Review of Basundhara Roy's "A Blur of a Woman"

A Blur of a Woman

Written by Basundhara Roy

Published by Red River, November 2024

ISBN: 978-81-976304-0-8

Price: INR 299

Language: English, pp. 110

Basudhara Roy is an Assistant Professor of English at Karim City College located in Jamshedpur, Jharkhand, India. As both, a poet and reviewer, her contributions have been and continue to be published in various anthologies and journals, like The Helter Skelter Anthology of New Writing in English, The Aleph Review, The Poetry Society of India, Mad in Asia Pacific, Teesta, Borderless, Muse India, Shabdadguchha, Cerebration, Rupkatha, Triveni, and Setu, Chandrabhaga, The Punch Machine, Yearbook of Indian Poetry in English, The Dhaka Tribune, Madras Courier and others. She is the author of many books such as Migrations of Hope (2019), Moon in My Teacup (2019), Stitching a Home (2021) and Inhabiting (2022). The underlying themes in her works mostly surround gender, mythology and ecology.

Basudhara Roy's A Blur of a Woman is a striking and emotional collection that examines the diverse experiences of individuals. It is edited by Semeen Ali, designed by Dibyajyoti Sarma and the artwork on the cover is by Sophia Naz—it is called “A Flesh Wound". Roy's verses delve into themes such as identity, societal pressures, love, grief, and perseverance, with exceptional sensitivity and insight. Her use of language is evocative and frequently metaphorical, crafting vivid imagery. She adeptly intertwines personal narratives with wider social reflections, rendering her poetry both intimate and widely relatable. The collection addresses various aspects of a woman's existence, from motherhood to battles against patriarchal conventions, providing a window into the inner worlds of women and their quests for belonging. Roy employs an array of poetic styles, themes and techniques, resulting in a rich and captivating experience. A Blur of a Woman stands as a tribute to the strength and tenacity of women, but does not restrict itself to this one aim. Menka Shivdasini—co-chair of the Asia-Pacific Writers and Translators— rightly said about this anthology: “Basudhara Roy’s finely etched and deeply considered poems examine the multiple complexities of women’s lives.”

Basudhara Roy's collection, visually captivating with its abstract and thought-provoking cover, instantly immerses the reader in a realm of intricate feelings and reflective journeys. The "blur" in the title suggests the fluid nature of identity, a concept mirrored throughout the chosen poems. The cover features a mix of warm and earthy colours. The indistinct organic forms allude to the blurriness in the title, indicating themes of resistance, fluidity, freedom, and the elusive quality of identity. The anthology’s appearance is designed to be visually appealing and thematically significant. The font used for the poems is clear, and the arrangement of spaces is executed with care and consideration. The paper appears to be of high quality, possibly a touch off-white or cream, imparting a classic and literary ambience.

The poem from where the anthology gets its title is on page number sixty. It explores the tension between societal pressures that seek to define and control a woman and her quiet, persistent assertion of self. It contrasts the woman’s physical compliance, “her body a sickle bending to your duty” with her unyielding mind: “But her mind she will still scan. Even as she is shuffled around”. The line, “Anywhere she stands/she owns the place”, suggests an inherent right to belong and occupy space. The ending suggests a potential for shedding external expectations and embracing a more self-defined existence. This seems to also be the central idea of this anthology in general.

Not only in thematic exploration but also in forms and language, Roy shows experimentation, self-definition and resistance. The anthology does not strictly adhere to a single theme or pattern. It also comprises of elegies and ghazals. The use of the ghazal form suggests a respect for tradition while exploring themes like complexities of human relationships, loss, and spirituality. These ghazals also raise questions and challenge the stereotypes. It calls out to multicultural traditions like “Yom Kippur” (Jewish) and “Dastarkhwan” (Persian) which are the title of two of her poems in this anthology.

