Harvard, watch out for strangers in a rickety old BMTC bus, and follow along with an MGR impersonator on the streets of Colombo.
Some memories hold strong, wrapped in intense emotion, while others are coarse:
Uma, unsentimental, powerful
purveyor of farts
never apologized
A story emerges, as the poems stipple together: from migrant laborers in a pandemic and a monsoon's romance to filter coffee and the commotion at Tippu's Palace.
for we may watch for things
but not the light itself
we watch the object
never the truth
of its illumination
This is a story that is lived abundantly, perhaps these (non-)memories, places and characters are worthy of lore. In words laid bare, beauty flows.
January 31, 2021
Nostalgia is a river and this feels like taking a holy dip in it.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews