Daily Times

How much poetry can a poem bear? It depends. It depends on the talent of the poet and the taste of his or her listener/reader.

Generally, you expect a certain degree of poeticism from a piece of poetry which does not necessarily come with cloying lyricism.

At first glance, poet and editor Manu Dash’s poems appear dry and prosaic. Even the poem that gives the name to his poetry collection: A Brief History of Silence, sounds somewhat philosophical and pensive but not a typical poetic one – at least not in the traditional sense of the adjective. That is to say, this poet has set for himself a very challenging task of transforming the mundane and banal into sublime. Needless to say, writing poems on the themes that are essentially winsome and soulful and thereby employing a diction that is soft, tender and emotive shoves you involuntarily into the realm of poetry. But, such a methodological arrangement creates in most cases only an illusion of poetry – outdated, stale and cliché- ridden. A glint that offers you a poetic façade, but is non-poetic at its core.

Manu Dash shuns poetic jargons: he twists his language mercilessly, at times even maliciously, only to brew poeticism out of his prosaic expressions. There are a few poems that were triggered by some actual events: Rajan, 66 – on the death of ‘the last swimming elephant who died in July 2016 in the Andaman Islands’, Irom Chanu Sharmila – a real person from Manipur ‘who broke her 16-year long fast to pursue her personal life’, and Letter to Dana Mahji – who ‘hits the news for carrying the dead body of his wife on his shoulder after being denied a hearse ambulance in Bhawanipatna, Kalahandi, Odisha, India’ and so on. As we see, these poems are based on events that made news headlines but Manu Dash has ingeniously carved powerful poems out of these real events and in doing so neither did he preen them with some lyrical layers nor pad them with the traditional sentimentality: they are terse, telling, to the point and thereby affect both your mind and heart.

Manu Dash shuns poetic jargons: he twists his language mercilessly, at times even maliciously, only to brew poeticism out of his prosaic expressions. There are a few poems that were triggered by some actual events: Rajan, 66 — on the death of ‘the last swimming elephant who died in July 2016 in the Andaman Islands’, Irom Chanu Sharmila — a real person from Manipur ‘who broke her 16-year long fast to pursue her personal life’, and Letter to Dana Mahji — who ‘hits the news for carrying the dead body of his wife on his shoulder after being denied a hearse ambulance in Bhawanipatna, Kalahandi, Odisha, India’ and so on

What kind of revenge

Whets you while carrying

The dead one? Does memory dies?

Is the sun pinioned like a carrot

Under the power sky?

Can eyeballing media grope

The latitude and longitude

Of your helplessness

Slipped into the slit of time, Dana?

(Letter to Dana Mahji)

This poem, “Walking with a Corpse”, is almost similar. But in the later instance, the protagonist: an invisible, seemingly un-tired person, is shown ‘Carrying the carcass/ of the rotting system.’

These poems portray a picture that is sombre and bleak. Here the poet depicts an alarmingly morbid state of affairs as the very names of some of his poems suggest: Hellhole Homes, Super Cyclone, Bhopal, Diwali in a Cancer Ward, Death of a Crane, Virus, A Parable on Cyclone 2019, etc. Even a poem on the otherwise romantic theme of kissing: “Kiss”, depicts the process of love as ‘an act of whoring’.

Occasionally, when the poet indulges in a fleeting diversion, you meet such mischievous expression as well:

Of late, I’ve groping for

The tender breasts of words

But they cower like mimosa

The moment I touch the skin.

(Folklore)

But Dash’s overall tone is of gloom.

Memory floats like cheap perfume,

And the owl enters the dream

Facts are buried in dystopia,

And vignettes disappear like shallow fog

(Buddha Singh)

Such a perspective and its corresponding treatment might be quite unsettling for many of us, but this poetry introduces us to a voice that deliberately arouses disquiet in us, that wants us to be open to the deadening modes of life we are pursuing. Perturbed by the uncanny socio-political existence, the poet converts his anguish into a perpetual enquiry:

Not a day passes

When I am not hounded by my question

The poet of A Brief History of Silence poses these unanswered questions to us and urges us to repeat them – lest we are left tongue-tied and our voices lie ‘Buried under the fold/ of a thick quilt of lips’. Before it is too late.

The writer is a Pakistan-born and Austria-based poet. He teaches South Asian Literature & Culture at Vienna University and can be reached at aftabhusainshah@yahoo.com