About me
Priyanka Bhowmick is a poet, wife, blogger, amateur photographer and online freelance writer. Born in Tezpur, a small town in Assam. She spent several years, from schooling to married life, in Tangla, Tezpur, Khairi (H.P.) and Guwahati. Her works are published in several newspapers and online journals like Sketchbook, Fried eye, Assam Tribune, Cynic Mag, Vox Poetica, Boloji, Muse India, Shamrock Haiku Journal, A handful of stones, etc. She authored a book on a collection of her poems "The Cry of a Gloomy Pond and other Poems" on 2010. Besides she runs an online literary journal called "Frog Croon".
The Cry of a Gloomy Pond and other poems (Paperback): Review
The Cry of a Gloomy Pond and other poems (Paperback)
by Priyanka Bhowmick
Paperback: 53 pages
ISBN-10: 8182531950
ISBN-13: 978-8182531956
Publisher: Cyberwit.net; 1 edition (November 22, 2010)
Language: English
Email me at [email protected] to order a signed copy of it.
Book Review by Makineedi Surya Bhaskar (a poet, a Literary Critic, an Artist and Art-critic, Story-writer, Writer of Children Literature, Academician and Free-lancer)
Dreamer surviving in the human race to find out her real identity, Priyanka Bhowmick writes and rises by improvising in solitude. She confesses the same in her fore word to her collection of poems ‘The Cry of a Gloomy Pond and Other Poems'. She says, "As solitude carries a huge role in writing, I would like to express my adoration for a beautiful place like Khairi (Himachal Pradesh, India), whose environment has lot to do with my poetry".
She idealizes a world free of fears and tears; anxieties and calamities; missed gains and bargains. She dreams the world reigned by self-made rules without any barriers or borders. That place is
"A place where angels abide,
a place full of smiles,
a place to hold head high,
… bridge up miles"
"A place to hold my head high"! We see Tagore's spirit in Priyanka. We can understand that it is rather true when we go through the lines of her poetry. She gives her ultimate preference to silence, serenity and patience and beauty.
The very first poem, ‘…In the silent wind' is an introductory undertone of the content and style of her poetry.
"…Singing the eternal elegies of the life
My mind crumbles with the bygone years,
Played in the tattered strings of seclusion,
Provoking my core with an enormous thrust
Cracking up my heart with ablaze,
I can hear my blood seethe…"
Abundantly filled with the nostalgia of bygone days, Priyanka sings eternal elegies, ‘the spill of the fiery memories'. Thus, a melancholic strain pervades throughout her letters with a sublime innate feeling. The content of day-to-day experiences and emotions take an excellent form. Thus, the life and poetry are not different to Priyanka. They both go with hand in hand.
A poem by name ‘She' is an ode to the woman. ‘She' is wishing to fly, hoping to turn the reality of a dream right…a magic of a frustrated soul waiting to occur and is burning in the fire of rituals, collecting words to utter. Moving around in darkness, she sees a beam of light…and drowning in the deepest sea, tries to survive. She suffers the deepest pains since her birth. All this descriptions while leading a reader to assume ‘she' as the woman, the poet simply confirms it.
"She's the woman
waiting to soar high above,
to move away from bindings
Yearning for love"
Women's lib of Priyanka does not go far away against the man, holding the healthy view of feminism.
Priyanka's feelings are subtle enough to instill the strain of melancholy in the hearts of readers. Haunted by thoughts day and night… with an empty mind of unending illusions, the ‘Broken Path' of the poet lead the reader nowhere but to getting back to the forlorn pavilion.
Strains of self-expression win through dominantly in some poems like ‘I am not a poet', ‘and I do not know why ', ‘I remember…' that exist serially one after another. ‘I am not a Poet', a self-retrospective, in which Priyanka says that the poet is a creator and creates feelings and emotions, which she has lost. She utters-
"I do not know why
the tears come down
even when I stop it
sealing all my emotions
sealing all my love"
These rolling down tears take the form of letters spontaneously themselves making Priyanka a promising poet. Though she says for a mere word -sake that she do not know why, she does know pretty well why she has become a poet.
