‘Buddhism - Creative and Spiritual Gift’:
A
Conversation with Charles Johnson
Nibir K. Ghosh
Dr. Charles Johnson, University of Washington
(Seattle) professor emeritus and the author of 23 books, is a novelist,
philosopher, essayist, literary scholar, short-story writer, cartoonist and
illustrator, an author of children’s literature, and a screen-and-teleplay
writer. A MacArthur fellow, Johnson has received a 2002 American Academy
of Arts and Letters Award for Literature, a 1990 National Book Award for his
novel Middle
Passage, a 1985 Writers Guild award for his PBS teleplay “Booker,”
the 2016 W.E.B. Du Bois Award at the National Black Writers Conference, and
many other awards. The Charles Johnson Society at the American
Literature Association was founded in 2003. In November, 2016, Pegasus Theater
in Chicago debuted its play adaptation of Middle Passage, titled “Rutherford’s
Travels.” His most recent publications are The Way of the Writer: Reflections on the Art and
Craft of Storytelling, and his fourth short story collection, Night Hawks. He has adorned
the Editorial Advisory Board of Re-Markings since its inception in March 2002.
The November 2017 Special Number of the journal – A
World Assembly of Poets – that
carried the following endorsement reflects his faith in the transformative
potential of art: “For sixteen years Re-Markings has been an important
journal of international literature and culture with an ever-expanding critical
range and creative reach. This new, special issue devoted exclusively to the
world's best poetry proves that it is a visionary publication crucial for
understanding the complexity of our world, our humanity, and our lives at this
watershed moment in the 21st century.” The current conversation emerged out of Dr.
Johnson’s recent India visit wherein we spent quality time together, at both
Nalanda and Agra, talking of issues seminal to his engagement with Buddhism as
a writer, philosopher and practitioner.
Ghosh: Many years ago,
during one of our conversations in Seattle, you had remarked, “I often dream, naturally, of India – its beauty, antiquity, breath-taking
art and remarkable people, the peace I feel instantly when my mind drifts to
the Buddhist Dharma or Hinduism, that great democracy of Being.” Please recount
your most significant thoughts and emotions in visiting the land you dreamt of.
Johnson: I have so many thoughts and so much to say about the
remarkable three weeks writer Sharyn Skeeter and I experienced as we moved
across northern and southern India, lecturing, reading poetry and fiction,
speaking with students at 9 universities, and visiting incredible Buddhist,
Muslim, Hindu and Sikh sights. You, Nibir, and your wonderful wife Sunita,
provided us with highpoints for our time at Nalanda University and in Agra. My
thoughts and feelings are too much for me to fully describe in this space – I’m still processing that India journey
I dreamed of making since my teens – but perhaps at some point I’ll describe these thoughts and
feelings in an essay.
Ghosh:
Before your recent India visit, you were enamored by the precepts of Buddhism,
its numerous sutras, its meditational practices. How did you feel being on the
very spot (under the Bodhi tree in Bodhgaya) where the Buddha found
enlightenment?
Johnson: That experience is one that deeply and powerfully affected
me. We meditated at Bodh Gaya, a kind of Mecca for Buddhists from all over the
world, a place we Buddhists dream of visiting during our lifetimes. How do I
feel after this experience? I feel that one of the truly important and
transformative dreams of my life has been fulfilled.
Ghosh:
What impressions would you like to share of your visit to the ruins of the
ancient Buddhist University at Nalanda?
Johnson: I am still moved by the beauty and antiquity of those ruins,
which I moved through with mindfulness, almost feeling as if I could imagine
what a spiritually vibrant and vital place it was so very long ago. Our guide
was superb, explaining everything we saw, and said he felt he was a student at
the original Nalanda in a previous life. He was certainly someone who explains
the Nalanda ruins eloquently in this life.
Ghosh:
Lecturing and participating in a Buddhist conference at Nalanda must have been
a unique experience for you. Could you please share some of the salient parts
of that experience?
