Versedays: Silence by Birdy

Birdy

Time for our very own LWS poetry! This time, I return to posting my own poem. The idea for this poem originated from the silent atmosphere in my office where people are totally immersed in their work staring at their computers. And then of course imagination and images took over! Here is the poem, hope you guys enjoy it!

Silence

by

Birdy


Silence like a smile, crept up

Around the corners of the lips of Time

Sighing its way through the hinges of the heart

Seeking for ways to heal the wounded parts

Caught in the deafening rush of the blood

Leaving wet footprints in the murky air

Creating lasting impressions that fade in seconds


Silence like a teardrop, flowed down

Along the riverbed of thoughts

Gushing through the myriad syllables of hatred

Winding its way past the rocks of love

Clinging to the doorways of memories

The sprays paint an outline of anger

With the multifarious hues filling the palette of yesterday

But the silent walls have a different story to tell


Silence like a proud mother,

Held its offspring in the air

Gaps filled with the smell of words

The heavy perfume that is hard to ignore

Yet is lost in the smoke rings of silence

Overpowered in the darkness of the light

Drowned in the loud footsteps of seconds


Silence remains.

Breath: Tim Winton

Image Credit: fantastic fiction

I love the sea. Given a choice between a mountain and the beach I would go for the latter. The ocean mesmerizes me. I think Tim Winton is equally enchanted by it. It shows in his writing in “Breath.” Here is a teaser of the story from the book jacket:

Bruce Pike can hear the sea at night and longs to go to the shore. When he befriends Loonie, his small town’s wild boy, that dream is realized. Together, intoxicated by the treacherous power of the waves and by the immortality of youth, the two boys defy all limits and rules. Pikelet learns what it is to be extraordinary, feels exhilaration for the very first time, and – caught up in love and friendship and an erotic current he cannot resist – he understands the true meaning of fear. These are experiences that will far outlast his adolescence. How, then, to mask the emptiness of leaving such intensity behind?

I bought this book after reading really great reviews about it. And I am glad I did. Breath is a coming of age story that is beautifully told with the poetry of the sea. Pikelet is a boy in a small town chafing for some excitement and he finds it when he befriends Loonie. He discovers a new passion in surfing and he is completely hooked. Pikelet and Loonie meet Sando, an ace surfer living underground, and he becomes their guru. But as Pikelet’s surfing skills progress his friendship with the aptly named Loonie (bin) regresses.

Pikelet discovers what he thinks is love with Eva, Sando’s wife, who was a top notch skier forced to retire due to a bad knee. In this way, Pikelet drifts among the people around him. Only fragile threads of necessity, imagined emotions and loneliness bind him to the people in his life. It is the sea that endures in his life, firmly holding him in his grasp. But that too, it seems, is not permanent.

We meet Pikelet first as Bruce, a grown man. But most of the book deals with Pikelet the boy and the teen. Undeniably, it is his past that continues to occupy his present too.

I loved the way Winton made each of his characters literally leap out of the book. The entire book vibrates with a certain deep intensity that the characters exude. This is not your average teenage friendship novel. It goes beyond that. And the intensity is explored from different perspectives. In the devotion that Loonie has for Sando, Pikelet’s pull to the sea, Eva’s memories of skiing over Swiss chalets in the night and even Loonie’s involvement with drugs. The pain of losing a friend too stands out sharp as white light.

“But when Sando first took Loonie to the islands, he left me behind in more than a literal sense. Somehow I stayed behind. I lost confidence in my place and value. It’s possible some of my sense of relegation was imaginary or the result of shame, but I was convinced that Sando no longer took me seriously, that Loonie didn’t regard me as an equal anymore, and the rich feeling of being in charge of myself evaporated. For the first time in my life I was not so much solitary as plain lonely.”

Winton also puts together highly charged scenes of surfing, which are extremely realistic. He uses a lot of surfing terms and what I am guessing are ‘Australianisms.’ At least a lot of words that was alien to me. But that doesn’t spoil the beauty of this book. It did leave me breathless in places.

Verdict: For the love of the sea, read it!

Rating: 4.5/5

Broken Birds: Jeanette Katzir

Image Credits: Main image broken birds Jeanette Katzir below from book club queen

I have been painstakingly reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children for the Read Along. I know most of you have raved about the book but to me it’s been a slow read so far. To intersperse relief I had been reading Jeanette Katzir’s Broken Birds along with it. I just finished it. Here is the brief from the book jacket:

World War II has long since ended, and yet Jaclyn and her four brothers and sisters grow up learning to survive it. Having lived through the Holocaust on the principle of constant distrust, their mother, Channa, dutifully teaches her children to cling to one another while casting a suspicious eye to the outside world. When Channa dies, the unexpected contents of her will force her adult children to face years of suppressed indignation. For Jaclyn and her siblings, the greatest war will not be against strangers, but against one another.

