A Style of Loving -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Radhika Gowaikar

(Poem #1913) A Style of Loving Light now restricts itself To the top half of trees; The angled sun Slants honey-coloured rays That lessen to the ground As we bike through The corridor of Palm Drive. We two Have reached a safety the years Can claim to have created: Unconsummated, therefore Unjaded, unsated. Picnic, movie, ice-cream; Talk; to clear my head Hot buttered rum -- coffee for you; And so not to bed. And so we have set the question Aside, gently. Were we to become lovers Where would our best friends be? You do not wish, nor I To risk again This savoured light for noon's High joy or pain. -- Vikram Seth

I was browsing in a bookstore, many years ago, when I first read this.  Some
fragment of it must have stayed with me; I bought The Collected Poems last
year simply to reclaim this poem. It is not as if I recommend this
particular style of loving -- indeed, all those years ago, when I was
young(er) and brash(er) I would perhaps have advised against it -- but then,
as now, I find the piece poignant. The subtlety of the sentiment is
remarkable, and Seth's verse does it justice. The poem also speaks to me of
the many different personal choices that are available to us if only we are
not oblivious to them.

This first appeared in the collection All You Who Sleep Tonight.

radhika.

Unclaimed -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem submitted by Aseem Kaul:

(Poem #1861) Unclaimed To make love with a stranger is the best. There is no riddle and there is no test. -- To lie and love, not aching to make sense Of this night in the mesh of reference. To touch, unclaimed by fear of imminent day, And understand, as only strangers may. To feel the beat of foreign heart to heart Preferring neither to prolong nor part. To rest within the unknown arms and know That this is all there is; that this is so. -- Vikram Seth

I've never been big on Vikram Seth as a poet. Sure, his poems are clever
enough (and some of his translations are exquisite) - he's witty and has a
good ear for rhyme - but his poems always seem to me to lack something
vital. As a poet, Seth takes the easy way out too often, lapses too quickly
into cliches, has too pronounced a tendency to be trite or banal. Don't get
me wrong - I LOVED Golden Gate, but as an exercise in verse, not poetry (oh,
and I think he's an incredible novelist - An Equal Music has to be one of my
favourite books - but that's another story).

This poem is the one exception - a poem so beautiful, so heartbreakingly
perfect, that it makes me forgive all his other silliness. It's a simple
enough poem - the entire idea flatly stated in the first line (and what an
incredible honest idea it is, reminding me always of Joan Baez's Love Song
to a Stranger - another song that deserves to be on Minstrels) - but its
plain couplets (such a wonderful use of form - the two by two rhythm of
desire and receive, demand and surrender, reach and completion) capture
perfectly that sense of restless and deeply physical intimacy that exists
between two people discovering each other through touch. Seth takes
something we usually think of as cheap and turn away from and converts it
into something achingly lovely - a touchstone of desire freed of all other
obligations. There are some beautiful phrases here "not aching to make sense
/ of this night in the mesh of reference" but somehow what comes across is
not the (somewhat clunky) cleverness of the words, but the honesty with
which Seth speaks of something so pure, so elemental.

Aseem.

P.S. I can't believe you don't already have this!

Untitled -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Vikas Kedia

(Poem #1566) Untitled Dark night, and silent, calm, and lovely, That stills the efforts of our lives, Rare, excellent-kind, and behovely No matter how the poet strives To weave with epithets and clauses Your soundless web, he falters, pauses, And your enchantment slips between His hands, as if it's never been. Of all times most inbued with beauty, You lend us by your spell relief From ineradicable grief (If for a spell), and pain, and duty. We sleep, and nightly are made whole In all our fretted mind and soul. -- Vikram Seth

        (from "The Golden Gate")

I had never thought I would be able to appreciate a novel written completely in
verse. But after having read a couple of poems by Seth on Minstrels, I decided
to take up the challenge. And now in last couple of days I have spent
innumerable precious hours (precious because I am in middle of end terms)
devouring it.

Unputdownable has become a cliched word in recent times due to unjudicious use
on the cover of paperback fictions, yet it seems as if the word was meant for
this book. I have found it to be a surprisingly light read, very contemporary
(even though written in the 80's) and at places even profound as this sonnet
illustrates. Being an aspiring computer scientist and student of logic,
I revel in paradoxes. Therefore the paradox in this verse, of a poet trying to
express the enchantment of the night by admitting his inadequacy to do so,
appeals to me in more than poetic sense.