The poems often touch on mortality and the ephemeral nature of life, contrasting superficial experiences with the underlying reality. The melancholic tone and use of devices like metaphor and irony invite contemplation on existence, meaning, and human connection. For example, the poem “Monsoon Ghazal” uses rain as a metaphor for desire, “unspooling a twine” that connects lovers. Love’s nature is depicted a both destructive “corrosion” and healing “balm”. The ghazal also touches upon the themes of faith and doubt “I fill love’s cup by draining faith”.

Vivid imagery and paradoxical expressions are used in her poems. "Choosing God," explores faith, religious freedom, and fundamentalism. Childhood faith is portrayed as innocent, evolving as the speaker grapples with adolescence. The tone shifts dramatically when the speaker confronts aggressive fundamentalism, symbolized by tattooing a god on their skin. This forced conversion leads to a rejection of dogma and a powerful depiction of the violence and chaos of religious extremism. Through vivid imagery and shifting tones, "Choosing God" critiques religious fundamentalism and celebrates the right to choose one's faith, emphasizing personal exploration and questioning, in the search for spiritual truth.

"Plotting a Dream" delves into the ephemeral nature of aspirations, using the metaphor of Cartesian coordinates to chart the elusive quality of dreams. The poem captures the struggle to define and hold onto these fleeting visions, acknowledging their potential for emptiness and the pain of unfulfilled desires. The dream-like identity in A Blur of a Woman is presented as something fluid and difficult to grasp. "On Reading Shahid," an ode to the poet, celebrates the enduring power of art and memory to transcend loss. The imagery of roses rising from ashes speaks to renewal and grace, mirroring the quiet strength found within the human heart. The anthology is about defiance and acceptance, conformation and transformation, gentle but affirmative soul. “Basudhara Roy’s poems seek to make their home in the precarious tension between the generic and the particular”, says Arundhati Subramaniam, Indian poet and writer about this anthology.

A Blur of a Woman weaves together a rich fabric of human experience. The anthology, marked by its evocative title and artwork, promises a voyage of self-exploration and discovery. The poems enhance this promise, delving into themes of faith, aspirations, memory, and resilience with openness and understanding. The collection as a whole serve as a powerful reminder of the necessity to embrace fluidity, challenge rigid beliefs, and find strength amidst life's intrinsic uncertainties. It stands as a testament to the lasting impact of art in shedding light on the complexities of the human experience, particularly women and providing comfort in the face of the unknown. These make it a compelling collection one can't afford to miss. Reading this anthology threw me into hues of emotions and experiences, without a single moment of boredom. This deserves to be read and re-read in tranquility in order to devour its essence to the maximum.

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About the Reviewer

Akanksha Pandey is a Research Scholar in the Department of English and Modern European Languages at the University of Lucknow. Her poems have been published in Rhetorica Quarterly, The Stroke Stories Publishing House, Setu Journal (Pittsburgh, USA), and an anthology by the All India Forum for English Students, Scholars and Trainers. In addition to poetry, she has published book reviews in Rhetorica Quarterly.

Book Review of Jaydeep Sarangi's "The Half Confessions: Soulful Poems"

“Where the End Begins”: A Review Article on

Jaydeep Sarangi’s The Half Confession: Soulful Poems

Published by Penprints, 2024

ASIN: B0DLX41W2K

Price: 350 INR

Language: English, pp. 96

The Half Confession: Soulful Poems by Jaydeep Sarangi is a collection of seventy three poems on varying themes. Sarangi, called the “Bard on the Banks of Dulung”, strikes notes that echo from the physical to the spiritual space. He acknowledges- “my poems may lead me to a destined understanding with the muse residing somewhere” (Sarangi, 9). There is an element of living together and experiencing together—people, places, and happenings—that makes it as appealingly “individual” as strikingly “collective”. Sarangi takes the opportunity to exhibit and analyze his poetic spirit, kindled by his memory which witnesses, recollects, registers, and documents the physical world manifested through geography, history, myths, familial legacy, and personal experiences. He speaks without inhibitions that his poetic creations emanate from “history, half-dreams, and half-confessions” (Sarangi, 9). This book is dedicated to “The story of you and me” hinting at the anonymous, hidden, or universal bond between individuals, between the author and the reader, or perhaps a personal bond with someone.