First of all, special thanks to Jeanette Katzir for sending us this book to read and review. However, our review here is a totally personal opinion and very subjective. It is not influenced by anything other than our own thoughts and feelings.



Katzir begins the book quite well. Starting with Channa’s childhood we come to the crucial event that would change everyone’s life in the book. Channa’s family is partially destroyed during the big war but Channa herself is saved thanks to her brother Isaac. They run away and join a group of partisans in the forest. They are like a group of hunted individuals, always on the run. The war eventually burns out and Channa and Isaac return to their home to find it occupied by other people. The next narrative is about Nathan, Katzir’s father and his experiences. Katzir skims through Nathan’s childhood and then comes to his ordeal through the war and how he rebuilds his life after.

Nathan and Channa meet in the US where they had wound up post war. It is here that the book begins to settle down into routine just like their lives. Nathan and Channa have five children and they try to provide as best as they could. We get glimpses of how Channa’s character could have been shaped by her experiences during the war. Her extreme mistrust of Nathan, of people around her, her constant unhappiness and her unwillingness to enjoy others’ happiness could all have been an offshoot of the war.

“I discovered some years later that some parents don’t want their children to be happier than they had been. It is not because they are competitive, but rather because it makes them feel lesser than. At first, I found that hard to believe, but over time, there was simply too much evidence to deny it.”

She is also paranoid of being penniless that leads her to stash she money in various places in the house and in different banks.

Yet, I wish Katzir had explored a little more of their war experiences, enough to bring out more of their personalities and how it might have shaped their lives and their children’s lives. Truly, after a point the narrative veers away from Channa and Nathan and concentrates on the dysfunctional relationship among the five siblings and their familial quarrels. I feel a lot of the details could have been avoided to make it crisper. There were a few touching points particularly in the end when Nathan relives his war experiences when he returns to visit the concentration camp where he had stayed. He follows his story to his escape and eventually the barn where he had lived for some time in hiding. Those pages were very well written and were quite animated.

Broken Birds is an apt title though. It stands for every person in the book, not just for Channa and Nathan who had gone through the great war. I just wish that that had been fleshed out a bit more and connected further to the rest of the book. But seen as a book about sibling rivalry and family rifts that are sadly caused by the minutest of things, it is a powerful read. Katzir provides an intimate account of how money can tear apart relations and how true faces are revealed.

Despite engaging topics the book rambles at long intervals. The narrative starts out like a straight railway track but then meets with many deviations, which slow down the journey. If not for the pace and the unnecessary detail Broken Birds would have been much more riveting.

Extra reading: Jesse Kornbluth has a very nice take at The Huffington Post.

Verdict: I appreciate Katzir’s strength in writing this honest book about her family and for that it should be read once. Rating: 3/5

Small Wars : Sadie Jones

Image Credit: Fantastic Fiction

It's been a lazy day so far for me. I spent the better part of this day finishing Sadie Jones' Small Wars, in between catching some cricketing action on the silly tube. Outside, the last crackers from Diwali are being burst, the occasional intrusion into a deceptive calm. I try to sleep, but a noisy kid from the house in front delights in throwing a stainless steel plate with all the strength her 2-year old body can summon on to the concrete floor. Crash. Boom. Clash. The plate hits the ground, twirls around gaily before settling down to its indignity on the ground. Not for long. Crash. Boom. Clash. Again. And again. In between the firecrackers and this fiery kid, there is little chance of sleep, I fear. Time to invest in some ear plugs, I think.

I picked up Small Wars because I had absolutely adored Sadie Jones' debut novel, The Outcast. Sadly, again the fallacy of expectations led me down the wrong page. Small Wars is set in Episkopi, a small village on the island of Cyprus. The British, of course, you would expect would have interest in Cyprus, close as it is to the Suez Canal and the oil-rich Middle East. The Cypriots would rather be a part of Greece, and thus springs up the EOKA - a terrorist outfit that the British forces battle against. One among the forces is Major Hal Treherne. Accompanying him is his wife Clara and their twin daughters, Meg and Lottie. Like in The Outcast, Sadie always builds up intensity without revealing much, rather inviting the reader to arrive at their own understanding. It was a technique that worked wonderfully well in the case of Lewis, the main character in The Outcast, but fails miserably here. I confess I hadn't much knowledge of the 'small war' that the British waged, defending the last of their Commonwealth as it were, in the decades following the Second World War. So I was on the back foot, especially since Sadie Jones probably thinks that the reader ought to arm himself with the historical details of this monumental war. Sorry for the sarcasm, but I AM irritated.

