I recently started Billy Collins' Horoscopes for the Dead. It has been on my TBR list since 2021! I don't remember why or what prompted it to be on the list. But should I be asked to hazard a guess, it would be my roughly semi-annual urge to appreciate, understand or at least read English poetry.
The Romantics and the Ballads are fine, but it’s free verse that I normally struggle with. Poetry by and large has been absent from my reading this year. I think the only one I read was वर्जिन: काव्य संग्रह, which, while Hindi was in Free Verse and more akin to the Modern English poetry rather than the Dinkars, Gupts and the other Rashtrakavis I hold in regard. Now that I look at Goodreads, the last poetry book before that was मधुशाला which I read in 2024. I started reading both these years ago but managed to finish them when I did only. But indeed Bachanji was a treat, to be savoured like expensive wine.
भावुकता अंगूर लता से खींच कल्पना की हाला,
कवि साकी बनकर आया है भरकर कविता का प्याला,
कभी न कण-भर खाली होगा लाख पिएँ, दो लाख पिएँ!
पाठकगण हैं पीनेवाले, पुस्तक मेरी मधुशाला।
He is said to have written it before he started drinking. I may not have the "लोहू में है पचहत्तर प्रतिशत हाला" (seventy-five percent alcohol in my blood), still, I would use the "पाठकगण हैं पीनेवाले" (readers are the drinkers) as the basis to defend my right to employ the wine metaphor.
Anyway, the goal was to read more poetry. And so I am.
Billy Collins is the sort of poet I don't normally get. He writes like one speaks, no rhymes, no metre (or at least the one whose cadence is less noticeable). No heavy use of alterations. But this everyday speech flow and the poetry grounded in everyday life are what made it more palatable. After reading this, should one be disapointed at the lack of vakchautya, he will at least not be completely lacking in what happened. The hidden कवि कहना चाहता है कि may be not so hidden, but that's charming in its own way. This book is a bit soothing even when grief is a major theme.
Anyway, this is not supposed to be a prescription of what I like in poetry. I just happened to resonate with one of the poems. 'The Straightener', which can be read here (I myself am unclear of the legality of hosting a poem from a book in a personal blog as she did, but whatever).
I love to organise my desk in my office. Some piles are arranged by thickness, but by width, and some by colour. The piles themselves are organized by utility. I just love to do it. No, I just love to complete this, to overcome the inertia is much hard. But once I start, its just peace. Once in a while, I will reorganise DD's desk too. It feels like Shramdaan, Karmdaan, Kaarseva. The peaceful feeling while organizing is there too when I do it for myself only. I remember during class 10 matrix exams making timetables and stuff meticulously. Tracking down every 15 minute chunk, with many chunks reserved for tracking itself!That were the days indeed. Anyway, back to the poem.
Never tomahawk, lantern, and spyglass.
Always lantern, spyglass, tomahawk.
Yes indeed. Once decided, things are set in stone. I can be the greatest Lakir ka Fakir at times. I love self imposed rules. If I had some legal background, I could feature among the absurd anecdotes in Restart: The Last Chance for the Indian Economy (my GR review here). But actual babudom is torture to me. Foucaultian-poststructuralist-imposed-structural-violence should I refer to Akhil Gupta's Red Tape: Bureaucracy, Structural Violence, and Poverty in India (the book unirnoncally uses the terms, more can be read in my GR review here). The view is supported by the "I" in the poem too it seems:
And if I can avoid doing my taxes
Only if we all could do so, I am not an anarchist. I once read (and did a
GR review of) von Mises' Bureaucracy. I agree a lot with him, self imposed rules are not the same as those imposed by the punitive backing of the state. I am currently reading
The Bureaucratic Phenomenon which seems to diagree with this view of Mises, but I am yet to see his complete thesis and have just started it. But at the very least i am no anarchists, I am for a strong state but at the same time hate the Babudom to its core. I don't know what I I am exactly, I feel a bit like the protagonist in
English, August: An Indian Story. I feel like him in a lot many ways and I think I will pen down those thoughts once in a while. That I must do, but I must write a thousand other things. But this is somewhat more serious and personal than others.
Sociology and fictional IAS babus aside. Back to the poem. The "I" in the poem too must feel the same tranquillity that the I do in real life. He too shirks social and legal obligation and prefers to straighten things out. The "I " has
a note from a girl I was fond of.
As did I! It was a note saying we shall study Topology after we have lunch (separately). She planned things with me in writing! It was on my table for many months. DD discovered it once and had a lot of fun teasing me. Good for her, I give her much pain, she can use this distraction. I have given over that girl now, but did the "I" in the poem ever express his feelings? Or perhaps he already did and it was reciprocated, and the note was a witness of that hence kept on the table as a trophy. Or maybe it was just an innocent note like in my case, kept as a reminder that he must act or perhaps a memoto. We will never know, but I hope the best for the "I" in the poem. He seems to be doing well. In fact:Today, for example, I will devote my time
to lining up my shoes in the closet,
pair by pair in chronological order
and lining up my shirts on the rack by color
to put off having to tell you, dear,
what I really think and what I now am bound to do.
The rhythm of "tell you, dear ... what I now am bound to do" sounds so much better than it would have without the "dear." I don't know if there is a technical word for that, but perhaps it's not important. I can just enjoy it as it is. Maybe. The itch to know is too strong. Straighten, I must. But perhaps now. I will keep some things absolutely straightened out, and some will be the most convoluted. Like my thoughts, like this very post. I don't know perhaps it is that I can't tame my thoughts that I cut off artificial physical sacred zones that must be straightened out? Okay, no more pop self Freudian (?) diagnosis. Off (to straightening out my desk).
