to write a few pages about our perception of her poems is so difficult
a task to try.So I confine myself to writing about a few of her poems
as a basis and I feel it is like the first rung of the ladder of
understanding the entire gamut of her sweep over almost all activities
of inanimate and animate world in her writing.
Words speak different language in her writings and able to bring the
ambiance of pronounced silence. Again her words bring a new mirror to
our face , showing the self awareness and analysis of human existence.
She adds more meanings and to the situations and places which normally
appear to be meaningless to us; like in her 'Qarrelsome Kitchen
Vessels' in kitchen we see only vessels depending on the utility ,
whereas when she sees , vessels talking about film,cooking, music and
even dressing. Silence of the kitchen vessels is an
affair of heart- breaking to her. She is able to have a
communion with the sorrow of the vessels and says
keeping their face shining, By draining their own tears'.
An ordinary Sculpture comes to life , gains more life than humans, and
able to show the human frailties, in the poem 'Sculpture" , she in her
own way castigates the sculptor for his possessiveness over the statue
and makes the fact visible that possessiveness is a destructive
process where both possessor and the possessed are lost in this
process.Again in the poem we are able to see the power of sex involved
in any creation though the 'created one ' does not know this.In a
general sweep of her brush , how she paints the presence of soul in
both animate and inanimate objects leading us to believe
the common soul of which we are parts.
Sea for Sale is another poem bringing out the woman's mind on to the
paper.What people normally think is contradicted by the poet by her
saying , the woman in house is partial and the whole woman can not be
contained in
the house; she is uncontainable and incomprehensible likethe sea since sea contains all wealth and one's lifetime , one can not
comprehend the incomprehensible phenomenon called
woman.
when we open a folder in our personal computer we may see a picture
which we stored earlier, but the poet sees a bird comes through her
window to the computer and sees a replica of the bird , that had been
captured when the bird the previous day came and pecked the food
grains and flew away laughing loudly!
and poet writes , she does not know the reason why the bird
laughed in that she effortlessly stresses the point that
every moment is fresh taking birth and no point in being stuck with
the past thereby demarcating the time as past , present and
future and we can imagine the scenario behind the lines.
Here is a poet whose lines you can enjoy and imagine by reading the
meanings both said and unsaid between the lines.
Ultimately poetry is one medium through which the inexpressible may be
expressed to certain extent with the imagination of the poet .If all
can be expressed in any medium , simply impossible by
humans , that is why we see development everywhere every
moment and we feel something still eluding us, if that is
perceivable , that is God.
And poetry helps in that process of understanding the ultimate truth..
Enjoy reading the poems of Sreedevi Nair
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