Hal and Clara, we are led to assume, are very much in love. The quintessential married couple with the two beautiful kids. A 'few incidents' however, change all that. A bombing on a beach. Then, the ruthless hunting down of terrorists. And then, the final straw when Clara herself is shot. We see through the course of the book the 'unraveling' of Hal. I put that in quotes because I could not make out when Hal was properly put together in order for him to unravel. He appears tight. Withdrawn. There is hardly any dialogue between him and Clara and he seems to have no conversation at all with the children. This is supposed to be gripping psychological portrayal of a man under stress. But to me, it is just irritating coyness from a gifted author. I kid you not. Towards the end of the book, I was ready to throw the kitchen sink at the book and the kid next door. "Open up Hal!! Speak!!" But he doesn't. I never get to know what motivates Hal. His thoughts are never fully formed enough for you to make sense of his actions. And Clara is too divine to be real. Granted, I guess it is all meant to convey the tight-lipped nature of men during that era, but there is only so much silence I can take. If Hal were to talk, then I know how that particular page on the book would look like. Blank.

And don't even ask me to talk about the ending. I am just glad it ended.

Verdict: Disappointing and irritating. 


Rating : 2/5

Versedays: You Do Not Need Many Things by Ryokan

Statue of Ryokan at Entsuji, Japan.

Image Credit:Olympia Zen Centre

After two weeks, Versedays finally returns! It was tough finding a poem this time because I had no idea or theme in mind. Not that I plan something like that for each week. Mostly it just falls into place. So when I stumbled upon Ryokan’s poetry I thought this is perfect to restart Versedays.

Taigu Ryokan, known as The Great Fool, lived in the 18th century and is one of Japan’s most loved poets. His poetry is extremely simple, seeming like prose even. All of them depict a scene from his life and his thoughts on it. They do not appear deeply philosophical while reading but the thought behind them is profound. Ryokan’s poems were never published during his lifetime and in fact, he refused to be honored as one too.

“Who says my poems are poems?
These poems are not poems.
When you can understand this,
then we can begin to speak of poetry”

Ryokan’s poetry was finally published by his young mistress Teishin, after his death. I am glad she did that. Here I present one of his works that I took a fancy to, named "You do not need many things" - His words cannot be truer...

You Do Not Need Many Things

by

Ryokan


My house is buried in the deepest recess of the forest
Every year, ivy vines grow longer than the year before.
Undisturbed by the affairs of the world I live at ease,
Woodmen’s singing rarely reaching me through the trees.
While the sun stays in the sky, I mend my torn clothes
And facing the moon, I read holy texts aloud to myself.
Let me drop a word of advice for believers of my faith.
To enjoy life’s immensity, you do not need many things.

Back!

Ah I am finally back! A week well spent in admiring architecture and savoring wonderful food! We traveled to Banavasi, Badami-Aihole-Pattadakkal and Coorg, which is known as the Scotland of India. A quick acquaintance with each place -

Banavasi is a village that has somehow managed to stand the test of time. An ancient village that sprouted a few thousand years ago, Banavasi is also home to a thousand year old temple. Badami, Aihole and Pattadakkal form a triangle of temple ruins. These structures were built around the 7th or 8th century AD and showed the prowess of one of Karnataka's earliest dynasties, the Chalukyas. Coorg is a beautiful hill station and it was a nice change after all the temples. Ah, but the architecture! That was breath taking. I couldn’t get enough. I will post a few photos that I captured to give you an idea of what we enjoyed!






As for books, I had taken The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd with me. Soul has already written a review of it. I am almost done and I must say I really loved the book so far. Well, now I am gearing for the Midnight’s Children Readalong tomorrow hosted by Bibliojunkie. I can’t wait! And Versedays will resume next week.

