Sharp Blue Search of Flame

Abstract

“Spearhafoc” is another example. The title plays upon the bellicose phrase “spearhavoc ,” but it actually means the modern sparrowhawk (Accipiter nisus) who speaks the poem. Norse mercenaries, medieval highwaymen, and modern outdoors enthusiasts share the protagonist’s role with the birds they watch, the fields they trespass upon, and the thousand-year-old groves on Ringstone Hill. Englaland is fertile ground for environmental literary criticism. Greg Brown Mercyhurst University Zilka Joseph. Sharp Blue Search of Flame. Detroit. Wayne State University Press. 2016. 116 pages. If the American critic Stephen Burt’s precepts for reading new poetry—look for a persona and a world, not for an argument or a plot—are to be heeded, then Zilka Joseph’s first book eminently meets those criteria. In addition to a distinct persona inhabiting a world of dual cultures, Joseph also makes an argument. Her subject matter and her language are shaped by two worlds—her Indian heritage and her residence in America—and her persona is molded by diverse influences , including Indian mythology and epic heroes, Hindu festivals, Jewish customs , growing up in Kolkata, the violence of rape and bride-burning, the experience of migration and the resulting dislocation, American folk music, and Mozart. She has a particular sensitivity to the natural world of birds, reptiles, flowers, and whales as well as the American outdoors. Joseph has a wonderful ability to combine the concerns of one poem (“Something Falls”) to echo the contents of another one (“The Blessed”). In the first, a girl nursing a childhood crush is diagnosed with polio (“I drag my wounded body / the way I will do / for the rest of my life”), and in the second, a wounded bird is rescued and given shelter (“my wild, starved, onelegged one”). In “Dharamsala,” a pilgrimage-trek draws in the Himalayan backdrop, steep climbs, and market-square stops and blends cozily with the intimacies of conjugal love. “Prey” exposes the familiar, materialistic trap of a marriage starting wrong resulting in domestic violence. Joseph uses understatement to depict the woman’s predicament rather than employ a strident, angry tone. In “Havan,” she gets more daring , getting the poem’s structure to zigzag across the page to mimic the household chase as a young bride is set on fire. On the other hand, “What Burns” could have gained from further elaboration. Less successful are her forays into Hindu mythology and her musings on goddesses, which seem to me to be assertions of female spirituality. Similarly, her attempt at creating a word-equivalent of mudras, in “The Bharat Natyam Dancer,” doesn’t entirely come off. Where Zilka Joseph excels is in her recording of family stories; the memories are photographic in their sharpness and unflinching in their revelations. She is equally adept in her handling of form to suit the needs of each poem. Altogether, a strong debut collection. Saleem Peeradina Siena Heights University Adil Jussawalla. I Dreamt a Horse Fell from the Sky. Gurgaon, India. Hachette India. 2015. 376 pages. Having been part of the resurgence of Indian poetry in English that was very much Bombay-centered, Adil Jussawalla brought out a brilliant debut collection called Land’s End in 1962. His precursor was Nissim Ezekiel (generally acknowledged as the founding father of postindependence Indian poetry in English), who Shauna Osborn Arachnid Verve Mongrel Empire Press Drawing threads of Comanche, Spanish, and Oklahoma culture into one eclectic tapestry, Shauna Osborn delivers a spellbinding collection in Arachnid Verse. Populated with memories that are both intimate to the writer and universally applicable, Osborn grapples with issues of gender, sexuality, and identity with equal measures of humor, anger, and grit. Only the Road / Solo el Camino: Eight Decades of Cuban Poetry Ed. & trans. Margaret Randall Duke University Press This anthology serves as a broad, bilingual survey of Cuban poets born during the twentieth century. Special attention is paid to diversity, with women making up nearly half of the authors represented. While it’s difficult to make generalizations about style with so many on display, the sum effect is that of a time-lapse shot taken over multiple generations that shows a kind of undeniable truth about the essence of Cuban poets and their craft (see WLT...