Subash Parajuli
The Sun on the Sand is a true devotion to nature, beauty, mesmerization of wilderness, and beauty of surroundings that occupy the poet’s instinct in different forms. It is a short anthology of poems is written by Ishwor Kandel and published by Amber Publication, Delhi. It includes 38 vibrant and lyrical poems.
The poet listens, observes and reckons very carefully to his inner voice and transforms ideas into the forms of poetry whenever he entangled with such ambiguity to such appearance in his inner and outer eyes. His poetry is focused on exalting the beauty of everything that surrounds to everyone’s life but the very beauty that commoners often miss are simply recognized and understood by the poet’s instinct and is presented in the form of verses. Kandel’s poems also talk of such places where objects and nature seem to come to life as inseparable. This book is a dedication to such mystical beliefs of a poet that brings out stream of consciousness via different perspective; he clearly shows his knowledge of poetry and literature. But at the same time, he speaks simply, that’s why his words are so wonderful and appealing to stand face to face about his experienced livelihood. The author shares with us the culture he has learned, and his life experience in harmonious words. This poetry collection is enjoyable and good to spend a pleasant moment in retrospect with oneself and appreciate love and life.
The book really allured to poetry readers’ about the poet’s expression and understanding to every tiny things, sensory feelings and emotions, maintaining purity and harmony. The poet shows how strong emotions can be transformed into a space and beyond horizons where time stands still and rhythm and silences create harmony from one axis to nihilism. In another respect, this book is visually pleasing as most of the pages have simple images in the correct spaces, which helps to visualize the concepts.
The most interesting part of this anthology is about the interview with Mr. Uday Adhikari who vehemently strikes with such questions to the poet about his journey of writings, his overall perspective towards modern writing, positions of Nepali literature in global arena and current pattern of Nepalese writer’s discourses where the grains of thoughts and his sensory expressions towards such subjects are beautifully responded. Most of the poems course through a personal, enigmatic relationship with natural landscapes.
Most of the poems are addressed to an individual perspective towards nature , resulting in a recurring I and thou relationship, making them reminiscent of verses addressed to a penetrate complexity in life.
The poem’ A Big Sky in Me’ is a depiction about a poet’s landscaping about ideas and thoughts how it glides from known to unknown destination to mark such an impact like a Tagore’s poem ‘Paper Boats’.
When I wake up in the morning
I stand at the door steps
my eyes rest on the branches nearby
and my little soul far away
I hire its wings
and fly miles away and get back
before the time
the Shrike flies back!!
The poet’s enigmatic longing to the poetry and some resemblance to such nexus with the tidal of time and it’s perplexity can easily be renounced from the above stanza.
Elsewhere, figurative language is applied to landscapes themselves, helping to translate the traveler’s experience and equally put such a satirical resemblance in particular profession teaching that probably the poet once faced in lifetime through the poem ‘Storm on Coffee Mug’. Most of the poems in this poetry book are in free verse pattern that has been broken into poetic lines but one verse has such string like thread and needle to embroidered pangs and joys of images. Even then, their line breaks have a random sensibility, sans enjambment or other resonant techniques are highly applied to deliver originality of the pretext.
When musicality arises, it occurs because of short lines and predictable patterns, as prevails in the poem entitled ‘ Song of a Tree’
‘I wish I could run away alone
From all my leaves and branch
Like a sadhu so know me none
That forced me live like a hunch’.
Throughout, the book uses language of romance and mysticism to address individual moments as beloved forms with streams, flow of breeze, blossom of flower, sound of owls or as disapproving or inaccessible lovers that continuously aspire to delve with aura of basking onto spiritual world.
Eventually, ‘The Sun on the Sand’ is a personal, enigmatic relationship with natural landscapes and the magnificent forces of nature where poet finds everything is sonorous for living.
[Reviewer Parajuli is a Nepali poet and educator. He has published three anthologies of poems in English: Mystic Myth, Soil on Pyre and Symphony of Life. He lives in Kathmandu.]