Johnson: Lecturing at Nalanda was for me a great honor. And what I
remember most is the kindness and generosity of the Buddhist practitioners I
met there. I feel both humbled and privileged to have been able to share that
space and time with them.
Ghosh: You have been a student of philosophy. What
initiated you to Buddhism as a philosophy and when?
Johnson: I first became interested in Buddhism and the
practice of meditation when I was 14-years-old and was reading one of my
mother’s books on yoga, which had a chapter on meditation. So I followed the
chapter’s instructions, and what I experienced was the most incredible thirty
minutes of my life. I realized I’d stumbled onto something powerful. But at
that age I didn’t have a teacher. So rather than sit in meditation again I
studied everything I could find related to Buddhism and Hinduism and Taoism
during my undergraduate years. I took courses, then seminars in graduate
school, approaching Buddhism through systematic, academic study until 1980 when
I found the teachers I needed and began the regular practice of meditation. Ten
years ago, I took my formal vows as a lay Buddhist or upasaka in the Soto Zen tradition with mendicant monk Claude AnShin
Thomas and his assistant (now an ordained nun) KenShin.
Ghosh: What do you consider to be the most
significant aspect of Buddha’s life?
Johnson: There are several important points in
Shakyamuni’s biography – first when he sees the Four Signs of old age,
sickness, death, and a wandering holy man who appears to have come to terms
with the impermanence of all things. Another major point, of course, is when
his quest leads him to an awakening in which he tracks down and overcomes ahamkara, the I-maker in all of us, i.e., the illusion of an enduring,
substantive identity and the selfish ego that leads to so much suffering.
Ghosh: Did the life of the Buddha exert any influence
on your personality and growth as a person?
Johnson: Yes, very much so from my teens. Back then, in
the early ‘60s, whenever I encountered anything related to Buddhadharma – zenga
or Zen paintings, poems, sutras, or stories about the Buddha – I felt as if somehow I’d
once known this wisdom and somehow forgotten it. It seemed that right and
perfect to me. When I experienced desire for material things, something in me – provided by an early
exposure to Buddhism – would make me stop and ask myself, “Why do you desire that? Why do you think that
will make you happy? Shouldn’t you be thinking instead of making someone else
happy rather than chasing selfish desires conditioned in you by society? Instead of desiring things, wouldn’t
non-attachment and helping others make you feel freer and happier?”
Ghosh: What led you to become a practicing Buddhist?
Johnson: An early in my life fatigue with American
materialism, consumerism, and the emphasis this culture or society places on
constantly having and getting, and chasing external things we’re told from
childhood to desire – as if saying to us that we are incomplete (and not already whole,
as we are) without these things. I was more interested in creating art, which
is a form of giving – a way of giving creative and spiritual gift to others.
Ghosh: As a fiction writer, how would
you respond to Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha?
Johnson: I’ve already responded to it, as a black American
writer, in my 1982 novel Oxherding Tale.
Ghosh: You state in Turning
the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing that the greatest challenge before the African American writer
is to create and sustain a “black culture that nurtures a passion for knowledge
for its own sake.” In your own writings how have
you dealt with the challenge you refer to?
Johnson: As I once told my students at
the University of Washington, when I write or read a novel or story, I want
three things: To laugh. To cry. And to
learn something I didn’t know before.
Ghosh:
You mention in the “Preface” to Turning the Wheel that you consider the Buddhist Dharma as the most
revolutionary and civilized of possible human choices, as the logical extension
of King's dream of the "beloved community" and Du Bois' "vision
of what the world could be if it was really a beautiful world." Could you
please elaborate how the visions of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Du Bois
reflect the way chosen by the Buddha?
Johnson: In his beautiful 1926 essay
“Criteria of Negro Art,” Du Bois counsels us against chasing after the tawdry,
materialistic baubles of the white American, against seeing those things as the
goals black Americans should strive for when we win our freedom – fancy cars, expensive clothes
and meals, owning large amounts of property (estates), and belonging to elite
social clubs. King, of course, urged black Americans to understand the
importance of non-violence as a way of life, integration (or inter-being, as
Thich Nhat Hahn would say) as being the life’s blood of Being, and loving
others in terms of agape. These
themes are very consistent with Buddhist teachings, which are
non-materialistic, non-violent, and non-dualistic. Teachings that encourage metta or loving-kindness toward others and
toward ourselves.
