A Fabulous review of Words Not Spoken by Shernaz Wadia

Every word I've written has become worth it's while because readers like Shernaz Wadia have read it with so much empathy and discernment. Shernaz's review satiates me with her deep understanding of poetry. I treasure the review like a precious gem dear Shernaz...and simply cannot thank you enough. Never enough.

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BOOK REVIEW

Vinita Agrawal

Words Not Spoken

Publisher: Gayatri Majumdar

BrownCritique – Sampark

ISBN 978-81-926842-2-2

Pages -121 Price: Rs. 125/-

. “In the way you hear the sea in a conch shell, if you press your ear against a work of art, you can overhear the artist’s spirit, tossing and turning...” says Yahia Lababidi.

That is what we hear when we listen closely to the poems in Words Not Spoken– the churning of the restless sea of a compassionate spirit speaking through the finest poetry anthology I have read in recent times

As stated on the back cover page, Vinita Agrawal is a Gold Medalist in M. A. Political Science. She has worked as a freelance writer and researcher butremains a poet at heart. The cover design by Sunanda Roy Chowdhury, speaks for itself.

Vinita is a creatively inventive poet. Similes, distinctive metaphors spring with invigorating regularity and alliteration-peppered poems in impeccable language spread like the warm, welcoming aroma of freshly brewed tea on a wintrymorning. Masterful word-strokes entwine colours, imagery, emotions, philosophy,a deep, empathetic understanding of human dilemma and environmental concern into a priceless, exquisite tapestry that is not just delightful in its poetic excellence but is also enigmatically elevating in the vast canvas it explores.

She seeks the sublime in the mundane; examines death, illness, loss, betrayal the universal human occurrences with insightful reflections and independent thought. Her poems foray into compassion and sufferinghumanity and interconnectedness, breath and stillness, heartaches and happiness, womanhood and its travails,  pain and patience, with powerfully carved images.The words not spoken in this collection become dark, haunting shadows in the spaces between her words, taking the uttered words onto a different dimension.Her poems make you prickle or be attentively silent; they can make you smile or cry; they provoke and prod.

She can deal with the vulnerabilities of others because she has examined and mulled over her own. Magnified under her disturbed gaze, everyday occurrences take on a new significanceWords spring to graceful dignity. Articulation is in step as she connects the dots of internalised experience and exhales it in poemsthat glint with witnessing awareness, probably sharpened by her deep involvement with Buddhism.

Her sensitivity to the woes of “the slant-eyed fair maidens”, leaf-pluckers of thetea gardens of Darjeeling, redefines our perception and shakes off our torpor faster than the tang of that morning ‘cuppa’ can, in the first poem Oolong, Orange Pekoe or Darjeeling.

Sometimes

their wayward pain rises like steam

and sears our lips

as we sip the brews delicately

from gold-rimmed china cups.

The Logo of Being and Coffee, Tea and Rebirth are inspired by her Buddhist learning and leaning.

A little badge of life pruned and polished

so that not a single breath of life is out of place

or out of count...and I am born again

after the night has passed. (The Logo of Being)

In The Light Maker, we are told

Buddha – the enlightened one...lives in all of us

fold yourself inwards – as fine and deep as you can go

to reach the light-maker in you.

‘If you have a mother, cherish her with care/For you will not know her value till you see her empty chair.’ The veracity of this age-old quote, her pain at personalbereavement and the universal regret experienced when a dear one (particularly a mother) is no more, are achingly distilled in the title poem Words Not Spoken. 

Brokenness stood on the spindly legs of a

yawning regret of words not spoken. Love not

expressed, miasma not cleared.

We are sucked, empathetically into the vortex of the poet’s anguish, as shemournfully laments words left unarticulated when her mother was alive -  

“ Scabrous conscience aches 

for the words not spoken.

Rhythmic emotions and melodic dreams come fascinatingly alive in a clutch of poems like “The Image and the FormSome DayWhispers of Time andConsecration

Fill me too

with spools of kind voices embossed with warmth

and cubes of coloured emotions,

One for every cell.

Bring me alive

so that I may hear

and answer. (Consecration)

The extremely penitent daughter becomes an appreciative mother who swells with pride in A Musician Son

Once in a while

you,  me and the dog

sit on the terrace in the moonlight

and you brew me a mug of your kind of brilliant coffee

strum the guitar

the music fills the craters of the moon

or is that just my pride?

The lilting cadences of Think Like a River provoke the mind as it meanders with“lifting and folding cusecs of time-travelled water, through clefts and chasms...She says that it is not just H2O. It is “...a ligament of peace, a flag of fluvial prideand gently cautions - “Think like a river...Save the river”

Anklets of a Lost Habitat is another poem that tinkles with musicality. It strums a blue song interspersed with cheerful notes whereas Time ticks with its own terrifying beauty in her proficient hands.

Pain, sadness, loneliness and longing are a recurrent theme in many of her poems as she beads agitated ghosts of old memories (ThoughtsMortakka,Monsoon ShowersOfficePainPuppet to name just a few.) She presents her personal experience and also stark realities around her, without morbidity or self-pity, seizing our attention intellectually.

The Refugees are here clenches emotion and brings a lump to our throat.

hungry, empty

the refugees are here

only to keep alive the stories of their land

through chapped, charred lips

that dried up kissing loved ones

goodbye

A Birthplace but no Memories and Bikaner again convey the throbbingemptiness of being displaced

Without the anchoring thread

of our soil

we are like drifting kites

conquering alien skies;

always aching for “home” (Bikaner)

Poetry

is my destruction but it might also save me,” says Vinita in Hangman.

I don’t know about her but I am positive that the precious jewels in this collection will save the day for those readers tired of wading through heaps of fake gems that often pass off as good poetry.

I am tempted to quote endlessly from this delectable feast for the mind and heart but I will let readers discover the memorable ecstasy of relishing it. I recommend this book to every lover of good poetry.