Guest Blog 13

The article enumerates Pravat’s soulful transcendental love poetry impregnated with a romantic imagination, humanistic fervor, spiritual and metaphysical dimensions.

Love Sublime: The Reviewers’ Delight

By Pravat Kumar Padhy

In my early school career, I felt endowed with the beauty of nature and used to write articles pertaining to the scenic landscape.

I began composing proverbial poems (sort of monostich) in my early teens (around thirteen or fourteen) while writing essays in my mother tongue, Odia.

In the volume, edited by Atma Ram on, “Interviews with Indian Writing in English”, 1992, I candidly expressed, Poems come to my mind as a fragrance to flower. Anything I see, it creates a symbolic frame in my mind......... when I see a small grain of seed, I feel it is tiny / because it nests with care / the mightiest in it.”

The beauty of nature, socio-economic spectrum, human values, social solidarity and occasionally mystics with sublime metaphysical expression predominantly occupy in my writings.

In the early stage of my literary career, I wrote a few poems on love and romance in Odia.

…On this earth

We are two lines

You are latitude

And

I am longitude

-Excerpt from Sate Tame (Indeed You), Early 1970s

If sweet eyes are the twinkling stars

I am always there my darling moon

If kisses are the morning brown clouds

How far are you from me?

Less than the distance of your sacred lips.

(A poem written in English in the Early 1970s)

My first printed short English poems, Defining and Love, appeared in the “THE SCOLOMANIAC”, No.3, Feb 1979, a journal of Indian Institute of Technology (ISM), Dhanbad. My Professor Dr. Sudhir Basumallick regaled reading the verse and felt happy about the writing by a science student.

LOVE

Love is the legend of life.

It has no shape, size of its own

It is as pure as milk

And is as soft as the Himalayan snow.

Between you and me

It is an open ocean for all to swim.

-THE SCOLOMANIAC, No.3, Feb 1979

Later in 1984, I had composed a poem, Konark Visit, which was published in Youth Age, November 1984, embedding romantic touch with geological allusion:

KONARK VISIT

You plucked

My love of life

And cloaked

In your closed eye-lid.

When I rushed to you

You feigned

As a statue

Made up of khandalite.

-Youth Age, 15 th November 1984

A few love poems appeared in the literary magazine, “Poesie”, edited by S N Tripathy, in 1988, 1989 and later in 1991. With a little hesitation, I submitted a sequence of love poems, written on a piece of paper, to the editor, Dr I H Rizvi. In 1990 Dr Rizvi featured my poem, Songs of Love, entwined with an immaculate romantic imagination, in the prestigious anthology “Contemporary Indian English Love Poetry”.

The poem attracted critical attention in the literary circle. Prof. R K Singh wrote me a letter of appreciation attaching the xerox copy of the published poems.

I was overwhelmed by the remark of Prof. D.Ganasekaran who writes, “P.K.Padhy unveils the curtain of your dream followed by the silence you surrender on seabed near the shore under the roaring tide. Padhy is highly sensuous & his ‘songs of love’ is a modern ‘Endymion’.”

The manuscript of, “Songs of Love”, primarily written during the late eighties and early nineties, was preserved in my personal folder and later, almost after two decades, I submitted the manuscript to Writers Workshop, Kolkata. Prof Ananda Lal, son of iconic poet late P Lal, emailed with a note of gratification: Padhy’s poems have a thematic sensitivity and an eye and ear for imagery …….,and he later published the collection, “Songs of Love: A Celebration”, under the prestigious banner of ‘Writers Workshop’ in 2012.

The collection is an expression of self-evaluation and a sort of autobiographical expression with sublime philosophical values. I feel my poetry embodies a flow of mystical feeling, the freshness of romanticism and the aesthetic beauty of creation. The collection endures the journey of a man and his peaceful family life culminating with an optimistic flavour of philosophical attainment. Editor, Beatrice van de Vis comments, “P K Padhy’s Songs of Love is an epic celebration of love and life, leading the reader on a lyrical and memorable journey through the cycles of life.

PCK Prem in ‘The Contemporary History of Indian English Poetry’, 2019 adds, “*Songs of Love- A Celebration* is a fine little book of lyrics where the poet enjoys the gift of life, love and sentiments sublime and creates an aura of infinite joy.”

