Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Book Review Songs of a Solitary Tree by Arun M Sivakrishna

Title: Songs of a Solitary Tree
Author: Arun M Sivakrishna
Pages: 90
Price: INR 250.00

Publisher: Partridge Publishing

Review

‘Songs of a solitary tree’ by Arun M Sivakrishna is a collection of sixty poems. The tagline of the book says “graphical verses of sublime snippets,” which should be read literally. It is no exaggeration that the poems indeed are of high moral and intellectual value and awe inspiring albeit too short sometimes. The flair to play with words seems to come naturally to the author as he goes on to spin stunning imagery out of the mundane in life. The common finds a new stature through his poetry.
Sivakrishna’s poetry is hard hitting and goes from being a static object to being an action played out in words. He blends personal experience with materials from a wide range of intellectual activities to create a collage of emotions. His use of ‘ideogrammatic method’ portrays new and unexpected relationships between what ought to be and what is. He has a keen observational eye with a gift for concrete utterance and a taste for experimenting.
Modernist to the core, the poems hide within their folds nuggets to be deciphered and relished. ‘What she must have kept in those eyes of hers?’ evokes nostalgia. ‘Ginger lime tea’ is a subtle yet poignant imagery of severance. ‘A space for Buddha’ holds up a mirror to our society at large that feigns happiness and is dwindling down to an online existence. ‘Blue linen shirt’ talks of the reality of a middle-class man whose life is guided by the commercials on the tele. In each poem there is more than meets the eye and this is where lies the poet’s prowess.

Cons

There is lack of proper punctuation. Some of the lines need to be read twice to understand where one ends and the other starts.

Verdict

The sheer volume of poetry being written, and the speed at which it races around online and even in print, can be daunting. Some of these books do not have a shelf life of more than a fortnight. ‘Songs of a solitary tree’ is not one of those short-lived eruptions. There is potential here.

About the author

Arun M Sivakrishna, a person of multiple interest, a management professional, when not selling trucks, keeps himself thoroughly engaged in varied interest from cricket to motor sports, photography and travel. A writer with a natural flair often comes out with hard hitting verses with a lot of depth on severance, pain and agony; based on realities of life. He lives in Mangalore.

Book links:


 Contact the author:  

arun.m.sivakrishna@gmail.com



3 comments:

  1. Jonali.....thanks a lot. That is a great review. I wish this book reaches the place it rightly deserves.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jonali.....thanks a lot. That is a great review. I wish this book reaches the place it rightly deserves.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Jonali.....thanks a lot. That is a great review. I wish this book reaches the place it rightly deserves.

    ReplyDelete