& çâÌæÚUæð´ ·¤è ¥ôÚU Îð¹Ùæ ÁæÚUè ÚU¹ð´ ¥ÍæüÌ ¥ÂÙð ÜÿØ ÂÚU ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´Ð ãæÚU Ù ×æÙð´, €UØô´ç·¤ ·¤æ× ·¤ÚUÙð âð ¥æÂ·¤ô ©gðàØ ·¤è Âýæç# ãôÌè ãñ ¥õÚU ÁèßÙ ·¤æ ¹æÜèÂÙ ÎêÚU ãôÌæ ãñÐ ÖÜð ãè ÁèßÙ ×ð´ ç·¤ÌÙè Öè ·¤çÆÙæ§ü €UØô´ Ù ¥æ°, çÁ™ææâæ ¥õÚU ©ˆâæã ÕÙæ° ÚU¹ð´Ð ŠØæÙ ÚU¹ð´, ÜÿØ ã×ðàææ ¥æÂ·Ô¤ Âæâ ãôÌð ãñ´ çÁ‹ãð´ ÂæÙð ·Ô¤ çÜ° ÂýØæâ ¥æÂ ·¤Öè Öè àæéM¤ ·¤ÚU â·¤Ìð ãñ´Ð

BOOK REVIEW

A Poet with a Voice of Conscience

by Razia Khan Amin
NADEEM Rahmans first published volume of poems with Its Impressive foreward by poet Shamsur Rahman, has been subtitled an (unau thorized) autobiography.' Beautifully printed in expensive art-paper by BRAC printers the get-up is attractive and would tempt any book-lover, in the preface Nadeem asks himself, why does one still write?' His own answer to the question is: Because the heart is a lonely hunter'. In the dedication he describes poetry as open heart surgery — which it Is. As will be evident to the reader the author's prose Is as vibrant as its poetry. Its pungent, crisp beat captures one's attention and Interest so firmly that perusal is compulsory. Although the rathpr unusual spelling which is also American might baffle some. The corrigendum stands for only a few of these anomalies. But that Is to do with the surface — the least important part of the process of baring the soul.
The Ballad of Bangladesh with its bitter diatribe against those in whom such a lot of trust was placed and those who failed the nation voices the hidden anguish of many a Bangladeshi:
They have failed and betrayed
the lovers, who have slept •with death
the angry young who have sung with rage the song of the earth and caesarean birth of Bangladesh
The towering wrath of the younger generation who have actually fought and bled for the birth of Bangladesh and their despair at not finding what they fought for — are expressed thus:
Every day that they failed to lay the foundations of a tangible tomorrow.
The Jocular yet vitriolic quotation from Cummings sets off the mood of the dubious politics of our country. Sometimes Nadeem's wit stands out an almost aphoristic bril
Hance:
Courage is the stock-in-trade of wives tied to headstrong husbands. The entire poem with its occasional rhyme sparkles with wit and a kind of eighteenth century Augustan clarity.
Sunlight on a broken column' is one of the best pieces in the collection. This partly sincere partly mocking homage to TS Eliot visualizes the bard' at his clerk's desk at the Lloyd's In the unreal city’— organizing the bills of lading — and leading the double lives of poet and bank clerk.
Tell me truthfully who confounded who you or Ezra Pound with a silent sonic boom of doom's strange surreal music and laconic lipless poems rattling bones in understanding
underground'
Ezra Pound's ruthless pruning surely is partly responsible for the laconic llplessness.
But Nadeem's ambivalent love-hatred towards the poet produces the song not of J Alfred Prufrock but the modern carpetbagger, the yuppy. the intellectual turned tradesman, the singer and musician turned businessman. In 'My Media' he declares:
and despite the rumour
I'm neither a loser nor an over-achiever' the commercialization of the living
arts he satirizes incisively
nevertheless.! accept no emoluments
for this melodious ministry but endowments and gratuity
I humbly receive only in hard currencies.
The Americanized over-me-chanlcal generation is seen mixing lyrics with lollypops poetry they whisk into icecream cones.' The extravaganza of the billion-dollar bonanza explodes on the readers' head with all Nadeem's sup-
pressed contempt!
He quotes from the exquisite sonnets of Mlchae-langelo, thanks to Arthur Symonds. Christened with water colours' and babtized in absinthe' arc phrases which take a permanent place in the mind. The punishments for a 'misspent' summer are nothing but added delights to an already indulged youth when smudging the canvas with fingertips In Imitation of Van Gogh's use of the thumb for a similar purpose — intensifies the zest and lust for life. The final twist comes when he confesses:
I love the squish, when I squash
a tube of paint, and the colours
as they dance to life
Entranced 1 thought
1 would paint forever ever suspecting
that I might exhaust my lust for life with an excess of colour.
The celebration of motherhood Is tender & intense:
Every mother is a sister of Mary. The divinity of mothers brings him down to his knees in deep and unqualified worship.
'Requiem' again Is such in its enviable marriage between phraseology and emotion
And love departed .
From the waste lands of my heart where a dying moon dc-'scends and no stars shine .
The terrible dissection of the anatomy of love tn the poem of the same name petrifies the reader with fear which shows Nadeem's apparently light-hearted Jocularity can culminate Into total disenchantment of the kind which disintegrates the human personality.
Thus love gives to each the shit that we deserve there Is no tragedy in blood and blood is sweet to love.' 'Never love' has all the cqul-slte lyrical flow of Elizabethan songs such as Shakespeare and Ben Jonson penned only with Its modern succinctness' If you would not be accused of having robbed the night of the stolen stars above, never love never, never love.
The use of echoes made fashionable by Eliot evokes associations with Coleridge and of course Eliot himself. Frequently, the cleverness of the prose-poem is a trifle tiresome lacking the urgency and the pungent sharpness of the previous vignettes. His wish for the end of modernity, because it lays the veneer (spelled venir!) of romance’, is understandable though. Love song of the fugitive captures the crisp rhythms of Anglo-Saxon verse so deftly put-to-use by Eliot:
'you might die from dining and winning
and choke in your turtlc-soup *
without even understanding the etiquette of grief -
The finality of Possessive Individualism' will long haunt the readers:
Tomorrow the sun will rise for
no reason at all and wanting to love, we may die and the heavens
may lx- amused'
The latest craze, environmental worries, has invaded Nadeems poetry with a bang tn his Tears':
like acid rain and love is the toxic waste of (my) distasteful I ears.'