Nov 12, 2024
Nov 12, 2024
This poem reverberates a poem, “Aire and Angells” by John Donne:“Angels
are the pretty creatures
who appear in life
like a magical breeze
soaking everyone around
in happiness and sanguinity.”
Angels can be likened to those individual beings who share the sufferings of other fellows and in whose eyes they can’t see the tears, such human beings are the builders of a strong society and a great nation in her vision.“ So in a voice, so in a shapeless flame,
Angells affect us oft, and worship’d be…
Some lovely glorious nothing I did see.”
The other poems on life are “Life and Electricity”, “Life”, “Life- A Maze”, “What is Life?”etc. The poet is the poet of Life in all shades of humors-sanguinary, melancholic, phlegmatic and choleric, covering the feelings of cheerfulness, sadness, coldness, anger, grief etc. respectively. In a beautiful poem, “On Cloud Nine”, she expresses herself in these tender words:“Life is but a train
And we are all the babbling passengers
Who keep jabbering, prattling, gibbering
Without realizing that our destinies are in the hands of one driver-
HIM!!!”.
On another occasion of poetic rumination she connects a different feeling in “My Sorrow”:“Poetic songs,
That is where my soul belongs;
The flowing words keep me mesmerized,
The pacifying verses keep me mystified
…….
Happiness pours like rain,
Ecstasy gushes in my veins…”
It is rightly said that wit and poetry exist side by side, each irradiating the other. The poet is aware of this fact quite impulsively, as she is a natural artist and composer of verses. She makes the most lucid and precise use of the poetic diction, exploiting all of the resources of the proper lexicon in order to convey her meaning and message to the eager reader through the poems. Her poems are imbibed with the spirit of Nature, and her style of diction varies according to the ends she wishes to achieve. She focuses on diction according to the nature of the style, the subject and the literary form, as we see in “The world of Delusion”:“I dribbled
all my sorrow
drop by drop
on a piece of paper
converting it
into words
and named it
poetry.”
This delusion is something imaginary and wishful showing her outlook on life. Her poem “Masking” is quite readable for this very reason. Her poems are composed as a reflection of life from the point of view of either the poet, or of the character/s that she is trying to portray. Neelam is consistent as far as the form of poetry is concerned, which is mostly the French vers libre i.e. the Free-verse form, allowing the poet to express herself without getting restricted in rhyme and meter. This form quite suits her freedom loving spirit which is not “ready to be thwarted”, though she dexterously manages the harmony of thoughts and beats of the rhythm, accompanied by the figurative aspects like alliteration, wit, the run-on-line, the imagery and metaphors etc.“My thoughts are busy
Weaving a wondrous world
…
I know that this world is a fantasy
Of my imagination, and is an illusion
Which will soon cess from its trance…
But I am happy to stay
In that world of delusion.”
18-Oct-2013
More by : Shazia Batool Naqvi
Shahzia's review of Neelam Saxena's Silhouettes of Reflections is just simply impressive for her critical analysis of the poems, Shazia is a literary critic par excellence not just for her creative appreciation of the poems in this collection but for her range of knowledge that she very intelligently uses to read and fathom deep inside the soul of individual poems and the book at large. She gives her views and comments not only on the theme of the poems but also on the poet's craftsmanship. it is always a pleasure reading the review which helps the readers in understanding the poems in depth. Thanx Shahzia |