APRIL IS NATIONAL POETRY MONTH! So to kick off the month (It starts on Saturday, I know...) I'm gonna write a review about foreign poetry because you should give it a try if you can find some about topics that interest you. (Bonus points if it's from a culture you know nothing about or originally in a language you do not understand and is not closely related to English)
Because of my school assignments, I've been reading a lot of poetry recently and because of my frequent driving from place to place, have been listening to a lot of Bollywood movie songs (I think this is the first time that I have actually been thankful for my busy schedule). I can only think of these songs from a musical point of view (because I don't understand Hindi too well), but when someone explains the lyrics to me, I find that I appreciate it as much as I do western poetry. I guess I just have to work on the language gap part..., but that is a personal goal for another time.
It turns out that my mother likes this kind of poetry too, so she bought a book of poems by an Indian poet named Gulzar. His poems are very famous throughout India and have been adapted into a lot of movie songs.
My point of this post is that foreign literature can be just as interesting as literature from your home country. People from other regions of the world feel all the same feelings and sometimes have interesting ways of expressing the same ideas.
First of all, I have to explain my views on understand/decoding poetry: Personally, the way that some people may see it as just abstractions and others may see it only in terms of the techniques used to present it, I see every poem as a story. I think that's because I'm a writer and try to find stories in everything, but that's the way I make sense of basically everything. I like to think about a string of events connected to the poem and it usually takes shape in my head that way. And that's what I'm going to do. I picked two short poems from the book and have written a little bit about what I see as the "story" within it. I encourage you to do the same. Read the poem, close your eyes, and picture it as if it were a movie. No matter how short, or how simple, this is the easiest and most natural way that I make sense of literature in general And no, it's not just limited to poetry- you could do this with a novel or short story and slowly build the "movie" in your head as you read onward.
I really enjoy Gulzar's style of writing in the way that it is simple and easy to understand (not saturated with countless references that would be difficult for anyone not a literary scholar to make sense of. I'm looking at YOU, old European poets!), but still holds the same amount of meaning if you are willing to think about it enough. I like brevity. That way you don't have to hide behind references to the works of others to make your point.
One that caught my eye as I was reading is called "Ash".
"Ash
Behind prison bars
Ash has begun to settle
In the eyes of the rebel
The white of cataract
Descends in the eyes of even a glowing ember
If not fanned for long."
I see it as a revolution, a war that is wrecking havoc on a nation, a city, some place somewhere. People are torn between supporting the rebels and the risk of being killed by the government or giving up themselves to a corrupt institution. The insurgents are being thrown into prison/being murdered in mass numbers and it seems like the other side is winning. Numbed by the dull cracks of bombshells sits a single young man (I see the speaker as a man, probably just grown up, maybe early-mid twenties) in a jail cell. His food remains untouched for days and all he can do is watch the chaos that is happening beyond his window. The fire for freedom that burned brightly in his heart that made him sign himself up for such an endeavor is weakening as he saw the horrors of war/conflict and he has lost the will to continue. The effort seems to be futile, so why bother supporting it?
The second is called "Mountain".
"Mountain
The bruised and mauled mountain did try
To hold on to the falling tree
But some people carried it away on their shoulders
Down to the factory
And the mountain just stared stonily at the sky.
Man has mercilessly clawed my flesh
His axes have torn away the forests on my head
My rivers
My waterfalls have been denuded
By man steeped in greed
My heart can be ripped apart by molten lava
But not that of man
His heart is made of stone!"
I think this is a situation that is not alien to our time. Deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems is a great problem in mankind's hunger for natural resources. I see this as nature's response towards the pillaging it has suffered at the hands of man.
What I find the most interesting about this poem is the twist in description that happens in the last three lines. We think of mountains as strong, without emotions. They are immovable, unshakable. But when it finally confides that even it can feel something in its heart, maybe man is the one that has a heart made of stone. Maybe man is the one that is truly immovable and unbreakable. Maybe his constant hunger for control, and what he does not have has made him more tough and his impact on the world more everlasting than the largest mountain.
That is a scary thought. That man, such a small thing, has conquered the mighty Earth that he once had fear of.
(Just something to turn around in your head as you're passing time.)