Indeed it has been an emotional reminiscence of the journey of life. The volume has been widely reviewed. I wish to share excerpts of the review articles:

Prof. Bam Dev Sharma , Formerly Department Head, English, President, Campus of International Languages, Tribhuvan University, Nepal in his review in The Literary Herald, Vol.1 Issue 2, 2015 enumerates:

I read his, "Songs of Love: A Celebration", in which he enjoys singing the beauty of nature-- human beings. To some extent, I find some poetic complicity between William Blake's, "Songs of Innocence", and, "Songs of Experience". When we try to delve into Blake's poems, we find nothing but the inner beauty because he invokes the true beauty which is far richer than human rationality. As we know that the songs of human beings are self expression of beauty articulated in the true sense of life, Padhy makes the same because his “Songs of Love" reflect deep human psyche, humanistic fervor, the universal paradigm and the thread that connects something innate and external realities.

Artfully I repose

On the high seas

Of your beauty.

The warmth

Of my inner sun

Swims with your

Passionate waves.

Because of this idiosyncratic nature, his poems remain as fresh as blowing wind, as genuine as the panorama, as shocking as lightening. In each poem, it is hard time for the reader to sift the words from their poetic fecundity. Like the good painter, he balances the paint stroke and colors: his paint strokes are the words, and his colors are the images…… Like metaphysical poets, he combines seen and unseen, palpable with impalpable, matter with spirit, sound with words.

Slowly you sail

With shades of shyness,

And carefully I unveil

The miracle of union.

Nearing the Moon

I immerse

Within the divinely wish

When you clad me

In the world

Of celestial sky.

To be precise, Padhy's love is transcendental. It is the spirit of humanity. It tries to create bond, fidelity, truism. We never find his love dissolving into the poetic lines alone, but it creates some kind of rejuvenation with awakened consciousness.

I go back to the

Pages of time

And read the poetry again.

I plunge to think how

Time shapes our mind

With beauty and bliss.

It is more to

A divine journey indeed.

Long time ago, John Keats sings the beauty, Padhy, too, sings love as beauty which is hidden magnum of human life. His love is not fragmentary, but complete unison where human flaw and precision are put together. Besides, most of his poems are ironic, they are some flowers put into a glass gleaming from the distance. They are exquisite to expose human mystic flashes; they portray the myriad of dimensions of life.

Please convey

Our best wishes

To the New soul:

The Designer’s gift.

I wish, close to you,

She listens

The lyrics

Of the evolutionary waves.

Ramesh Anand, Poet, in his review in Boloji.com , Feb 2013 expresses:

Soulful songs of love expressed in vivid pictures with great control of imagination, passes blissfulness and create extreme love in the reader’s heart . . . songs of loves threads high quality love through the cycles of life. Each verse is beautifully woven with inseparable combination of nature and inner feelings….

Throughout night

Your smile gathers

The petals

Of the blooming buds.

I discover

Every morning

Your freshness

Becomes the garden

Of my life.

Another wonderful love poem that depicts the love beamed by children:

The kids express

The meaning of affection

And Craftsman’s bliss.

Love sublimates

The musical voice

In their innocent smiles.

He chooses to write the epilogue of life with a touch of sublime philosophy blended with divine feeling.

We walk down

The garden of life

Reminiscing

The poetic sublime.

Wind whispers

All the songs

Of our poetic flight.

Our journey

Is an extension

Of the boundless voyage.

Renowned poet and author Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar in Asian Signature, Issue 3, Vol 3 January 2016 interprets the romantic imagination sketched in the collection:

The poet derives pleasure in the celebration of life, even though faced with myriads of challenges. In the very first poem ‘Songs of Love- A Celebration”, he himself introduces it:

Wings of aspiration
Muse the music of shyness
Collecting vibrations of
Meandering rhymes.
Our amazed maiden meet
Manuscripts sonnets of
Different verse
Back in our mind.

The poet is emotionally so matured, romantically pure and metaphysically insightful that he paints love with rainbow of his feelings ennobled by trajectory of experiences and truthful realization. He describes love in newer light and drapes his thoughts of love with the emotional refinement.

Our love is a ceaseless
Melodious celebration,
Our love is the lamp
And we are its brightness,
Our love is a song
And we are its rhythm..

