Confessional poetry

IN his fourth book of poems - Where Parallel Lines Meet - Tabish Khair has moved onto new ground, very different from his earlier work, The Book Of Heroes. Here the poet has skilfully used form to his advantage. Even though the poems are in free verse, he has employed 10-syllabi lines using rhythm and assonance with remarkable success. The variation of the extended lines are in conformity with the pattern. Also, in the shorter poems, the rhythm is sustained with the same facility.

The poems in the collection, 64 in number, have been given names with an Indian context in mind, and divided in geometric terms: "Squares and Circles", "Straight Lines and Triangles" and "Other Geometrics". His usual style has been to develop the poems as a recollection of memories to tell the stories in descriptive and narrative forms. Eventually there is nostalgia and a plethora of casual comments softened with perceptions.

Drawing on personal experience and emotions associated with the events and characters, Khair employs the confessional mode in his narration and description. In this case an example would be the poem "Kitchen" wherein the poet captures the past and preserves it: "Gifting the ones we hit to our ancient tribal gardener/whose grandson looked deeply offended when, on a visit/we gave him that delicacy of his tribe - a crow". In the poem "Ancestral House", Khair recalls: "Few memories inhabit/that eighteen-roomed house/some ancestor built/Twenty-one years have passed/since we were there last". A more intimate confessional poem is, "Amma" that dramatises the homestead and physical decay: "Slowly you shuffle examining each new tear in the curtains/which will have to be mended when the first monsoon rain/provides a respite from the sun, curtails the need for shade". Vividly portrayed too are the poems, "Circus Act in Gaya" and the "Poem from Outside a Muharram Procession". He elevates a trivial subject as in "Arrest of the Metre-Reader" with psychological depth evoking instant sympathy: "Poor man," we said, "Poor, poor man: It must have been money that drove him to such tricks/may be ailing parents, a wife and six daughters."

Khair explores his range of themes - from life and emotion - telescoping them through images and pondering over a network of gestures. Such confessional writing offers a unique self- fulfilment and a sort of psychological liberation from the pressures that seek expression; which Khair does by miniaturising each moment of experience.

MANOHAR BANDOPADHYAY

Where Parallel Lines Meet, Tabish Khair, published in Viking by Penguin Books India, 2000, p. 106, Rs. 195.

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