“Speaking with My Unspoken Words” vibrates through the inner pain in the author, acknowledging and discarding the means of morality and also questioning them: “A good dip in holy water is a progress of the soul retiring from the mud” (13). Acquiring a Wordsworthian tone charged by mythic experience, it mulls over transcending unhappy memories and cleansing the soul. “Patterns on Stone” somewhat reflects the book's cover with the gradual diffusion of a leaf in stone. It builds on the effects of history on the personality of the poet. He says, “History has grown deep within me” mentioning Kailash, Anubis, Jericho, and Nazca (14). “Knocker-uppers” emphasizes the importance of time for everything—birth, life, everyday things, and death (15). “A Giant Tongue” proposes to meet someday “the empress of my heart” stretching for its craving from Amravati to Kalighat (16). “A Whiff of Love” further accentuates the confessional element through a metaphor of stone as a “solitary traveler”, finding out love and spending all – “Sighs, tears, prayers, and oaths” (17). “Thesaurus of My Wine Moments” creates a lexicographic and bibliographic representation of the flow of thoughts (18). “My Father's House” is a poem that combines childhood memories and parental aspirations with a sense of nostalgia (19).

“Falling Petals” resonates with the title of the book recalling a “covered face…through my half-confessions” (21). “One drop of red wine” sets an archaic tone envisioning Cleopatra, the Nile, Egypt and a hankering for red wine (22). “The half-confession”, the titular poem, is a reflection on the life and childhood memories of the poet, especially his father and ailing mother whom he thinks he will meet “for a slow silent walk near a chosen place” (25). “An Acre of Love” suggests the poet's need to renew his soul, waiting for an embrace, union, and acceptance (26). “No Sofa for Me, Please!” creates a drawing room image of writing poetry referring to Nemrut Mountains, Sundarbons, Teesta, Guntur, and Solan; invoking eastern Muse, Urania, and Calliope (27). “Waters on High” builds on love and waiting, referring to Antiquity, recalling figures King Menes, Nefertiti, and Rani Laxmibai (29). “That Other Swamp” creates a native image of Dulung and marshes (30). “Rain as You” is a short poem about remembering, wanting, and allowing, “Rain as you like” (31). “Oracle of the Rivers” connects ancient Rome to ancient Pompeii, Olympus, and Osiris to India with “Medha in the Vedas” (32). “Road to Pompeii” reflects on the attachment to the past and the roads that can lead to this renowned city (33).

“Amor Vincit Omnia” shows the intricate connection between words, emotions, and the art of writing poetry (34). “The Window Seduces My Love” creates a patient’s image of a poet wanting to write when on death bed (35). In “Rain on My Stories” the author ruminates on meeting stories casually in a quotidian life “secret prayers and cold spirits in rain” (39). “Alphabets of My Sky” describes the poet’s association with Murkiness who has loved the poet since “he loved alphabets” (40). “No Forgetting” focuses on the bonds of love, memory, and erasure (41). “Truths” in two stanzas highlights two realities of life and love (42). “Wheels of Stones” inscribes in its form the transcendental cycle of time represented celestially through the Sun and aesthetically through stone wheels in Konarka (43).

