POETLY

Such a joy to have for today's 'imagist' tukaaaaaa 😊 “Many miracles are attributed to Tukaram, and he is often compared to St. Francis as animals and birds loved him and he them. Birds often rode on his shoulders and sat on his instrument, which he kept slung around his neck when not playing it. With cymbals in hand and ecstatic tears on his face he would be seen in the streets dancing and singing his poems to god.” Tukaram wrote in Marathi (1608-1649), and has been a huge

Ramanujan was a genius. He was a polymath- a polyglot, an academic, a scholar, a philologist, a folklorist, an educator and literary critic, a translator, playwright, and, of course, a poet. This poem embodiess his keen eye, his sensitivity, and, for me, the humility and distancing of the self as ego, the act of creation requires. What is interesting to me is, of course, the vibrant and many-layered application of metaphor, but his exploration of dualities. I think arti

another poem... for Emily. who knew. "The newly emerged insects are attracted to lights in riverside towns and villages and the local authorities deploy snow clearing vehicle to remove their rotting corpses." - https://freshwaterblog.net/…/the-mayflys-lifecycle-a-fasci…/ the mayfly: a biography from her liquid prison she escapes, winged nymph lusting after light. a few hours of breath - then blessed before she falls, with the dance of the possessed - wings askew, sussed

Humans have had the privilege of language and rational thought. an evolutionary gift that I often think, we might have been better off without. This gift has allowed us the luxury of locating ourselves at the centre of the universe. Quite literally. Galileo and Copernicus are sitting together somewhere with a glass of wine, and a cigar, having the last laugh. We are living in the age of the “anthropocene”. The debate for nomenclature and this kind of self-definition, howev

"...a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways..." A poet could find a universe between the gap of a word and its meaning, a phrase and the shadow it casts on reality; between language and her paramour, meaning. This is the joy of metaphor. There is a hiatus between two imaginations, or domains of experience, and that is where the magic happens. The moment Maggie Smith speaks about life with a dry conviction, almost mocking the hollow, syrupy tones that well-meaning adults bes

Edna St. Vincent Millay's sonnets are refreshing in their brusqueness. There is a sense of irony in her seemingly clear convictions. She seems to be speaking about her beloved, saying deep emotional truths with a straight face, and by the end, letting a wry smile gently crease the side of her lips. There is honesty in her articulation of love. What I love is the way the persona's convictions slowly shift, how her sarcastic critique of those who make great sacrifices fo

"The moment always came when poets had to close the doors behind them, strip off their mantles, fripperies, and other poetic paraphernalia, and confront – silently, patiently awaiting their own selves – the still white sheet of paper. For this is finally what really counts.” - from Wislawa Szymborska's Nobel speech, The Poet and the World. Before Wislawa’s gaze, reality stood. stripped of all artifice. But what ensued was not an expression of fear or the arrogance of enli