Afshan Shafi’s debut poetry
collection is like LSD for the imagination. The poems are written in a variety of styles, themes and lyrical voices. One never knows what to expect from one poem to the next, or even one line to the next in the anthology. What remains consistent is the abstract absurdity of the imagery, the scattered melange of invigoratingly unique metaphors that have been together despite their clashing, often disconnected connotations. Shafi’s use of free verse is a very common choice for modern writers. Modern poetry challenges the very definition of a poem. Without the defined structure of traditional metre and rhyme, poets writing in free verse need to find new and creative ways to make their poems lyrical. In the case of Odd Circles, it is the enjambments, long and fast paced sentences and the sparing use of caesuras that gives the work its flowing poetic quality. The rapidity of the tone makes it impossible for the audience to naturally pause to reflect upon each line or to ponder the meaning and significance of each word or phrase. Instead, readers are left with a unique sensory and emotional experience, one that cannot be deciphered, only felt.
Shafi’s poems are the most brilliantly meaningless that I have ever read. But perhaps that is the point. Perhaps the goal is precisely to make the readers question the very notion that a poem has to make sense and have a foundation in reality. When one first starts reading the anthology, the unusualness of the writing and the randomness of the images and metaphors may feel a bit jarring but as one adapts to this oddness, which the title of the collection promises to deliver, it becomes easier to experience the poems and accept them for what they are. At times, readers may find themselves straining to make sense of the chaos but usually there is no sense, only rhythm and a ceaseless, intense sensory barrage. With each poem, you are plunging into an utterly new world, like Alice going down the rabbit hole. You may not always know what the poem means but you are always left with a feeling: nostalgia, wonder, a pensive melancholy or even raw-nerved anguish. It is not just the structure and style of the poems that is creative and innovative but also the very use of language itself. Readers will often find themselves amazed at the way a word is used in a completely new context or the way that two words are put together that have never been put together before.
Just like the choice to write in free verse, unencumbered by metre or rhyme, the ubiquitous semantic abstraction in Shafi’s poems is quite stylistically modern. Like abstract expressionism evolved from neorealism, abstract poetry has evolved from the iambic word sketches of Wordsworth and the romantic poets, which in turn evolved from the dactylic narrative poems of Homer and Virgil. Many modern poets writing in free verse are forging a new literary genre akin to abstract art. The advent of asemic writing has further bridged the gap between the art forms of painting and writing. But while asemic writing sucks its audience into a literary vacuum through the absence of any concrete meaning, Shafi’s poetry bombards its audience with a variety of meanings, images and emotions. The progression of the poems is not linear but, contrary to the title of the anthology, it is not circular either. In fact, they have no classifiable shape at all.
The way that the poems sound is as significant as the assortment of words. Each poem sounds, reads and feels different. There are no recurrent themes and motifs, and hence there can be no preconceived expectations. Each poem is a surprise, as is each word. Just like the title of the anthology, the titles of the poems are mere clues, not descriptions of what is to come. Odd Circles does not attempt to bring order to the chaos of the world and human life as traditional poetry does but, rather, embraces it, making the reader as much a part of the experiences captured in the poems as the writer. At times the metaphors seem imbued with meaning and at times they seem devoid of it. Reading a poem in Odd Circles is a purely subjective experience, solely dependent upon the imagination of the reader. No generalised, universal significance can be derived from the poems that any two readers would agree upon. Rather than alienating their audience by their formless semantic chaos and rapid, swirling tone, Shafi’s poems draw their readers in where there is no room for detached, objective observers.
The reviewer is an Assistant Editor Daily Times