Ghosh:
In your essay “Why Buddhism for Black America Now?” you say, “The historical
and present-day suffering experienced by black Americans creates a natural
doorway into the Dharma.” Would it would be right to infer that to the black
Americans, the Dharma came as a natural alternative to their disillusionment
with Communism, Christianity and the Nation of Islam?
Johnson: Yes, I think you can say that about some black American
Buddhists, though certainly not all of us. Jan Willis, for example, describes
herself as a “Baptist-Buddhist,” and says that Buddhist practices make it
easier for her to realize Christian ideals – for example, of loving others.
Ghosh:
When one refers to “Black Buddhism” and “White Buddhism” in academic and social
discourse, are we talking of racial segregation in America?
Johnson: No, I don’t think so. In the Dharma there is no north and
south, as Hui-neng the sixth patriarch of Zen once said. There is no black and
white. No east or west. We all have Buddha-nature.
Ghosh:
How would you respond to the 2007 documentary film The Dhamma Brothers
by Jenny Phillips?
Johnson: I would respond by saying it is an important film that
makes clear the value of mindfulness training for everyone, even people who are
incarcerated.
Ghosh:
The Dhamma Brothers shows the efficacy of Vipassana meditation in
helping prison inmates come to terms with the inner turmoil resulting out of
their past actions. In what way can such spiritual and meditative exercise
effect the lives of those African Americans who are born free but remain chained
by poverty, inequality, disease and subtler forms of segregation?
Johnson: Spiritual and meditative practices in the Buddhadharma allow
us to take control of our lives at their source – the mind. Everything we experience
begins there, in the mind, in consciousness. And once the mind has become our
servant, we are better prepared to deal with anything external that comes our
way. And we do so in a spirit of freedom, with personal agency, with ahimsa, or harmlessness toward other
sentient beings, and with metta or
loving-kindness.
Ghosh: In one of your talks you stated that
“despite its inherent unclarity, race is easily the most democratic of all
possible subjects.” Could you
please elaborate?
Johnson: What I meant is that we apply it to everything, as an
explanation for everything in the social world. We really do ask more from the
concept of “race” than it can meaningfully provide.
Ghosh:
In your essay entitled “Every Twenty-Eight Hours: The Case of Trayvon Martin”
from the collection Taming the Ox, you make a rather sad statement: “We
rightly feel anger over all the Trayvons murdered billions of times every day
by toxic perceptions and conceptions in the white mind, and then, tragically
murdered every twenty-eight hours for real.” How, according to you, should
black intellectuals, philosophers, writers and academics address such
challenges to cleanse the “toxic perceptions and conceptions in the white
mind”?
Johnson: We can begin by
emphasizing the importance of epistemo-logical humility, by which I mean
teaching others that our knowledge about most things, and especially other
people, must by necessity be partial, incomplete, provisional, and subject to
revision based on new evidence.
Ghosh: What method should
be adopted to emphasize the significance of 'epistemological humility' to a
community that is convinced of gross racial injustice as reflected in cases
like Rodney King and Trayvon Martin?
Johnson: Epistemology
is about theory of knowledge. If we know – have evidence – that
a gross injustice was committed against Trayvon Martin, then we hold the person
responsible for that accountable.
Ghosh: In your insightful essay, "Why
Buddhism for Black America Now," you affirm that the "Dharma of
Buddhism" could go a long way in addressing the issue of young black males
caught up in "gangs, despair, fatherlessness, drugs, prison,
anti-intellectualism, and anti-social behavior by the time they are eight years
old." Who do you think would be willing to undertake the responsibility to
transform such individuals or collectives in the manner shown by the
Enlightened One?
Johnson: Let’s start with
responsible black fathers being there, day in and day out, in the lives of the
children we bring into the world.