“The Long Separation” hints at reading “all letters when my image fades away”, reinstilling old memories (44). “Wildly Wilting Times” replicates the memories of good times lost in wear and tear of time, exhibiting patterns of “heat, cold, dry, peace and pain” (45). “Mapping the Mind” is an attempt to restore a person to life or a sense of self “after a long pain…old illness, and burning silences (46). “Watching” is written in a more prosaic form as an attempt to find the different possibilities that are hidden behind poems (47). “Where are the Rivers Gone?” recalls the Euphrates, the Nile, the Ganges, and the Beas, not only as inspiration for creativity but also as sources of wisdom (48). “Falling Beliefs” pens down in words the reception of viewing a “black and white picture” (49). “Your Moon Months” connects civilization, time, and life with the moon year and its shapes and movement. It mentions Uruk and Yamuna, and about silences traveling to many lands and “many myths searching for substances” (50). “A River to Die on” connects rivers to the hearts of poets. Sarangi points out the strong bond he shares with the rivers, be it the Indus, the Ganges, or the Dulung with whom he identifies himself and sees it as his “truest self” (51). “Expectations” stretches another memory of a poet sitting on a river bank waiting and recalling forgotten memories (52). “Your Sun is Never Old” transitions into old age and even in old age what keeps the poet close is writing (53). “Love You More” is about reestablishing the connection with love through writing (54). “From the Above” creates an image of some afterlife and separation where the poet can witness things from a long distance (55). “Museums” is a satire on the “death of a relation” left with marks of ignorance and forgetfulness (56). “Shadows of Today” revisits the childhood memories and the comforts it bring (57). “To Your Doors Only” contrasts the picture of living together in cold winters with that of separation in hot summers, suggesting to unite and if possible offer an apology (58).

“Genesis” recollects childhood memories and suggests a change in the poet from what he was earlier (59). “A Quiet Sunday” contradicts physical silence with the desire for communication that lies within (60). “Memory Box” highlights poets yearning to come out of old memories and unburdening the baggage of the past (61). “Meeting You on the Ghat” is a culmination of the circle of life. Sarangi writes life is a vessel “on a voyage through a watery bed” (72). “Your Poet” affirms the belief of the poet in faith, when inhalation and exhalation almost seem one “in unison” (73). “Chanting at Night” engages with incessant remembrance through “daily chores, hearts, and homes” (74). “A Defeated Bard” points out the helplessness of the poet as he disconnects from everything he has and keeps on waiting only for his fragmented body to be lifted by Tigris (75). “If You Ever Visit Jhargram” creates an image of the place and river Dulung (76). Arundhati Subramaniam refers to this aspect of the book as the “ebb and flow of the river” uniting “Jayadeep Sarangi’s restless, lurching verse fragments”.

“Roof of My Syllables” gallops through time and place, personal and universal existence, highlighting the significance of the roof for fisherwomen, farmers, the poet’s mother, and himself (86). “Untitled Hope” is a poem epistle to persuade the offended to come out of silence and ignorance and accept what has been familiar (87). “Don't Be Far Off” is an address to Subarnarekha, invoking a good poem, and lifting “mind and the heart into glory” (88). “Joy Forever” portrays the beauty of feminine or nature with silences, joys, and freshness (91). “Speaking Mists” shifts from foreign locale to native lands where the poet recollects walking on the streets (92). “The Map-maker” is a common phrase used in other poems in the book. The last poem is dedicated to Keki N. Daruwalla (93). John Thieme opines that the book “brings together personal love lyrics” drawn from “collective wisdom” making it a “verse autobiography.”

The book is filled with innumerable escapades of the poet’s mind interacting with the surroundings, deeper thoughts, and language of the soul. Sarangi enters into a conscious engagement with the art of writing, intertwining it with his memories. Largely, the book leaps into the past, recalling, silencing, and expressing. Sarangi emphatically declared history as a dominant motif in the poems. However, even history is not seen as a monolithic entity from his perspective. With different poems touching on the notes of the past, it reads into mythic, historical, and familial past. Similarly, cultural, political, personal, and geographical memories intersect during poetic creation. There is a constant yearning to retain the connection with the past, and nostalgia is familial, spatial, and personal.