Exploration of sensuous realm of life through the purgatory process of love or love making is quite palpable in his poems of love. He lets us peep into the secret chamber where love culminates into an inexplicable unification of soul on the ecstatic bed of life. He reveals-

I sink myself
Below your neckline
And inner self silently.
You surrender
At sea-bed near the shore
Under the roaring tides.
Passionately we search
Each other closing our eyes.

His thoughts on love, romance, longing and yearning shift from physical plains to metaphysical zenith. ‘I’ and ‘you’ become ‘We’ through the sincere journey. The gradual evolution of self and soul provides a spiritual and metaphysical dimension to his poetry.

The warmth rejoice
Of the sacred celebration
Carries
The nostalgic memories
And reaches out to the sun
Of a new bright light.
In the open
Ecstasy quaintness sky,
On the cosmic path,
We continue to walk
With the evolutionary smile.

Togetherness in life, facilitated by love helps the people to tide over all the troubles of life. Love sprouts hope and with this weapon they succeed in beautifying their life.

Life is a wave
Of joy and sorrow.
Harmonically it swings
In the high and low.
I collect the grains of hope
By the side
Of the completeness
And wish
The waves of our creation
Would breathe the zest of life
For the longest time.

Love is eternal and beyond the clutch of Time. Despite passing ages, the feeling of love is always there and this is what finds an apparent treatment in the following lines impregnated with metaphoric excellence and the poetic skills.

Time transgresses
Over wealthy age.
Lamp of love
Still continues to burn
Behind the eagerness
Of perennial urge.

Apt usage of metaphors and other poetic devices lends extra beauty to this extra-ordinary, lyrical and wonderful casket of love poems.

Prof. Sudhir K. Arora writes, in Creation and Criticism Journal, Jan 2017:

The poet in Padhy is a traveller who soars high on the wings of imagination and sings the songs of love that echo and re-echo in the hearts of the readers who are also on the journey of life in the quest of blissful love:

His inner sun begins to swim with her “passionate waves.” He hears the “symphony of love” and feels that she is “soft, calm and poetic.” The following lines reveal the height of the romantic love:

You wake me up

In my moist dream

And your soft touch

Lulls me to sleep.

Closing my eyes

I search

The shade of light

Over your

Flowery smiles. (14)

He also wonders and begins to think over what makes them one. Her love is nectar which flows from her eyes. He also recalls the time when they quarreled with each other resulting in togetherness after forgetting the argument. He recalls:

I recall

Unmindfully sometimes,

Opinion gets divided

I poise for mine

And you for yours.

After a brief spell

On a different musical tone

We sing together

The same soulful song

Forgetting the argument gap

As a devilish dream (22)

When he is alone, he recalls her. The letter she sends brings “a fresh breeze of remembrance.” Love for him is “an act of creation.” Soon a baby is born. He welcomes the beloved’s womanhood that offers him “a gateway to another new poem.” She assimilates love for a noble cause. Both of them discover “petals of love and glee” in the sunny and innocent smiles of their kids. He feels that these are the flowers of love that “confer together” while “weaving the inspiring Generation link.” He goes back and reminds in order to read the poetry of love. He is thankful that time has enriched them with beauty and bliss that will lead them towards “a divine journey.” He knows that their love is “a ceaseless / melodious celebration.” Their love is the lamp and they themselves are its brightness. They are the rhythm to the song of love. Their journey is “an extension / of the boundless voyage.” With “nostalgic memories”, they hope to realise the “sun of a new bright light” so that they may walk the cosmic path together with “the evolutionary smile.” The poem that begins with the physical ends with the sublime. Physical love ends with the passage of time but the sublime love with which the lover in Padhy is blessed continues to shine and shower blessings which lead to celebration.

I express my indebtedness to the esteemed reviewers who interpret the essence of love poems with distinct delicacy and poeticism. The poetic ecstasies and journey of human life are parallel and perennial, beyond space and time. Life is a poem, music its journey! Poetry is a stream murmuring our emotional resonance. I wish to conclude with admiration for poetry:

I choose poetry

The power of feminism:

The symbol of divinized muse

That mingles with

The gentle flow of a river

And confluences with

The vastness of the sea

It discovers the calmness

Of the rising sun

And enlightens the joy of life

Blooming within

the resonance of deep silence.

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