Author: Sanjeev Sethi
CLASSIX (an imprint of Hawakal)
ISBN:978-81-19858-79-8
Reviewed by Gopal Lahiri, Poet and Critic, Kolkata, India
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Insightful and Crafted Poetry
In his latest collection of poems titled Legato Without A Lisp, Sanjeev Sethi fires up those wincing, unforgettable moments and wrestle those confounding, touching, rare experiences onto the page. Like Whitman, Sethi believes that moments are not the parts and poems of the body only but of the soul as well. His poems are insightful, crafted and concise.
With an exquisite ear toward language and rhythm, Sethi plays watchful attention to words and images as they influence, colour and serve an emotional placeholder in his work. He refuses to be boring and presses the readers not be either. The poet creates an atmosphere in his work that inspire and encourage his readers to be alert and focussed. One cannot but agree with Payal Nagpal when she says about Sethi’s poems ‘ Wisdom shared through poetry’.
In a recent interview Sanjeev talks about the logic behind the title of the book, ‘The title hit me while tidying the book’s first draft, like how sometimes a poem’s first line reaches one as one is lost in daily rituals. And immediately, I knew this was it. Legato, as you know, is music without a break, so translating it to poetry as one poem after another and Without a Lisp is symbolic of sans a setback. In short, poem after poem without an impediment’.
In this book, there is a laminar flow of poems that evokes both the surface and the depths of the poetic landscape. They echo the poets present selves standing as if in a row of pearls behind glass. The poet loves words and he reiterates, ‘They often drop by at the right time’.
And like a dancer, his words pirouetting in front of him dodging and deflecting the frenzied flings and steps. In a way the poet redefines the commonality of poetries and excels to the highest level. Not to mention that his poems are always engaging and thought-provoking.
It is no denying that his poems are not always direct clear simple statements such as in spoken words. On the contrary, his poems are oblique, creating an assertive mood, an unparaphrasable experience, suggesting through moments rather than summing up with expository.
Look at this poem ‘Demiurge’. The poem’s sentences contain a strange musicality, running from the first into the next and so on till writing lines ‘On a lily pad.’. The images are all specific, surprising and they manage to tie the abstract to the concrete. They also feel aesthetically related yet undergoes a transformation at the end.
Colors of a quetzal are comely.
When transferred to the cloth
they may not fetch
a fashion designer’s nod.
However quickly, the strophe arrives
placing it on a platform
is a considered act,
like gearing for a gala.
As you beek,
I write lines
on a lily pad
that someday you will read.(Demiurge)
This is Sethi’s eighth book of poems. There are hundred two poems in this collection. Stylistically it takes readers on a musical ride over varied notes to create awareness and disclosures and to make this world more appealing. In the following poem, the poet looks at the dynamic of words within words and the multiplicity of meanings within.
Emotion was our sexual glue.
We were raw, reckless,
we were sure it was armour.
Later, one learned excitability
is one component of this juggernaut
on the artery to intimacy.
Whenever peppery memorabilia
is spotted, it belongs to this phase;
as with froth, it hasn’t outstayed itself. (Annalist).
The poet reiterates, ‘My poetry is my gaze. If something touches me, it will eventually become a part of my poetic archives’. He trusts poetry’s capacity to deliver presences through images incarnated in words, through words flowing in rhythm. Rhythm serves the poet as a means of access to time and space.
When words reach
in diglot:
With semblant meanings,
and the others
with their imagined import,
I appropriate them
for poetry. (Ceremony).
I’m astonished by how many of Sethi’s poems seem to unfold and take place in liminal spaces, in recesses and intervals, in realms of twists and turns. In his poems, language becomes a form of magic as the word becomes a bridge, a juncture, a way of relation. Perhaps these words are a form of linkage, a way of reaching out to oneself but they never lets go of the literary imagination. Read these poems, ‘Alignment’, ‘ Rendezvous’, ‘ The Elements’ ‘ Caret’ and connect the dots of bridging.
