A Statement About Life
Raji Narasimhan
AFFINITIES: POEMS by Malati Mathur Aesthetics Publication, Ludhiana, 2014, 100 pp., Price not stated
January 2014, volume 38, No 1

The poetry of this collection of poems is the poetry of the glide. It is poetry that results from the choreographed re-focussings of the main thought into the body of the poem. These off-shoot thoughts move into a dynamic adjacence with the main thought or motif, thereby expanding into a major statement about life: an inspired paraphrase of it. This inner design or pattern emerging compellingly into view is the hallmark of the best poems in the collection. Take the poem ‘Laughter’, for example. The two images or modes of imagery in it are the gurgling laughter of a stream flowing on, and the hapless laughter of man battling through life. Gurgling or hapless, the element of mirth characterizes them both, man and river. Haplessness and frolicsomeness are worked into the mirth, and mirth becomes Mirth: moves to the forefront of the reading eye, spreads out in panoramic proportions as the visage of life, as a synonym of life.

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