Loneliness seems to be a recurring theme in the writings of Seth, if I can make
that judgement from the poems I have read on Minstrels and this book. But this
book is written in a lighter and humorous vein as compared to poems like "All
You who Sleep Tonight". Word play, alliteration, puns abound. Couple of gems
I have so far come across are "Monday's mundane", "Cultural and haughty and
hortycultural". This book has turned out to be an excellent introduction to the
art of verse for a novice like me.

regards
Vikas

Why, Asks a Friend, Attempt Tetrameter? (Golden Gate 5.4) -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by a contributor who wishes to remain anonymous:

(Poem #1453) Why, Asks a Friend, Attempt Tetrameter? (Golden Gate 5.4) Why, asks a friend, attempt tetrameter? Because it once was noble, yet Capers before the proud pentameter, Tyrant of English. I regret To see this marvelous swift meter Deamean its heritage, and peter Into mere Hudibrastic tricks, Unapostolic knacks and knicks. But why take all this quite so badly? I would not, had I world and time To wait for reason, rhythm, rhyme, To reassert themselves, but sadly, The time is not remote when I Will not be here to wait. That's why. -- Vikram Seth

Seth's 'The Golden Gate'- labelled "The Great Californian Novel" by Gore
Vidal, was inspired by Pushkin's Eugene Onegin, and like Pushkin's work, is
constructed with sonnets set end to end. Within 690 rhyming tetrameter
sonnets, Seth weaves a satirical romance describing the stories of young
professionals in San Francisco throughout their quests and questions to
find, then deal with, love in their own lives as well as each others'.

I still recall how, years ago, when I'd first got hold of The Golden Gate,
I'd put in an all-nighter as I read what was my first exposure to modern
verse. Alternating between spartan and rich, wicked and funny, this racy
novel made me realize how beautifully verse can lend itself to describing
even the most mundane and monotonous travails of everyday life in the most
delightful fashion.

[Martin adds]

This is a delightful defense of the tetrameter, a verse form that, as Seth
notes, has lost out to the pentameter in the arena of 'nobility'. As Derek
Attridge points out[1], iambic pentameter is practically the only metre that
isn't expressible as a variant of the "natural" 4x4 metre (four lines of
four beats), and thus distinguishes itself as more "intellectual". To this
has been added the weight of tradition and association, so that today a
pentametric poem by its mere form biases the reader towards taking it more
seriously - indeed the "tyrant of English".

Besides "Eugene Onegin", Seth's book reminds me of Byron's "Don Juan".
There is the same effect of brilliant, polished verse that nonetheless can
give the impression of being dashed off in an odd moment - an ever-present
vein of authorial joie de vivre and sheer fun that leavens the unusual weight
of a novel written entirely in metrical verse.

[1] In "The Rhythms of English Poetry", one of the best nonfiction books I've
ever read. It's been a while, so any mistakes in summarising his argument
are entirely mine.

[Links]

 Biography:
   http://www.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Seth.html

 For more on the ever-popular tetrameter:
   http://www.tetrameter.com/seth.htm

 Eugene Onegin:
   http://www.pushkins-poems.com/Yev001.htm

Qingdao: December -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem submitted by H. K. Tang:

(Poem #1356) Qingdao: December Here by the sea this quiet night I see the moon through misted light. The water laps the rocks below. I hear it lap and swash and go. The pine-trees, dense and earthward-bent, Suffuse the air with resin-scent. A landward breeze combs through my hair And cools the earth with salted air. Here all attempt in life appears Irrelevant. The erosive years That build the moon and the rock and tree Speak of a sweet futility And say that we who are from birth Caressed by unimpulsive earth Should yield our fever to the trees, The seaward light and the resined breeze. Here by the sea this quiet night Where my still spirit could take flight And nullify the heart's distress Into the peace of wordlessness, I see the light, I breathe the scent, I touch the insight, but a bent Of heart exacts its old designs And draws my hands to write these lines. -- Vikram Seth

Vikram's poems remind me of poems from the Tang Dynasty.  It is hardly
surprising since he translated Tang poems.  "Qingdao: December" is taken
from his collection 'All You Who Sleep Tonight'.  The first few lines
immediately mesmerize with the tranquility of a seaside town on the
eastern coast of China.  The rhymes and measures fuse so naturally with
the surroundings being described that one hardly notices the clever
structure of the poem.  This I guess is the beauty of Vikram's art, it
soothes and hypnotizes.  The poem ends with a magical snap by referring
to a "bent of heart exacts its old designs and draws my hands to write
these lines".  It is a wonderful illustration of how rest and
relaxation, ironically one may say, stimulate the creative mind.