Ghosh: Under
the inspiring leadership of Dr. Ambedkar, millions of Dalits in India have
converted themselves to the Buddhist faith. Do you foresee, in the near or
distant future, any mass conversion to Buddhism by blacks in America?
Johnson: No, I do not foresee mass conversions, but instead a steady
trickle of black Americans who find the Buddhist way of life perfect for
themselves.
Ghosh: Your
brilliant and lucid rendering of your friendship with August Wilson in the
story “Night Hawks” reminded me of the quality time Sunita and I spent with you
and August Wilson at the Broadway Grill way back in November 2003. I can’t
thank you enough for arranging the said unforgettable meeting. Here I would
like to refer to a statement made by August Wilson in the above story: “Nothing
we’ve done changes or improves the
situation of black people. We’re still powerless and disrespected every day—by
everyone and ourselves. People still think black men are violent and lazy and
stupid. They see you and me as the exceptions, not the rule.” If you were to
respond to August’s view of the social impotence of art, what would you like to
tell him from your own experience and learning?
Johnson: I think for both of us the love of beauty significantly
changed our lives for the better, as did being completely immersed in the
creative process for so much of our lives.
Ghosh: Going by Wilson's
words, the commitment of a writer must go beyond personal gratification and
include a sense of social responsibility. What is your take on this?
Johnson: Nibir,
I think you should look very carefully at how you've presented this question.
It's loaded with assumptions. For example, why do you reduce the love of beauty
to "personal gratification," and then dismiss it as of less
importance than "social responsibility"? The love and creation of
artistic beauty (as well as goodness and truth) in art is a gift to others that
enriches their lives. That is the artist's social responsibility. But let me
ask YOU a question: Why is it that we never hear black American writers talking
about beauty? Or the love of beauty? For example, Ishmael Reed titles one of
his books of essays, "Writin' is Fightin'." Stanley Crouch's first
essay collection is titled, "Notes From a Hanging Judge," i.e., notes from an executioner. And
in a message to a poet friend of mine, John Edgar Wideman said to her,
"Stay Strong in the Struggle." Is that how YOU see black literary
art? As only a call to battle?
Ghosh: In a passage in your
story, "The Sorcerer's Apprentice," you speak about your anxiety
regarding living up to the expectations of your parents. Can you kindly share
what you had in mind?
Johnson:
Oh –
What I'm saying is that my great concern in my
youth was that I never wanted to fail or let down my parents because of all the
important sacrifices they made for me and their support throughout my young
life.
Ghosh: I wonder why you
never tried your hand at writing poetry. Your visit to the Taj must have
inspired you to compose your first poem.
Johnson: When I was an undergraduate I experimented with
all kinds of things. (I was willing to try almost anything once before the
age of 20.) That included writing poems almost daily for a while. I wrote 80
very bad poems. They rhymed. They were full of the angst of someone in his late
teens, too full of raging hormones and loneliness. They
were "romantic" in the worst sense. Back then, I hadn't studied
poetry and I just didn't know what I was doing or the possibilities for
well-wrought poetic forms of expression. If I wrote a poem about the Taj, which
seemed so supernatural and otherworldly to me, I doubt that I could do it
justice. Poets think differently – have a different "cognitive style" – from prose writers.
It's a way of thinking, seeing, feeling that I fear I've never cultivated or
have much talent for.
But I love and appreciate great poetry – and I memorize the
ones I truly love, from Western poets and lines from the Gita. But
I surrendered long ago to the sad reality that when it comes to the arts based
on language, I'm most likely fated to be a boring prose person and not a poet.
Ghosh: You have adorned the Advisory Board of
Re-Markings and enriched it with your valuable contributions. What
message would you like to share with its readers and contributors?
Johnson: The message I would
share is: Read and support in any way you can this fine publication and the
people who work so selflessly to bring out every issue.
Ghosh:
Thank you so much, Dr. Johnson.
·
Dr.