The river marks a prominent metaphor for acquiring both a geographical and a psychological space. Mamang Dai calls it a collection “lifted by rivers into a slow silent walk”. Rivers as geographical entities become the source of life and poetic imagination. They channel and link many of the poems, so much so that, despite being different, the poems acquire a transcendental coherence. Rivers as “streams of consciousness” help the poet to feel, revisit, recollect, and express his inner thoughts. They further establish an innate connection with language, the art of writing, sentences, verses, and words. Most poems are not seen as a complete product but are in the process of becoming. Rugmani Prabhakar, a poet, writer, and social activist, categorizes Sarangi’s oeuvre in the Preface as “disjunctive or fragmentary poetry” aligning with modernist and postmodernist tendencies. Sarangi’s poetry is marked by its nonlinear and haphazard structure delving into the “ambiguity, complexity, and chaos of experience” (Prabhakar 10). Therefore, an incessant emphasis occurs on the state of halve—half as incomplete, or half as partially complete. The Half Confession: Soulful Poems makes a voyage through history, myth, and memory. It is a soul's journey through the heart, mind, and the phenomena of the world.

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About the Reviewer

Raj Gaurav Verma is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Modern European Languages at the University of Lucknow. Previously, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the Central University of Jammu. His published books include Diasporic Writings: Narratives across Space and Time (2020), Indian Women Writings: Introduction to Select Texts (2020), Reading Gandhi: Perspectives in the 21st Century (2022), Mahatma Gandhi: Essays on Life and Literature (2023), Mythological Fiction: An Introduction (2023), and Myths, Mythology and Mythological Narratives: Theories, Themes and Interpretations (2023). His areas of interest include Travel Writings, Translation Studies, Dalit Studies, Plant Humanities, and Indian Diasporic Writings.

Review of "Digitalis and Other Poems"

Digitalis and Other Poems

Written by John Thieme

Published by Setu Publications, Pittsburgh, PA (USA)

ISBN - 978-1-947403-27-7

Price: 940 INR

Language: English, pp.109

John Thieme’s Digitalis resonates as a symphony of contradictions, a poetic pulse oscillating between elegy and insurrection, solitude and communion, the ephemeral whispers of memory and the enduring echoes of myth. Divided into two movements, it juxtaposes solitary poems that wrestle with the spectres of environmental collapse and pandemic isolation against Massiah, a luminous cycle of verse narratives rooted in the vibrant microcosm of a Guyanese barbershop. These interwoven strands form a tapestry of interrogation—colonial legacies unravel, the climate crisis looms, and storytelling emerges as both lamentation and salvation. Thieme’s verse becomes a crucible of complexity, where poetry mourns the irretrievable even as it defiantly cultivates the seeds of renewal.

Elegy for an Imperilled Earth

The collection opens with “Digitalis”, a poem that walks the reader through a landscape scarred by time and human negligence. The speaker’s contemplative stroll past a churchyard, Roman ruins, and a secret graveyard unearthed for a parking lot becomes a meditation on erasure. Thieme’s earth is a silent archivist, its memory longer than epitaphs or history books. “Stones flash fictions of departed lives,” he writes, yet modernity’s “careless dieselled flotsam” intrudes with toxic clouds and apathetic youth. The foxglove, beautiful and poisonous, mirrors humanity’s fraught relationship with nature—a duality echoed in the speaker’s lie to his dog: “It’s all OK.” Here, environmental grief is both intimate and universal, a quiet reckoning with the “ravages of time”.

This elegiac tone deepens in “The Years”, where Frank, a regular in Massiah’s barber shop, laments the destruction of a Guyanese valley by ecotourism developers. The poem’s refrain—“Eat labba and drink creek water / and you will always come back to Guyana”—twists from a proverb of belonging into an indictment of exploitation. The strangers who felled cow wood trees and abandoned half-built roads embody colonial extraction’s cyclical violence. Thieme’s imagery— mudslides erasing “progress”, labba (forest rodents) vanishing—paints a haunting portrait of ecological and cultural loss, where even nostalgia is commodified.