The Motorcycle Diaries : Ernesto Che Guevara

Image Credit: Amazon

Isn't this funny? Here you are, reading a book that you absolutely think you MUST LOVE, and then you find that, wait a minute, what's wrong with me? Why am I not loving this book? Why am I just making my way through this book? I don't know if that is the fallacy of expectation. I remember seeing the iconic symbol of India, the Taj Mahal, and wondering to myself what the fuss is about a yellowing tomb that kind of resembled a mosque on a road near my house. Reading Ernesto Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes On A Latin American Journey kind of evoked the same feelings in me. Yet these are feelings that are kind of hard for me to 'feel.' Almost as if it were a sacrilege to feel so. Really!

Che was and is one of the world's most iconic figures. I admire him even though there is much to criticize about him. His was at least an exceptional life. The Motorcycle Diaries chronicles his mammoth 5000 mile journey across South America as a young medical student along with his friend, Alberto. The two of them leave Argentina on their beloved motorcycle, La Poderosa, or the Mighty One, and it is a journey that transforms them - the plight of Latin America's ordinary men and women, leading lives of sickness, suffering and despair, moves Che. It is believed that it was this journey that motivated Che to lead a life of initiating social change. To call it a life-changing journey would perhaps be an understatement. But the book itself, I could not draw myself fully into. Perhaps the passages I completely liked were in the beginning, when Che was still an awed traveler:

"Here we understood that our vocation, our true vocation, was to move for eternity along the roads and seas of the world. Always curious, looking into everything that came before our eyes, sniffing out each corner but only very faintly – not setting down roots in any land or staying long enough to see the substratum of things; the outer limits would suffice."

And then, later, observe the transformation in young Che:

"We are looking for the bottom part of the town. We talk to many beggars. Our noses inhale attentively the misery."

Here is where the seeds of change were sown in one of the world's greatest revolutionaries. As the diaries progress, Che's ideas for the rest of his life become clearer - his dream of a united Latin America, his ambition to change the system, his desire to be with the people - over the course of the nine months this journey took by ship, motorcycle, trucks, buses and even a horse. Yet...here I go again. I wasn't drawn enough to the book. But I am not alone! Over at the Book Haven, Nyssaneala agrees when she feels that the memoir lacks depth. Remember also that these diaries were compiled into a narrative form AFTER the journey. It maybe lacks the immediacy of the moment. A certain coherence perhaps. Too often, I was also left bewildered by Che's abrupt time and character shifts - before I could fully absorb the impact of one incident, Che had already left on to another one. A series of disjointed episodes then are what present itself to the reader.

Personally, I think I liked Kerouac's On The Road much better. There was just something missing here for me. As a traveler, I couldn't embrace the Diaries. Maybe if you are really passionate about Che, it may be worth a read. I am not. And is that the difference?

Verdict: A letdown. Disappointing. 


Rating: 3/5

Literary Blog Hop

Thanks to the Blue Bookcase for hosting this interesting blog hop! To answer their question for the Literary Blog Hop -

Highlight one of your favorite books and why you would consider it "literary."

I would choose Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. That was a book that stayed with me a long time after I finished it. What is so literary you ask? For it to win over the Austens and the Hardys? Well, I would say I found the writing absolutely delightful and mesmerizing. The characterization was brilliant I thought. The delicate flirtation of friendship with a more intimate relationship was portrayed excellently. A delicate balancing act carried out well. Of course, the atmosphere created through every page brought the place alive. I literally walked around in Oxford before wandering the passages of the mansion at Brideshead. Well, here is one of my favorite passages, which I have also quoted in my more detailed review over at the blog.

The fortnight at Venice passed quickly and sweetly - perhaps too sweetly; I was drowning in honey, stingless. On some days life kept pace with the gondola, as we nosed through the sidecanals and the boatman uttered his plaintive musical bird-cry of warning; on other days with the speed-boat bouncing over the lagoon in a stream of sun-lit foam; it left a confused memory of fierce sunlight on the sands and cool, marble interiors; of water everywhere, lapping on smooth stone, reflected in a dapple of light on painted ceilings; of a night at the Corombona palace such as Byron might have known, and another Byronic night fishing for scampi in the shallows of Chioggia, the phosphorescent wake of the little ship, the lantern swinging in the prow, and the net coming up full of weed and sand and floundering fishes; of melon and prosciutto on the balcony in the cool of the morning; of hot cheese sandwiches and champagne cocktails at Harry's bar.


I would say there are a lot of factors that make a literary classic. Language, writing style, structure, plot and story among others. It sure does not include winning a prize because some of the best classics and literary works have gone unnoticed. And perhaps Brideshead might fall short in some ways that are not obvious to me but I enjoyed it.

Thanks once again to the Blue Bookcase for posing a thoughtful question and a lovely blog hop!