With extraordinary intellectual elegance and generosity of inner self, his poems constellate into a masterwork of reason argued with a literary artist’s splendour of mien. He believes that all verse must be governed and every poet must search a governing principle and its insistent momentum.
Sethi practises poetry like a religion. He inhabits in its magic, he invokes its ceremonies, he incises its revelations. The poems he bring to the readers are teeming with knowledge, wisdom, and a sense of logic. They are wondrously uprooted from silence. One can easily ‘strum along’ reading these adroitly nuanced poems like, ‘Structure’, ‘ Out of Mothballs’, ‘ Initiation’, ‘ Indenture’ ‘The Elements’ and a few others.
The poet creates a method of crafting poetic lines that mirrors perception and shows not lollygagging but a serious mind at work. Good poetry always put some questions in the reader’s mind His work is insistently topical and often grounded in wordplay.
If the press corps
is in cahoots with
the ruling dispensation,
which coxswain will steer
the boat of the public opinion?
Who will fuel the community
sentiment to mold informed choices ? (Fourth Estate)
Sethi is at heart a seeker and poetry is for him a form of exploration. In the poem ‘Moderation’, the poet asserts, ‘ When the fiefdom of fantasy/broadens ahead of the creator’s/artistry, it flounders./It lacks a foothold.’
And the poet continues, ‘ When the imaginative urge/follows the carte blanche course,/inherent in it is the impulse/to bumfuzzle all concerned.’
For Sethi, the words become the only way of attaining himself, attaining a truer identity, a mode of being. Like Octavio Paz, the poet believes, ‘I am the shadow my words cast.’ And he is candid in his poem ‘ Portrait’.
In the flames of loneliness
he singed
till the pitter-patter
of words,
those tiny droplets
of engagement
saved him, his hide. (Portrait)
Legato Without a Lisp is a startling poetry collection of varied tones, perspectives and influences. Sethi’s is an intimate yet sharp voice, unconventional yet assured, marked by strong wordplay and alliteration, astute syntax and enjambment and an original metrices. The poet travels across time and space to address a series of moments, both private and public. There is a powerful dialectic running throughout his work with intense energy and powerful control.
The cover design is emblematic. This collection is certain to join his earlier works in having a long-lasting impact.
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Sanjeev Sethi has authored eight books of poetry. Legato Without a Lisp is his latest (CLASSIX, an imprint of Hawakal, New Delhi, September 2024). His poetry has been published in over thirty-five countries and has appeared in more than 500 journals, anthologies, and online literary venues. He edited Dreich Planet # 1 India, an anthology for Hybriddreich, Scotland, in December 2022. He is the joint winner of the Full Fat Collection Competition-Deux, organized by Hedgehog Poetry Press, UK. Sethi is in the top 10 of the erbacce-prize 2021. He is the recipient of the Ethos Literary Award 2022. In 2023, he won the First Prize in a Poetry Competition by the National Defence Academy, Pune. He was conferred the 2023 Setu Award for Excellence. He lives in Mumbai, India.
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Gopal Lahiri
Gopal Lahiri was born and grew up in Kolkata, India. He is a bilingual poet, writer, editor, critic and translator and published in Bengali and English language. He has authored thirty books to his credits His poetry is also published across various anthologies as well as in eminent journals of India and abroad. His book reviews have been published in Indian Literature of Sahitya Akademi, (Print journal), Muse India, Scroll.in, Different Truths, Kitaab (Singapore), Setu (US). The Lake (UK) online journals and many newspapers like ‘ The Statesman, ‘The Millenium Post’ etc. He has been nominated for Pushcart Prize for poetry in 2021. He is the recipient of the Poet of the Year Award in Destiny Poets, UK, 2016, Setu Excellence Award, 2020, Pittsburgh, US and the first Jayanta Mahapatra National Award on literature in 2024.
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Gopal Lahiri,