Memory: A Fragile Scaffolding

Memory in Digitalis is unreliable yet indispensable. In “Separations”, the speaker revisits a childhood marked by bomb-site playgrounds and gas-lamp lighters, only to find gentrification erasing the “grimy time of unreflecting boyhood joy”. Thieme questions the stories we tell ourselves: “Do I remember things that never happened?” The poem’s severed worms—“separated halves could live their lives alone”—become a metaphor for identity fractured by time and revision. Similarly, the pandemic poems distill isolation into Gothic imagery: houses haunted by absence, orphaned dogs, and cherry blossoms persisting amid desolation. These poems refuse resolution, lingering in the ache of what is half-remembered and half-invented. Yet storytelling emerges as an antidote to erasure. In “Legba”, the arrival of Papa Legba—a Voodoo spirit bridging worlds—transforms Massiah’s barber shop into a sacred space. Legba’s tales of “uncut trees, unsilted rivers, and green tales the griots told” counter colonial amnesia. His rasping voice weaves myth with history, from leopard spots to “chains and darkened ship-holds”, insisting that trauma and resilience coexist. When he urges listeners to “dig deep inside yuh brainbox” to find their “green land of yuh mind”, Thieme suggests memory as an act of resistance, a way to reclaim agency in a fractured world.

Laughter as Subversion

Amid the collection’s gravity, Thieme wields humour as a weapon. “Happy Poem” revels in linguistic play, somersaulting through palindromes (“Was it a cat, I saw?”) and mocking politicians as “kitsch masters of the half-baked cock and bull”. Its laughter is infectious yet destabilising, smuggling giggles into funerals and letting words “slide off the page” to evade fixity. This anarchic joy mirrors the Arawaks’ subversion in “A Barber’s Tale”, where Columbus’s flag is urinated on and burnt—a carnivalesque rejection of colonial myth-making. Even the enigmatic “Racoon”, a trickster figure spiking drinks and multiplying ambiguously, embodies the chaos of rumour, challenging readers to question narratives of power.

Identity in the Liminal Spaces

The barber shop tales grapple with hybrid identities forged in colonialism’s wake. “Dougla”, a story retold with conflicting details, follows a mixed-race man rejected by both sides during riots. Dougla’s fate—whether he walked into the sea or vanished into the bush—remains unresolved, reflecting the impossibility of belonging in a fractured postcolonial landscape. Thieme’s layered storytelling (“the many versions crystallise as history”) mirrors Massiah’s role as a “one-man register of shrivelled dreams”, where truth is communal and ever-shifting. Similarly, the spiders in Massiah’s rafters, weaving “flags of new-spun cloth”, symbolise identity as a collaborative act, endlessly spun and responded to.

Conclusion: Poetry as Digitalis

Digitalis emerges as a testament to the unyielding gaze, a collection that refuses the comfort of aversion. It confronts the spectres of climate grief, the scars of colonial violence, and the ephemeral threads of memory, yet it clings to poetry’s alchemical power—to both mend and unsettle. Thieme’s foxglove, at once venom and cure, transforms into a luminous metaphor for language itself: a double-edged instrument capable of entombing falsehoods or sowing liberation. In Massiah’s barber shop, where whispers ascend into myth, and within the spectral quiet of the pandemic, Thieme asserts that storytelling is not mere art—it is survival. The collection’s closing tableau—Papa Legba descending into the mundane churn of morning traffic, “a lonely soul” aglow with “inner peace”—distills its essence: even amidst frag.mentation, radiance persists.

Digitalis is not a balm for our age of crisis but a vital provocation, urging us to question, excavate, laugh, remember, and, above all, listen. It is poetry as invocation, resistance, and the pulse of life itself.

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About the Reviewer

Jyotirmoy Joshi, a Ph.D. scholar in English at the University of Lucknow, explores the compelling intersection of Fantasy Literature and Mental Health. A self-confessed Walter Mitty, his vibrant imagination fuels both academic inquiry and real-world adventure – often found riding Himalayan passes on his motorcycle. He proudly identifies as a Liberal Humanist, Ravenclaw, and Bardolater, perspectives shaped by a unique fusion of idyllic fantasy and dark, eccentric thrillers. Beyond academia, his passions include films, doodling, Enlightenment literature, F1, MotoGP. He has contributed insightful work to publications like The Criterion, the prestigious Women's Link and the IIS Journal of Arts, and to Rhetorica, Film Comment, Science Fiction Book Reviews, and Fantasy Café