Happy Reading and I wish you all a wonderful and poetry-filled month!
Note: I am using the English translations by Pavan K. Varma in all of the poems that I provide/analyze.
Because of my school assignments, I've been reading a lot of poetry recently and because of my frequent driving from place to place, have been listening to a lot of Bollywood movie songs (I think this is the first time that I have actually been thankful for my busy schedule). I can only think of these songs from a musical point of view (because I don't understand Hindi too well), but when someone explains the lyrics to me, I find that I appreciate it as much as I do western poetry. I guess I just have to work on the language gap part..., but that is a personal goal for another time.
It turns out that my mother likes this kind of poetry too, so she bought a book of poems by an Indian poet named Gulzar. His poems are very famous throughout India and have been adapted into a lot of movie songs.
My point of this post is that foreign literature can be just as interesting as literature from your home country. People from other regions of the world feel all the same feelings and sometimes have interesting ways of expressing the same ideas.
First of all, I have to explain my views on understand/decoding poetry: Personally, the way that some people may see it as just abstractions and others may see it only in terms of the techniques used to present it, I see every poem as a story. I think that's because I'm a writer and try to find stories in everything, but that's the way I make sense of basically everything. I like to think about a string of events connected to the poem and it usually takes shape in my head that way. And that's what I'm going to do. I picked two short poems from the book and have written a little bit about what I see as the "story" within it. I encourage you to do the same. Read the poem, close your eyes, and picture it as if it were a movie. No matter how short, or how simple, this is the easiest and most natural way that I make sense of literature in general And no, it's not just limited to poetry- you could do this with a novel or short story and slowly build the "movie" in your head as you read onward.
I really enjoy Gulzar's style of writing in the way that it is simple and easy to understand (not saturated with countless references that would be difficult for anyone not a literary scholar to make sense of. I'm looking at YOU, old European poets!), but still holds the same amount of meaning if you are willing to think about it enough. I like brevity. That way you don't have to hide behind references to the works of others to make your point.
One that caught my eye as I was reading is called "Ash".
"Ash
Behind prison bars
Ash has begun to settle
In the eyes of the rebel
The white of cataract
Descends in the eyes of even a glowing ember
If not fanned for long."
I see it as a revolution, a war that is wrecking havoc on a nation, a city, some place somewhere. People are torn between supporting the rebels and the risk of being killed by the government or giving up themselves to a corrupt institution. The insurgents are being thrown into prison/being murdered in mass numbers and it seems like the other side is winning. Numbed by the dull cracks of bombshells sits a single young man (I see the speaker as a man, probably just grown up, maybe early-mid twenties) in a jail cell. His food remains untouched for days and all he can do is watch the chaos that is happening beyond his window. The fire for freedom that burned brightly in his heart that made him sign himself up for such an endeavor is weakening as he saw the horrors of war/conflict and he has lost the will to continue. The effort seems to be futile, so why bother supporting it?
The second is called "Mountain".
"Mountain
The bruised and mauled mountain did try
To hold on to the falling tree
But some people carried it away on their shoulders
Down to the factory
And the mountain just stared stonily at the sky.
Man has mercilessly clawed my flesh
His axes have torn away the forests on my head
My rivers
My waterfalls have been denuded
By man steeped in greed
My heart can be ripped apart by molten lava
But not that of man
His heart is made of stone!"
I think this is a situation that is not alien to our time. Deforestation and the destruction of ecosystems is a great problem in mankind's hunger for natural resources. I see this as nature's response towards the pillaging it has suffered at the hands of man.
What I find the most interesting about this poem is the twist in description that happens in the last three lines. We think of mountains as strong, without emotions. They are immovable, unshakable. But when it finally confides that even it can feel something in its heart, maybe man is the one that has a heart made of stone. Maybe man is the one that is truly immovable and unbreakable. Maybe his constant hunger for control, and what he does not have has made him more tough and his impact on the world more everlasting than the largest mountain.
That is a scary thought. That man, such a small thing, has conquered the mighty Earth that he once had fear of.
(Just something to turn around in your head as you're passing time.)
Happy Reading and I wish you all a wonderful and poetry-filled month!
Note: I am using the English translations by Pavan K. Varma in all of the poems that I provide/analyze.
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