H. K. Tang

The Wind -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Tanmoy Saha

(Poem #1318) The Wind The bay is thick with flecks of white. The freezing air is honed and thined. The gulls sleep on the stones tonight, Wings locked against the prising wind. With no companion to my mood, Against the wind as it should be, I walk, but in my solitude Bow to the wind that buffets me. -- Vikram Seth

 From: All You who Sleep Tonight

I was slightly surprised to find that this poem was not on the minstrels
collection. This is one of the best poems of Seth that I have come across...he
is at his best when he pens these small ones (Remember 'Sit'? - Poem #966)....

This poem needs absolutely no explanation at all....but do you ever wonder why
is he against the wind "as it should be" ?!

Some more of poems can be found at
[broken link] http://www.nth-dimension.co.uk/vl/author.asp?id=235

Tanmoy

P.S. Anybody know what Seth is working on next?

Research in Jiangsu Province -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Nakul Krishna

(Poem #1266) Research in Jiangsu Province From off this plastic strip the noise Of buzzing stops. A human voice Asks its set questions, pauses, then Waits for responses to begin. The questions bore in. How much is The cost and area of this house? I see you have two sons. Would you Prefer to have had a daughter too? And do your private plots provide Substantial income on the side? Do you rear silkworms? goslings? pigs? How much per year is spent on eggs? How much on oil and soya sauce And salt and vinegar? asks the voice. The answering phantom states a figure Then reconsiders, makes it bigger. Children and contraceptives, soap And schooling rise like dreams of hope To rise with radios and bikes Round pensions, tea and alarm clocks. 'Forty square metres. Sixteen cents. To save us from the elements. Miscarriage. Pickle with rice gruel Three times a week. Rice-straw for fuel. Chicken and fruit trees.' In Jiangning Green spurts the psychedelic Spring And blossoming plum confounds the smell Of pig-shit plastered on the soil. Life and production, drought and flood Merge with the fertile river mud And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest And mandarin ducks return to nest. The Yangtse flows on like brown tape. The research forms take final shape, Each figure like a laden boat With white or madder sails afloat. Float on, float on, O facts and facts, Distilled compendia of past acts, Reveal the grand design to me, Flotilla of my PhD. On the obnoxious dreary pillage Of privacy, imperfect knowledge Will sprout like lodged rice, rank with grain In whose submerging ears obtain Statistics where none grew before And housing estimates galore, Diet and wealth and income data, Age structures and a price inflator. Birth and fertility projections, Plans based on need and predilections, O needful numbers, and half true, Without you what would nations do? I switch the tape off. This to me Encapsulates reality, Although the beckoning plum-trees splayed Against the sky, the fragrant shade, Have something tellable, it seems, Of evanescence, light and dreams, And the cloud-busy, far-blue air Forms a continuous questionnaire And Mrs Gao herself whose voice Is captive on my tape may choose Some time when tapes and forms are far To talk about the Japanese War, May mention how her family fled, And starved, and bartered her for bread, And stroke her grandson's head and say Such things could not occur today. -- Vikram Seth

Note: 'Research in Jiangsu Province' appears in Seth's 1985 poetry
collection -- 'The Humble Administrator's Garden' for which he won the
Commonwealth Poetry Prize. Richly deserved, I think.

Written while researching China's economic demography for his PhD, Vikram
Seth's 'Research in Jiangsu Province' is typical of his poetry --
atmospheric and gently evocative, with an ear for quiet detail, placing the
narrator away from the centre of his narrative, passing from an almost
brutal banality to sheer music, epiphanies strewn along the way -- in his
own words, 'encapsulat[ing] reality' with a chilling conclusion that brings
it all together.

Nakul.

Sit -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem submitted by Salima Virani :

(Poem #966) Sit Sit, drink your coffee here; your work can wait awhile. You're twenty-six, and still have some of life ahead. No need for wit; just talk vacuities, and I'll Reciprocate in kind, or laugh at you instead. The world is too opaque, distressing and profound. This twenty minutes' rendezvous will make my day: To sit here in the sun, with grackles all around, Staring with beady eyes, and you two feet away. -- Vikram Seth

I love this poem by Seth.  It hit me hard when I first read it.  I realised
that so much of my communication is done electronically these days and it
has gotten so cryptic and purpose-driven over time that I'd almost forgotten
what it was like to spend an afternoon 'talking vacuities'.  I like it also
because it reminds me of my friends from college and university ... with
whom I spent many such twenty minute rendezvous ... and the nostalgia of
being back in Bombay just sweeps me away (sigh).

Some day I'll make it happen again.  A trip to Prithvi Theatre maybe, two
cups of coffee, two friends and a twenty minute rendezvous :).