"so many questions
arise, though the answer
hidden in the core
of life."
The questions explore the inner expressions of feelings, emotions and love of the poet to come out as poems themselves.
The thoughts belong to ‘you' also prevail in. Who is this ‘you'? He is neither a lover nor a man, without whom, the poet feels crippled. Whether her eyes are open or closed, she envisions his illusion.
The poet boldly welcomes him and asks him to come and see her heart still bleed his name. However, in a desperate condition in which his arrival stands an illusion, she listens to a call for an unknown ‘you'. When we go through these poems in continuation, we perceive his address. He is the Almighty-
"… he always stays beside.
He stays behind to listen,
to what we cannot say."
He is always there forwarding his divine shoulders to cry upon and He is there for us and for us only! He is there to hold our bare hands, to bring a smile on our faces, to shower the light upon us and to wipe out our tears.
She has a deep concern for the Mother Nature also. In ‘Fading Beauty', she declares that her own children are murdering her.
"the ones who used to play…
play in her lap…play with her…
they have grown up to be her murderers
she wants to survive…but she can't"
The paradox is that ‘though she has got an eternal place in each heart, even though everyone loves her and gazes at her charming beauty… but she's been killed.' That is the irony, which she brings forward into the notice of the readers.
By chance, she writes incidental poetry also when she has moved. ‘Based on the incident that took place in Tamil Nadu during 2009, where the ministers stood and kept watching when a sub –inspector, Vetrivel was bleeding to death'; she wrote the poem ‘Cop in flames'. '63 years of Independence' is such an another poem, she laments-
"sovereign India but still remains the horror
blasts, murders, blood spoils the shrine
the British departed but terrorists supervise
hidden in the mask of diaphanous lies…"
Weeping for her country, she sheds "the tears those still keep pouring without an end" upon the soil of her country, her India, her land and pray God-
"Hail o lord! Keep my country awakened
For we still inhabit among the terrors"
This sentence brings the remembrance of Tagore's words in ‘Where the Mind is without Fear…'
Story-telling nature is a feature in Priyanka's poetry. Along with ‘A dream Terrified', ‘The Old Man Sitting' etc., she tells a story. ‘Sam and Jane' is a pathetic narrative, a morbid love story which ends in the death of Jane while crossing the high way to meet Sam with gifts. These poems prove that the story telling implants the interest of the reader even in the free verse. Though nominalization appears here and there, adds a beauty to the gaiety of the poem.
"Sam walked to and fro
Eyeing on the lovers kiss…"
Imagery abounds in her poetry which is still elucidated to its full by adjective words.
"These absolute venomous voices
Relentlessly ring like a nightmare…"
The main thing here is ‘the voices' which are ‘relentlessly ringing'. The voices are absolute and venomous. They are ringing as a nightmare also.
Personification is a strong element in Priyanka's poetry. She personifies an old chair, the lighthouse, the breeze, and the words of an empty sheet and a dried gloomy pond. Her personification is not abstract and each in turn, represents the poet's gloomy heart in its concern.
An old chair in the family, a member since fifty years, brought by old grandpa along with his bride says that he is the witness for his family's smiles and tears. Personifies the breeze and asks to come and take her to the higher mountains and to the subterranean fields when the people are in sleep. Breeze on touching her face, poet's soul rises up and asks to take her where no human being does exist. She wants their joint existence only.
The last poem, ‘Words from an empty sheet' signifies that the poet's mind is still vacant to produce ever-new poems of thought and emotions. This poem symbolizes the ever-pervading mood of the poet to pursue her poetry. This poem is the personification of an empty paper, a symbol for the poet herself. We can write anything on the paper when it is empty only. In the same manner, the poet promises that her heart is ever empty to poetize her feelings.