Nibir K. Ghosh, former Head, Department of English Studies &
Research, Agra College, Agra is UGC Professor Emeritus. He has been a Senior
Fulbright Fellow at the University of Washington, Seattle, USA during 2003-04. An eminent scholar and critic of American, British and
Postcolonial literatures, he is Author/Editor of 14
widely acclaimed books and has published
over 170 articles and scholarly essays on various political, socio-cultural and
feminist issues in prestigious national and international journals. His essay -
“Spiritual Nationalism of Sri Aurobindo”- is prescribed in the Foundation Course
of universities and colleges in Madhya Pradesh.
v
Published in Re-Markings, Vol 17 No.3 September 2018
www.re-markings.com
Copyright: Nibir K. Ghosh 2018
Review
Essays
A Master Storyteller and
His Inspired Nocturnes
Robin
Lindley
It has
been said that stories are the communal currency of humanity. National Book Award-winning author (Middle Passage) and renowned University
of Washington professor Charles Johnson writes stories that touch the broad
scope of human experience and deepen a sense of wonder and mystery.
Although Professor Johnson is also a critic,
screenwriter, beloved teacher, and professional cartoonist, he may be best known
for his novels and stories. His genre bending creative works are built on his
deep knowledge of philosophy, spirituality, art, and history reinforced by a
vivid and lyrical writing style, a sense of humor from whimsical to ironic,
intellectual integrity, and a spirit that is generous, kind and hopeful.
Professor
Johnson’s new collection of a dozen stories, Night Hawks, ranges widely and reflects his limitless creative and
imaginative powers, delving into the struggles and desires of characters in
various historical periods and cultural worlds. All but one of these stories
was originally written for the Humanities Washington program Bedtime Stories—a
program launched at Professor Johnson’s behest almost two decades ago to
promote literacy and learning. These stories transport the reader from Professor
Johnson’s home in contemporary Seattle to places as far-flung as ancient Athens
and India, modern-day Japan and war-torn Afghanistan.
The
title story “Night Hawks” invites readers in on the nighttime conversations of
two great American writers, Professor Johnson and his dear friend, the revered
Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright August Wilson (1945-2005). The two met
regularly at a Capitol Hill café in Seattle for 15 years, and the story gives
readers a sense of their wide-ranging discussions on art, religion, politics,
race, their families, their hometowns—Professor Johnson in Evanston, Illinois,
and August Wilson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They also pondered more than a
century of shared history that bore down on them, from a time when the cruel segregation
policies of the Jim Crow South were still legal, through the civil rights
movement, and continuing through decades of persistent racial and economic
inequality.
Professor
Johnson’s dinners with August Wilson often lasted from seven at night until two
in the morning—and at times later. In the story “Night Hawks,” the two renowned
literary innovators consider the meaning of their lives as artists of color.
They talk into the wee hours. When their usual café closes, they reconvene at
an all-night pancake house. After they witness a bloody fight there between
several young black men, the role of their acclaimed work and their shared love
of beauty gains clarity.
As Professor
Johnson described in his engaging book on storytelling art, The Way of the Writer, he urged his
students to imagine beyond their own experience, to write about characters with
backgrounds other than their own. His mentor, the legendary novelist and
literary critic John Gardner advised: “Nothing
can be more limiting to the imagination than only writing about what you know.”
The
stories brought together in Night Hawks
evidence Professor Johnson’s compassion and empathy for characters of many
backgrounds who face human dilemmas from gravely serious to absurd or comical.
Before teaching literature and writing at the University of Washington, Professor
Johnson earned a doctorate in philosophy, and this core knowledge combined with
his understanding of human nature and history, and his Buddhist practice undergird
his tales of wonder.
Some
stories in Night Hawks require the
characters to make life or death decisions. In “Follow the Drinking Gourd” a
freed black man in the antebellum North travels back south to free his wife’s
cousin and her infant from slavery. He locates the woman and baby and, as they flee
toward freedom, they are chased by brutal slave hunters, “soulcatchers.” The
trio hides, but the baby’s cries threaten to betray their location and lead all
of them back to slavery or worse. The man must decide whether to kill the baby
to save himself and the woman. In “Idols
of the Cave,” a Muslim-American soldier in the war in Afghanistan faces the
crude racism of his commanding officer and a perplexing enemy. The story
reaches its climax in the ruins of an ancient library, a sanctuary of learning.
The
author’s sense of humor also comes to play in these stories. Take for example
“The Cynic.” The Greek philosopher Plato, who Professor Johnson has studied
rigorously since his teen years, tries to communicate obtuse abstractions to
mocking students. Eventually, nature ambushes the great thinker with beauty. The
English major protagonist of the whimsical “Guinea Pig” earns a meager living
by selling bodily fluids and volunteering for medical experiments. He’s set up
for an experiment that involves a stunning female scientist, a 130-pound
Rottweiler, and a “personality transfer.” What could go wrong? In “The Prince
of Ascetics,” an insanely jealous monk skeptically observes the struggles and
eventual apotheosis of a man who has forsaken all for awakening.
Professor
Johnson’s hometown Seattle provides a backdrop in several stories such as the extensively-researched
“The Night Belongs to Phoenix Jones,” based on a real crime-fighting Seattle
superhero who is joined in this endeavor on weekends by an English teacher.
“Welcome to Wedgwood” is set in Professor Johnson’s neighborhood and peppered
with identifiable local haunts such as the QFC grocery store on 35th
Avenue Northeast. In this story, the frustrated protagonist considers how to
deal with a noisy new neighbor and eventually questions his own preconceived
notions when he confronts the disturber of his peace.
Professor
Johnson also has a background as a professional cartoonist and visual artist,
and his refined visual imagination contributes to the sense of the story as “a
vivid and continuous dream,” the essence of a great story in John Gardner’s
view. In “The Weave,” for example, Professor Johnson limns the colorful and
glistening interior of a beauty shop in Seattle’s Central Area. Here, the story
of a vengeful woman and her boyfriend who steal hair extensions worth thousands
of dollars is interwoven with a meditation on hair, and consideration of the pain
of those who differ from a dominant
culture and of regret in the aftermath of revenge.
Professor
Johnson co-wrote “4189” with science fiction writer Steven Barnes and it seems obvious
that both enjoyed collaborating on this tale of a dystopian future concerning a
man and his realistic sex robot in a society where death is not allowed. In the
introduction to Night Hawks,
Professor Johnson graciously credits his co-author with creating the story
idea, plot, and characters, saying that “I just added some seasoning—a little
philosophy and lyricism.”
As Joan Didion wrote in The White Album that “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” For Professor Johnson, great stories must
contain “a measure of honest hope for the promise of our human species.” And
his new collection exudes wonder and generosity and hope.
Readers
will come away from the stories in Night
Hawks strengthened by their understanding, their sympathy, their beautiful
expression of the universality of human joy and pain, and their encouragement
to continue on. To continue on, even through the darkest nights.
REFERENCE
Night Hawks: Stories by Charles Johnson.
New York: Scribner, 2018. pp.192. $ 24 (Hardcover).
·
Robin Lindley is a Seattle-based writer and
attorney, and the features editor of the History
News Network (hnn.us). His articles have appeared in HNN, Crosscut, Salon, Real Change, Documentary, Writer’s Chronicle,
Billmoyers.com, Alternet, and others. He has a special interest in cultural
history and the arts.
v
Orchestration of Universal
Harmony
and Prayer
Gopikrishnan
Kottoor
Nibir
Ghosh quotes Wordsworth in his Editorial in the Re-Markings’ special number, A
World Assembly of Poets, that the poet is the rock of defence of human
nature - An upholder and preserver, “carrying everywhere with him relationship and love.” If the poet is that light, anthologists and editors as
Nibir and Tijan M. Sallah are truly the torch bearers who inspire us with their commitments, working behind the
curtain, to bring out the light of the poets to the world. This is one such marvel of a poetry anthology, and what has
gone into its making is visible
“poet-heartedness” laudable, and worthy of emulation. We need more such world
anthologists to bring on the poetry of the earth together. Its therapy for the
universe works in multidimensional ways. The work of the likes of Nibir Ghosh
and Sallah uphold the maxim that “The
poetry of the earth is never dead.” Without
such zestful enthusiasts for poetry, where would the poets themselves be?