Salima.

[Minstrels Links]

Vikram Seth:
Poem #650, All You Who Sleep Tonight
Poem #754, Protocols
Poem #460, Round and Round

Protocols -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem submitted by Vidur:

(Poem #754) Protocols What can I say to you? How can I retract All that that fool, my voice, has spoken_ Now that the facts are plain, the placid surface cracked, The protocols of friendship broken? I cannot walk by day as now I walk at dawn Past the still house where you lie sleeping. May the sun burn these footprints on the lawn And hold you in its warmth and keeping. -- Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth needs no introduction. Although he is better known for a certain
volumnious book that fetched him fame and fortune, I find his verse far
better than any of his prose. This poem is from his collection "All You Who
Sleep Tonight", the title poem of which was on this list some time ago.

What I like about the poem is the simple, elegant form, its ability to
convey volumes of emotion with economy of verse and of course, the all too
familiar experience it talks about.

Vidur.

[Minstrels Links]

Poems by Vikram Seth:
Poem #460, "Round and Round"
Poem #650, "All You Who Sleep Tonight"

Vikram Seth is also known for his interpretations of Chinese poets such as
Li Po, Tu Fu and Wang Wei. The former has featured on the Minstrels before:
Poem #504, "About Tu Fu"
Poem #749, "Parting"
Poem #683, "To Tu Fu from Shantung"
Poem #70, "The River-Merchant's Wife: A Letter"
(The first three above are translated by Sam Hamill; the fourth by Ezra
Pound).

And finally, other contemporary Indian poets writing in English to have
featured on the Minstrels include Eunice de Souza:
Poem #682, "Advice to Women"
Poem #603, "Marriages are Made"
and Nissim Ezekiel:
Poem #714, "Night of the Scorpion"
Poem #364, "The Patriot"
Poem #579, "The Professor"

All You who Sleep Tonight -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem sent in by Sukrit Mehra

(Poem #650) All You who Sleep Tonight All you who sleep tonight Far from the ones you love, No hand to left or right And emptiness above - Know that you aren't alone The whole world shares your tears, Some for two nights or one, And some for all their years. -- Vikram Seth

Doesn't one feel inadequate at writing these commentaries. How can one
express in words, thoughts behind the words? How can one cross those
limitations? But this poem, I think, will appeal to most of us. Anybody who
ever lived must have been lonely, sometime or the other. Especially in this
day and age.

        "The global village" is a euphemism for the "every person for
himself - commando operation - world", where we exist now. It gets
lonely here. Living across oceans, away from family, friends and
familiarity. Somehow this poem always reminds me of "Brothers in Arms"
by Dire Straits.

  "...Someday you'll return to,
  your valleys and your farms
  and you'll no longer burn to be
  Brothers in Arms."

But then that is just half of the story - what about the people whose
loneliness is something much more incurable and not to do with geographical
location. What about them.

This poem has always been special to me... It says, "hey it happens, its
natural". And when nobody is there, it is.  I cherish its existence in my
life.

Sukrit

Links:

 We've run one Seth poem before - see poem #460

 http://www.cc.emory.edu/ENGLISH/Bahri/Seth.html has a biography of Seth and
 a writeup on his opus 'A Suitable Boy'.

Round and Round -- Vikram Seth

Guest poem submitted by Abhijit Padte:

(Poem #460) Round and Round After a long and wretched flight That stretched from daylight into night, Where babies wept and tempers shattered And the plane lurched and whiskey splattered Over my plastic food, I came To claim my bags from Baggage Claim Around, the carousel went around The anxious travelers sought and found Their bags, intact or gently battered, But to my foolish eyes what mattered Was a brave suitcase, red and small, That circled round, not mine at all. I knew that bag. It must be hers. We hadnt met in seven years! And as the metal plates squealed and clattered My happy memories chimed and chattered. An old man pulled it off the Claim. My bags appeared: I did the same. -- Vikram Seth

This poem is from Vikram Seth's volume of poems 'All You who Sleep Tonight',
published in 1990. Vikram Seth is better known for his narrative poem the
'Golden Gate'.

I like this poem for its simplicity and particularly for its depiction of how a
simple thing as a familiar bag can evoke a spate of emotions emanating from a
network of memories all tied up to some attachments in the past. In some sense
we all feel that we are through with the past and yet some simple event can
trigger of an overwhelming sense of reliving those moments. The human psyche has
a remarkable ability to retain the emotional contents of events long forgotten.

What also come through is the sense of tremendous expectations raised and
lowered with a deftness by the poet in the span of the last two lines.

Abhijit Padte.