November 2023 MBR The Poetry Shelf

The Poetry Shelf

The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Transtromer
Tomas Transtromer, poet
Patty Crane, translator
Copper Canyon Press
https://www.coppercanyonpress.org
9781556596858, $40.00, HC, 536pp

https://www.amazon.com/Blue-House-Collected-Works-Transtr%C3%B6mer/dp/1556596855

Synopsis: Tomas Gosta Transtromer (15 April 1931 - 26 March 2015) was a Swedish poet, psychologist and translator. His poems captured the long Swedish winters, the rhythm of the seasons and the palpable, atmospheric beauty of nature. Transtromer's work is also characterized by a sense of mystery and wonder underlying the routine of everyday life, a quality which often gives his poems a religious dimension. He has been described as a Christian poet. (Wikipedia)

With slow strokes and subtle, rich lines, "The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Transtromer" is evidence of a Nobel Prize-winning poet tracing the world with his pen. A stunning testament to an illustrious career, "The Blue House" gathers poems and writings from Swedish poet Tomas Transtromer's fourteen collections into a single volume. Original Swedish sits alongside their English translations as Patty Crane translates his words into revelatory language acute in the understanding of human change and loss.

Subtle in politics and exact in imagery, the poems of "The Blue House" range from agile haiku to cinematic prose. Social phenomena are observed in rich detail (a "dictator's bust" presiding over a train car of doomed passengers) and the collection is propelled by empathy and curiosity. Under Transtromer's watchful eye, no subject is overlooked: Milij Balakirev, the Russian composer; Nils Dacke, the Swedish peasant who led a rebellion against the king; and him, the stranger who forgets his name by the roadside. From the personal to the political to the existential, Transtromer's poems act as a telephoto lens, granting us reinvigorated access to the world we live in.

Critique: Featuring an informative Introduction by Yusef Komunyakaa, this large format (7 x 1.75 x 9 inches, 2.8 pounds) hardcover edition of "The Blue House: Collected Works of Tomas Transtromer" from Copper Canyon Press will prove of special and particular attraction to readers with an interest in Scandinavian Poetry & Literary Criticism. With memorably crafted verse covering a wealth of subjects ranging from nature to death, grieve and loss, "The Blue House" is especially and unreservedly recommended as a seminal and core addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Poetry collections. It should be noted for students, academia, and non-specialist general readers with an interest in the subject that "The Blue House" is also available in a digital book format (Kindle, $40.00).

The Scent of Sunlight
Jibanananda Das
Translated from Bangla by Clinton B. Seely
Parabaas Publishing
https://parabaas.com/ourbooks.php
9781946582034, $29.95

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1946582034

The Scent of Sunlight profiles poems by Jibanananda Das that are influenced by one of the finest Bengali poets in Indian history. Typically, the acclaims of such writers are promoted in their books, but Jibanananda's relevance and popularity has been widely acknowledged internationally. A sonnet cycle was performed from his writings to illustrate one Chicago Bengali-American committee's concept of what Bengali culture is all about. His literary acclaim, which began in the 1950s when the poetry-reading Bengali community embraced his works, continues into modern times because his poems examine key facets of attitudes towards life and resurrection that, ironically, breathe new life into his words so that they will resonate in new generations around the world. Few poets can lay claim to such a fete. Even fewer Indian writers can tap international audiences to lay hands upon the communities of expats within them, as well as those who live well outside Bengali borders.

Jibanananda is an extraordinary writer, and the presentation of his works in English and its native Bengla by translator Clinton B. Seely allows an accessibility to his writings, which surely should be included in any definitive class on Indian poetry and artists. 'Sensation' is one example of a piece which begins with personal introspection, only to blossom into the greater world: "Into the half light and shadow go I. Within my head/Not a dream, but some sensation works its will.../Who can go on, like the simple folk?/Who can stop within this light and darkness/Like the simple people? Who can speak/Like them today? Who can know/For certain anymore? Who seeks to understand/The carnal savors anymore? Who apprehends the joys/Of life anymore, like everyman?/And sows seeds anymore like everyman?/Where is that relish? And who, hungry for the harvest,/Has smeared himself with scents of earth,/Is anointed with the scents of water,/Has gazed toward light with rapt attention/And gained a peasant heart - /Who would anymore remain awake upon this earth?"

One reason why Jibanananda's works are so powerfully attractive to international audiences is because they move from personal to full-bodied spiritual and social examination on the wings of a butterfly, widespread in understanding and shared emotions that don't just reside in the poet's heart, but impact and reflect the greater world. Whether he's exploring the jungles of Sundarban or the vultures of Asia's skies, Jibanananda's special brand of power lies in his ability to gather seemingly disparate images and cultural influences, weaving together seamless stories that are highly accessible by all readers no matter their ethnicity. Works from his sonnet cycle 'Bengal the Beautiful' bring the sights, sounds, and feel of his native land to life in a manner that requires no prior familiarity with India, yet presents the opportunity for this connection through a cycle of observations that is creatively embedded in "you are here" imagery: "Again I shall return to the Dhansiri's banks, to this Bengal,/Not as a man, perhaps, but as a shalik bird, or a white hawk./As, perhaps, a crow of dawn in this land of autumn's new rice harvest,/I'll float upon the breast of fog one day in the shade of a jackfruit tree./Or I'll be the pet duck of some teenaged girl - ankle bells upon her reddened feet..."

The result is a powerful, extraordinarily wide-reaching set of portraits and insights which should be made a mainstay of any library purporting to be authoritative in its representation of Indian literature. Poetry book clubs would miss an important collection were they to pass on the opportunity to place The Scent of Sunlight central in their discussions of India's finest.

Escape Velocity
Cate McNider
https://catemcnider.net
Atmosphere Press
www.atmospherepress.com
9781639889419, $17.00 Paper/$8.99 ebook/$9.99 audiobook

https://www.amazon.com/Escape-Velocity-Cate-McNider/dp/1639889418

Escape Velocity presents a chronological collection of poems from 10/2010 to 1/2023, stringing experiences together to form a trajectory and progression of understanding old paradigms and letting go of assumptions, patterns, and ego. Cate McNider, in her Introduction, reviews her invitation to readers to "enter into the Theater of the Void, to turn on the light within you, to close your two eyes to the illusionary demands of the 'world' and encounter the lush and wondrous being-ness that waits within you. It's never what you think it is, and the discovery of that will lead to moments of those mini-lights being turned on within you." With this, the stage is set for a ride through not just her life and observations, but those which resonate with the reader.

Take the succinct reflection in the opening poem 'Happiness': "I want to be as soft as you,/as solid and as fluid..." Here, the notion of happiness is also linked to being in the present and acknowledging its brief spate of energy in the wider scheme of things. McNider's ability to capture the passage of time and place in a study that introduces a very different definition of happiness then segues neatly into 'Whale's Song,' a poem of transformative longing and sharing: "If only I could insert my self,/angiogram balloon/inside your arteries, open you,/let the moon's tide take the pain/way out to sea..." These examples are but a drop in the literary bucket of psychological, spiritual, and nature observations that provide all types of readers with an art form that blossoms with internal examination and external force. What is the reason for life, time, and evolutionary processes? How do they bloom in heart and mind to take wing into the greater world of human and nature?

Each poem represents a piece of a journey that, when viewed from the broader perspective of this collection, adds to a marked and meaningful path that is accessible not just to literature or psychology readers, but anyone interested in self-growth and introspection. Libraries and readers interested in a hard-hitting collection that encourages and gently drives its readers into higher-level thinking, from ego examination to broader connections, will find the poems in Escape Velocity offer an escape hatch leading to better understanding and life meaning.

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