Preserving LW: A thought project in the making
The thing about great poetry is that it sustains a life, an afterlife, of its own. As does any great text or work of literature; as, unfortunately, does not the pretty, cutesy ‘instagrammable’ poems of our wonderful new age. And ‘great’ here does not mean greatness in the eyes of the reader: I speak rather of a greatness that exists of itself, without implicating the reader and their meaning-making process, without the highly subjective processes of responding, critiquing and analyzing. However much we contest and debate, sometimes things do have an inherent quality of greatness: a je ne sais quoi that one cannot really put down in logical thought. Perhaps it defies language — and that may be the greatness in itself — that a writer has managed to capture something quintessential, yet unsayable. Such literary works have greatness embedded in them, all on their own, regardless of the reader or critic; and, regardless of reader or critic, they sustain themselves and live on.
Almost always, I believe, this quality of self-sufficiency is received through the strength and power of language. A strength that the writing of Rupi Kaur and similar types — although easily consumable, perfectly quotable and highly tattooable — does not possess. (The commodification of poetry: so Instagram is the market and Kaur-types tapped right into it. Now that’s a Marxist analysis essay for another day.) Language in a poem, used adroitly, keeps the poem alive long after the poet is gone. And so, encountering Lakdas’s poetry properly for the first time, decades after his death; I saw the words jump off the page, singing and warring and full-bloodedly alive, tremulous with an energy that I could not help but match in myself.
So I looked into the poems, and saw many things. Poems within poems. Words rearranging themselves to make new meanings. New patterns emerging from the dancing language, as fluid and ever-changing as barely contained dark energy in a flux. Vortexes opening up.
These are the result of that thought experiment, a project still a work in progress:
I. The Vengeance of Ashanti
A girl I had used, once or twice,
in the centuries old house, was married
yesterday by my cousin, a private in the army –
for the sake of a name. A two year old kid she had,
& a seven month baby,
the one in her belly.
Too many wished to know who the father was;
perhaps it was my cousin, perhaps it was I.
Her insides packed with white seed, she
used an army of spine(-less men) to keep alive;
being the bearer of her different blood.
She & I were acid & kerosene;
no one but his epileptic sister noticed.
Two months back one night
she had given herself to I, the last male in the line;
as she lay heaped upon my lap
in the familiar hall inside
I knew he’d heard — saw, watched among spines,
cousin who I remember, nearly from boyhood,
had shared many things: the house, death, Ashanthi;
even then, we didn’t know how to look after her.
In the garden
drunk men gloated & danced,
eating burnt pig & black stork,
raising a great marsh-howl as Ashanti,
her longer-than-usual earlobes hung with
gold rings of great intricacy & weight
set fire to the old house petering out such maledictions,
the pots, pans, campbed in the hall,
& the leased-out firewood shed.
Perhaps they died there, army of pigs,
who were drunk on the wine or the thrill
– if she had put them, once more, to sleep;
as the flames of justice came washing in.
[Setting Ashanti to rest: this poem has been composed using all of the words of LW’s original, much-discussed poem; exactly using the 240 words (including the title) plus only 12 more to elicit cohesive meaning. Hence the total of the poem above comes to 252 words, with the twelve additional words being highlighted in regular font. This experiment was for the purpose of coaxing out a narrative within a narrative; a new narrative that seemed trapped inside the poem and struggling to vindicate itself. It was also to lay the culpability in the hands of those who were culpable; writing over many decades of evasion, even on the part of — yes — the poet himself. Ashanti, one of Sri Lankan English literature’s most-discussed tragic victims, needed to be freed.]*
II. Blackout Poem: i
III. Blackout Poem: ii
did not I think
I, being a husk —
a shell,
have a different appetite
on my tongue;
of sadness?
the absence of feeling
is water
rotting.
More may come as this thought project progresses. :) Let’s see where this goes eventually.
*The re-writing of the Ashanti poem was also the result of a larger analysis of culpability and complicity, deflection and evasion of blame:
