Dear...

It is nice to ‘see’ you here in my mailbox. Also thank you for sending out those crude poems out. I am permitting myself to call them poems, because they perhaps can attain some kind of wholeness one day; also here to intone Valery, poems are never finished, only abandoned.

It is good that you have taken a hiatus from ‘blogging’ – this word always reminds me of its rhyme, clogging, which I willfully misread as to walk around in clunky clogs, making a huge racket – to take up the task of bonfires and revision. Here let me splice in a section from an essay on this subject. This comes from “My Own John Berryman” by Philip Levine in his book, ‘The Bread Of Time’ (on the last count I have read this essay more than ten times, such is the ‘bread’ for wannabe poets in a dark time, and one of these days I shall type it up in whole for you (hear Grandpa Whitman’s echo?)):

“But Levine, it is not up to its most inspired moments – it has accepted three mediocre rhymes, it is padded where the imagination fails. If it is to become a poem, the author must attack again and bring the entirety up to the level of its few fine moments.” In effect John was giving us a lesson in how poems are revised: one listened to one’s own voice when it was “hot” (a word he liked) and let that “hot” writing redirect one toward a radical revision. “No hanging back”, he once said. “One must be ruthless with one’s own writing or someone else will be.” (I tried but failed to improve the poem. Even at twenty-six, I had not learned to trust my imagination.)

Also do send some of these revisions over as you go through them. I shall tell you what I like and what I find loathsome in them. And in equal measure feel free to do so with any of mine anytime.

Also coming to gossip – why is most verbal exchange gossip? – I ‘hung out’ this evening with three American poets, and like all ‘professional’ poets they spent most of the time discussing sex and sex lives. Such are the hazards of camp! So in order to make up for it, I went to a bookstore and read for a while.

Have you read Rilke’s ‘Letters to a Young Poet’ yet? I found a hardbound copy of these today and almost bought the book, when my ‘bania’ nature kicked in. I have them as printouts somewhere and must re-read them again. Rilke managed to get to that lyrical pitch, which not many lyric poets since have been able to get consistently to. Ted Hughes comes closest.

I also picked up The Vintage Book of Indian Writing, edited by Amit Chaudari. Perhaps you are aware of it? He divvies it up into four or five parts – Bengali writers, Hindi/ Urdu writers, Indian English writers, and other vernacular writers – with two top heavy (and yet interesting if one bears the chewing pains) essays, previously published in that over theoretical TLS, as a way of introduction for his selection. I skimmed through the Bengali section very quickly. The most interesting find was Tagore’s ‘An Essay on Nursery Rhymes’, as a month or so ago I was googling for nursery rhymes I had heard and grew up with in my mother tongue (Telugu), like mad, with the notion that going back to the root and writing from there would necessarily involve re-encountering these first word melodies. Do you remember any rhymes, lullabies etc from your childhood? If so, type them up and send them to me.

Here is the line I shall chant to sleep tonight, from Tagore’s essay: Bristhi pare tapur tapur, nadey elo baan… (“Drip Drip”, sings the rain, as rivers overflow… for the first line of a children’s rhyme, it hides many portents of doom…)

It is also appropriate that it should be raining here.

Goodnight. Sashi

PS: Also since I was running at my mouth over your use of adjectives previous, here is another passage from Levine’s essay on this subject:

“Levine,” he said on another day, “when was the last time you read your Shakespeare?” “Last week,” I said. “And what?” “Measure for Measure.” “Fine. I have noticed you consistently complain about the quantity of adjectives in the poems of your classmates.” This was true. “Is it the number that matters or quality?” I failed to answer. “Remember your Blake: ‘Bring out number, weight and measure in a year of dearth.’ ” I nodded. “ ‘Thy turfy mountains where live nibbling sheep.’ Two nouns, two adjectives. Any complaints, Levine?” I had none. “Who wrote that line?” “Shakespeare,” I said. “What play?” Again I was silent. His long face darkened with sadness. LaFollette answered, “The Tempest.” “Levine, do not return to this class until you have reread The Tempest. I assume you had read it at least once.” I had. “ ‘Fresher than May, sweeter/ Than her gold buttons on the boughs…’ Recognize it?” I did not. “There is great poetry hiding where you least suspect it – there, for example, buried in that hideous speech from The Two Noble Kinsmen, Act III, Scene 1.” Much scratching of pens as the class bowed to their notebooks. “We must find our touchstones where we can."