A World Assembly of Poets is
indeed a landmark edition of contemporary world poetry in English. Beginning with Africa where, as Sallah
rightly observes, it all began, this definitive edition of poetry traverses the
globe, milking in sentiments and emotions that make for some of the finest
poetry being written. We have established voices here such as
those of Rita Dove, Paul Muldoon, or a Shiv K. Kumar. Younger ones rub
shoulders with giants to a point where names shed skins to merge with the flesh
and blood of the poets within them.
Poetry,
all said, is finally that which touches the heart, that even baits it to its
ecstatic end. The poem “At My Wake” by Frank M.
Chipasula (Malawi) on his mother is a poem that deeply moves us: “As her mourning grew richer and richer,/ I snuggled in her
thick sobs/ As she slowly sobbed my
name/ Heavy with the sweetness of a mother’s pain.” Shiv K. Kumar’s imagistic poetry has always been a marvel:
“A priest’s chant/ tender but peremptory/
churns the viscid waters/ into submission” (At
the Ghats in Banaras).
Katherine
Gallagher’s (Australia) “The Unknown Soldier” is a
befitting poem for the collection with the strength of a Ivor Gurney, when she talks
about the body of the Unknown Soldier
being taken “covered with real flowers/ from
country to country/ … And our hands tremble/ under his weight/ our eyes are
shocked/ by the riddles of tongues/ presenting the same paradox/ in every
country/ the whole human voice as background/ shrilled to fever/ about keeping
the guns at bay.”
New
Zealand’s Bill Manhire puts strength into body love that goes beyond touch to
the sensual and to the real: “Your tongue, touching
on song,/ darkens all songs/ Your touch is almost a signature.” Its undercurrents remind of the poet Norman Mc Caig.
Precise, stunning visuals.
One could
go on and on. This unique
anthology is not just about remarkable ideas in
contemporary poetry. It has qualities of poetic content carefully chosen by its
editors and spun to kaleidoscopic dimensions, such that any page at random puts
you on to touching, moving, poetry, spinning off to emotional and ambient
heights.
Truly,
as Tijan M. Sallah observes, the anthology has succeeded in its lofty aim to
capture a wide canvas of peace, warmth and relationships, truth, right, and
beauty that is the essence of genuine poetry. With the poetic
resonance of nearly one hundred poets from most parts of the earth, this
assembly of contemporary poets once again opens the
door to the orchestration of universal harmony and prayer that reinforces the
belief that poetry is the altar of the hope of mankind.
REFERENCE
A World
Assembly of Poets. Re-Markings’ Special Number Vol. 16 No. 4, November
2017. Guest Editor: Tijan M. Sallah. Editors: Nibir K. Ghosh, A. Karunaker
& Sunita Rani Ghosh. New Delhi: Re-Markings in association with Authorspress. pp. 418. $19.99, Rs. 799.
·
Gopikrishnan Kottoor, an award winning poet based
in Trivandrum, Kerala, attended the
MFA poetry program of Southwest Texas, San Marcos, Texas, USA in 2000. He has published ten books of poetry which
include Victoria Terminus (Selected Poems), A Buchenwald Diary, Mother
Sonata, Vrindavan, and My
Little Tsunami.
v
Of
Lessons Learnt by Heart
Urvashi
Sabu
Anyone below 40 will find these poems
too fantastic to be true. Having given this disclaimer right at the beginning,
let me start by describing my first reaction (and I am well above 40) upon
reading this slim unassuming volume of poetry. I was lost in time, borne aloft
on the wings of memory to a time when children sat on a durree in a tiny school
with one master and loudly learnt their alphabet and tables (often wrong, but
who was complaining?); when evenings resonated with the bells of cows coming
home and with mingled sounds of the azaan and the aarti; when djinns and ghosts
were real; and when the preferred modes of transport were the horse-drawn
tonga, the humble bullock cart, or for the very
well off, the elephant. It was a time of Ammi’s home remedies for all
ailments and of Abbu’s lessons in life, imparted in strictness that was a
reverse euphemism for love. And then, one grew up. All of a sudden, in the
blink of an eye, childhood, that innocent little interval between birth and
forgetting, was over; and one was ready: circumcised, schooled, and settled
into the ways of the world. What remained of that age past were lessons and
reflections.
