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      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
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After Grief by Shikhandin, Red River, 2021.

reviewed by 
Pramila Venkateswaran

​

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“Death is a rusty truck / bulldozing in to trash / the morning,” begins Shikandin’s After Grief, which is an exploration of death, loss, separation from family, and finding light. 
Most of the poems, some of which are autobiographical, offers us the poet’s introspection of the threshold between life and death, glimpsing that which is veiled. Through a rich tapestry of images, she allows us moments of rapture. Interestingly, the tapestried cover, repeated as sectional divides, matches the rich imagery of the poems. Natural landscapes, seascapes, domestic scenes populate the settings of the poems and offer imagery spanning the physical and the metaphysical. Shikandin teaches us the many hues of grief. I love the ending of “Unwanted,” where grief is concretized; we hold grief close, experiencing it fully, its softness and jaggedness, as we read: “hold it close — this juddering / of ribs. This folding of shoulders. These / unblinking eyes that defy the saturation of clouds.” Some endings of poems heart-stoppers, such as, “your hands / even time’s wheel would turn into clay.”
“Dawning” begins with evocative opening line. “No rain yet, and the sky is a beggar’s quilt.” The poem describes daily scenes, making mundane objects extraordinary, such as, “A water-colored plastic bag floats up like an airborne jellyfish.” In “Crossing,” “The season slides off your shoulder. A tidy pile / of days.” Surprising juxtapositions and images make the poet’s experience of loss and her description of the ebbing of life both realistic and endearing. In “Dawning,” the first stanza is a street scene; we don’t expect the second stanza which is about the poet’s father-in-law lying on a hospital bed gradually fading away. The nature of the ebbing of life contrasting with the prevalence of nature is a motif throughout the volume.
 The final stanza of “Hope springs like grass from ashes,” with its resonance of the proverbial “hope springs eternal,” with its many-hued images of light—lanterns, lamps, blossoms as fallen stars—the mystic night arrayed with the song of a bird, the silhouettes making objects into “vaporous silhouettes” offer us the richness of British romantic poetry and the tradition of regional Indian poets. Shikandin is able to give these influences her own twist with her attention to the free verse form that flows through the use of sound patterns and interesting line breaks. She uses geographic and cosmic imagery to portray the sound of laughter as the ultimate sound connecting us to the spirit. Images concretize abstract nouns. For example, spirit visually described as “fluff of life upon my shoulder,” fluff making us imagine our own associations—cotton, cloud or bird. Or in “After the “Passing of Father,” “your tired hands swat / At another intruding memory bouncing on that net / Of emptiness,” offers us both a mundane gesture as well as memory as pestilence.
In “The way I imagine you” we hear the speaker’s grief in having a mother who is beyond reach in her mansion; only her death brings relief to the speaker: “I have no reason to mourn, anymore.” The experience of disconnection with the mother strikes a strident note in this volume. The most extraordinary poem on this theme is “The Fist,” which contrasts strikingly with the poet’s deep love for the father figure who connects with her despite death. “I am the fist that slammed out through your vagina. / I am the stone that shattered your lying mirror./ You hated me for breaking / your faith. Mothers don’t seek / daughters, and here you were saddled / with two.” Thus begins “The Fist,” drawing us into the drama of disconnection imaged in the description of the mother’s experience of the shock of arrival of the girl child. The symbol of the fist is both a symbol of rebellion as well as a container.
Shikandin’s poems entrance us with its musical quality. Internal rhymes, assonance and consonance flow readily from her pen. Witness her use of sonics in internal rhymes, slant rhymes, and assonance surprising us, as in “Hope Springs Like Grass from Ashes,” “lawn,” “thorn,” “song” placed in close range within two lines.  Sound patterns, enjambed lines, alternating stops and pauses in the middle of lines make Shikandin’s poems limpid in their flow.
Although some poems such as “Dear Emily” and “Cancer Ward” are wordy and need editing, and some poems push to the brink of overwriting and prosaic declarations, the volume anchors us in the physicality of experience. I think this is the uniqueness of Shikandin’s poetry, which shows how much we can delve into experiences within and without through language and poetic craft.  

​

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​VerseVille (formerly The Enchanting Verses Literary Review) © 2008-2025    ISSN 0974-3057 Published from India. 

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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Media Coverages
    • Copyright Notice
    • VerseVille Blog
  • Submissions
    • Poetry and Essays Guidelines
    • Book Review Guidelines
    • Research Series Guidelines
  • Masthead
  • Editions
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
    • 2012 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
    • 2019 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIX July 2019
    • 2020 ISSUES >
      • Issue XXX February 2020
      • ISSUE XXXI December 2020
    • 2021 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXII August 2021
    • 2022 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXIII June 2022
      • ISSUE XXXIV December 2022
    • 2023 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXV August 2023
      • ISSUE XXXVI December 2023 Indian Poetry
    • 2024 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXVII October 2024 Bengali Poetry
    • 2025 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXXVIII January 2025 Balkan Poetry
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions