Poetry: The Poet is Dead, Long Live the Reader

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It is the Reader who knows

(Not the poet) who has died

Whether it did any good job of itself

Or it was a sheer waste of words…

Dr. Jernail Singh Anand, a renowned poet and writer from Chandigarh, India, shares his ‘post-modern’ poetry

Jernail Singh Anand- Sindh CourierDr. Jernail Singh Anand, based in Chandigarh, is an Indian poet and scholar credited with 170 plus books of English literature, philosophy and spirituality. He won great Serbian Award Charter of Morava and his name adorns the Poets’ Rock in Serbia. He was honored with Seneca Award LAUDIS CHARTA by Academy of Arts & Philosophical Sciences, Bari, Italy 2024. He is Founder President of the International Academy of Ethics and conferred Doctor of Philosophy (Honoris Causa) by University of Engineering & Management, (UEM) Jaipur. Email anandjs55@yahoo.com 

Biblio-link: https://sites.google.com/view/bibliography-dr-jernal-singh/home   

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The Poet is Dead, Long Live the Reader

We murder to dissect, said Wordsworth.

A poem was a whole

And trying to understand it

Which he calls dissection,

We murder it.

Is criticism a postmortem?

It was dissection in the past,

Now the critic performs

The duty of

Putting the parts together

And trying to give a shape

And a habitation to an airy nothing.

Now there is murder already

The Apoet commits it

Dissection is done by the reader

And postmortem by the critical squad

Who puts it into an organic shape

And consigns it to a mortuary (anthology)

The age of murder and dissection

Which accused critics is over

The role has inched towards

The Poet now.

He does all the rites of slaughter

And it is then handed over to the Reader.

It is the Reader who knows

(Not the poet) who has died

Whether it did any good job of itself

Or it was a sheer waste of words

Assisted by the head priest

Who comes with his critical incantations!

The poem is then wheeled

Into the mortuary (Anthology)

Where it is remembered for some time

Lectures on it delivered by scholars

And then consigned

To the Swarg Dham (cremation ground) (Library)

Where some tantriks come

And take the ashes

And reconstruct the poem

And the dead poet

And before they take up a project

For further dissection,

They make sure

The poet is well known and dead now

Lest he should get up in delirium

And say.

No, no…

I did not mean it so.

***

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POST-MODERN

(Excuse me dear Poem)

It was easy now.

The reader was the writer of the text

And each poem had as many texts

As its readers

How kind of the man

Was it Abercrombie?

Who gave a new lease of life

To the Poem!  

How obsessed I am with myself

My broken self

My loves and my hatreds

That poor readers had to have a tough time

Even now, I am full of my I

See how I write

I feel, I say, I said

I will never leave me till I am dead

My problem when I write a poem is

I don’t know what to say

How to say

And for whom to say

So, I pick up a stone

And throw it into a lake

The waves of water which

Scramble around…is my poetic take.

Scribble a few words

Which shirk making any sense

Awesome, great poetry,

Great ink is at work

The examiner’s craze

‘The poet says’

Has undergone a transformation

And no longer exists as a coveted phrase

Poets used to be prophets

Now it is a heretical construct

If the poets says anything

Or tries to instruct.

Poetry is an aesthetic experience

A jigsaw puzzle

You enjoy giving it ears

And providing it a muzzle

The poet only puts forward 

Disjointed images

And some broken words

Those who die before their deaths are cowards.

_____________________

Read: Ahimsak ((The Non-Violent Hero) – Mystic Poetry from India

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