What has happened to us? Where is sophisticated love poetry? Spiritual longing and hurt with natural references is all very good, and eroticism is certainly not in short supply, though poetry isn’t really a good medium for it—and the better poets instinctively understand this. But the more sophisticated the poetry these days, the more we get the crunchy weirdness and pain of the Modernism school, which gained access to our schools several generations ago and shows no sign of loosening its grip.
Blame, perhaps, the Creative Writing Workshop and its group analysis—love poems don’t go well in a group setting—a group of students don’t want to be courted. Nor does Criticism. The love poem, presented by a living ‘poet-lover’ to the absent beloved, runs the risk of falling flat (humiliation) in a classroom setting. “Who do you think you are? Byron?” Such attempts can seem embarrassing on a number of levels. Love is like rhyme. It better be extremely good if you try it. Bad poets try it all the time, but that’s why they are “bad” poets. Love and rhyme make up an old language and a new language (Modernism) has taken its place, one which is not romantically presumptuous.
Scarriet found a sophisticated love poem. A true miracle—because only a fool would attempt it today. Here’s the question. How can it possibly be “sophisticated?” How can a bad type of poem succeed, and second, succeed in the hands of a poet who is obviously a fool?
Witness the miracle:
“Beatrice Guides Dante To Paradise” by Deepanjan Chhetri:
Walking past the department of French,
The stairs stared at us as in Hitchcock films;
We talked while my boots traced her footsteps:
“Do we have time?” “We have enough of it.”
Turning away from Comparative Literature,
I looked down from dizzying heights;
A little wind would twirl her hair,
As we spoke of ELT and suicide.
I stood against an infernal heat,
And watched the city through her eyes:
The Hindu Hostel, and the Howrah Bridge;
The moving cars appeared like toys,
And men, like ants, toiled for food:
My views hadn’t altered with altitude.
~~~~~~~~~
Deepanjan Chhetri has climbed into the first rank with this poem—and he has written a series of them.
Life can be grounded or lofty—by asserting there is no difference, in the final line, the poet introduces duality paradoxically—his awareness of the not different is the difference. And the poem is given an added lift, since the final observation flies in the face of expectation. Is it the feigned indifference of the lover?
The difference in height is a symbol for duality in love—a height casually traveled by the two potential lovers together. Are they just stairs? Or stairs of danger? The altitude won’t affect his attitude. This observation is the key to the whole poem, and best expressed, of course, in the last line.
Scarriet Editors
July 31, 2022