This is the tapestry of Earthenware. Neatly divided into two
sections, Soil and Stone, the sixty poems in this volume
are small (some only four lines) and succinct. The section titles are
metaphorical. ‘Soil’, soft and loose, conveys the beginnings of germination. It
evokes the process of growing up, of learning to know oneself, and to know the
world. Soil needs to be aerated and ploughed for seeds to sprout; and the
experiences of childhood as portrayed in the first section serve precisely this
function. ‘Stone’, the succeeding section, is soil, petrified. It is replete
not so much with nostalgia as with disillusionment. There is loss, there is
sorrow, there are lessons learnt in the process of growing up. The poems are
harsher and bleaker in tone, carrying none of the wide eyed wonder of the
little boy in ‘Soil’. The companions of childhood are gone, gone are the protective
elders, as well as the loved ones. What remain are philosophical ruminations,
each one a gem. Consider for example, the simplicity of “Hands can shake the
world/ Do undo all/ but hands are held best / in a handshake.” Then there is an
entire group of poems titled ‘Missing’ that evoke the ambivalent and
multidimensional shades of loss in almost the same way as a multifaceted
solitaire. They are cohesive in theme and varied in expression in such a way
that every reader will identify with at least one if not more nuances of the
concept of ‘missing’. To summarise, the carefree happiness of childhood in the
first section is finely balanced by the somber pensiveness of the next section.
Despite being two separate parts, both the sections form an organic whole when
read together, as the experiences of the first have an implicit bearing on the
tenor of the next.
The cover design needs special mention.
At first glance, it is just an ordinary looking painting with a few pots and
pans of different shapes, colours, and sizes piled against a soft yellow
background. Ah, Earthenware! One thinks. How obvious. It is only when one has
gone through the entire volume and has shut the book that one realizes how
absolutely significant that cover is. The soft yellow background evokes the
dusty lanes of that childhood village. The pots and pans, by now, the eponymous
Earthenware, become symbolic of the rustic, fragile experiences of growing up.
Each pot is an experience lovingly shaped by the creator. But what catches the
eye and stays on in memory is the one broken pot dominating the foreground. All
beautiful things must end, and some end with the shattering of lovingly held
illusions. If, for Keats, “a thing of beauty is a joy for ever,” then in Earthenware, the beauty lies not just in
happy memories but also in the “lessons learnt by heart” that life and longing
bring our way.
I’ve climbed a jamun tree, purpled my
lips, ridden a tonga, told ghost stories, learnt the alphabet (and my tables)
loud and wrong, and witnessed grand Tazia processions in my hometown. Twenty
years apart and a distinct Muslim milieu, but so many similarities! The images
are familiar, yet dyed in a magical hue. Earthenware
is a poetic eulogy to childhood and to the inevitably painful act of growing
up. It is a symphony of longing and loss. It lingers like an old tune which the
mind has relegated to some dusty corner of memory, but which the heart
remembers.
REFERENCE
Earthenware by Anisur Rahman. New Delhi: Rubric
Publishing, 2018. pp. 83. Rs. 200.
·
Dr. Urvashi Sabu is Associate Professor in the
Department of English at PGDAV College (Delhi University), Delhi. She is
currently in UEA Norwich (UK) as recipient of the prestigious Charles Wallace
India Trust Translation Fellowship.
v
Published in Re-Markings, Vol 17 No.3 September 2018
www.re-markings.com
Copyright: Nibir K. Ghosh 2018
Powerful!!!
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