My Poetry My Voice (Collection of Poems), Pages: 120
Poet: Madhumita Ghosh
Publisher: Authorspress,
ISBN-13: 978-81-7273-968-3, Year: 2015

My Poetry My Voice is the fourth poetry book of Madhumita Ghosh whose other three poetry books are “For All You Lovely People”, “Pebbles on the Shore” and “Flowing with the River" and “William Blake: A Prophet for Mankind” being a critical book on the British poet. Consisting of thirteen sections in perfect consonance with variegated moods of the poet, the anthology under review mirrors her love, joy and pleasure of being in love,pangs of separation, fond memories, deep despair, intense nostalgia, loneliness, dejection and despondency, immense loss, agonising assault of times with gloomy set-up. She has tried to portray her intense feelings, emotions and experiences on the major canvass of life and the beautiful world acting as a source of inspiration for her. She mentions in her preface that ‘Nature inspires me with all its beauteous forms and features. Man’s thoughtless mutilation of the beautiful world saddens me. I rejoice or weep within and write'. All the poems are in romantic vein, later poems being of philosophical strands. She gives a detailed account of her comprehensive perspective on multi-dimensional love and life, romanticism and mysticism, and existential predicament of woman in the world with a feminine point of view. Her insights into the vagaries of love and life are quite remarkable and inspire the readers to delve into the realm and even transcend beyond.

The Sound of Silence ( four poems) is the first section of the anthology. It is the poetic exploration and explosion of the innermost feelings and thoughts of the poet. Silence to the poet is melodious, soothing, peace with a soulful cadence. It is a universal fact that seeds of thoughts do sprout up in silence.Of all the four poems under this section, “Melodies of Silence” and “The Song of Silence” focus on the silence in love and the rest two are about ‘dark and dense ‘ side of life ‘mutilated and mangled’ yet interspersed with personal and autobiographical touches. In all of them, the poetess has reflected her deep contemplation, deep moorings for soothing our feelings inside. She underlines the supreme power of silence with joyous moments captured in meditative broodings. We get a very wonderful description of Nature resonant with sweet melodies of introspection-

I sit with eyes closed
Listening to the music within
Dancing in my mind.(Melodies of Silence)

The Song of Silence is another poem dealing with the stark realism of city life. She enjoys silence to let her heart and soul speak out through poetry. The poet is nostalgic about her times spent therein. Her reflective strain can also be felt here. Brooding over the past fetches her some sort of joy and peace in her thirsty present. Ensnared by sweet memories, she remarks-

I listened
As memories of a cacophonic city
Echoed in a distant past
Of a life vapid
Screaming
To be heard
Faded far away
Plugged, my ears heard nothing any more.

The poet seems to be very fond of music and songs and she correlates them with the beats, cadence and rhythm of her heart and together they create sweet symphony of thoughts on love, life and the world. Her existential concern is pervaded with a sense of helplessness. At the present stage of life, she is assertive and tries to come to terms with the stern realities of life and accepts her lot without any grudges and grumbles. She is in a who-cares-mood and parries away the pensive thoughts scaring her from afar. Nevertheless, she expresses her apprehensions-

Why do I grieve?
My years are being lost too
one after another;
never ever will those be back.
My writings will, perhaps;
one day.” (Music Lost)

“Junes to a December: An Autobiography” is a realistic documentation of the poet’s experience of life in its totality. She has enjoyed the variegated aspects of her life, feeling love, joy and undergoing traumas and anguishes. However, she is aware of the final destination of life. She takes recourse in profound philosophy and echoes the eternal refrain-

Floating on the dancing waves
meeting new banks and strands
I wait to arrive
at the last river mouth
to merge with the bounding waves.
To go deep under
to frolic with the fish
to ebb and tide;
but never again to return to the shore.

In Memoirs of Memories (Nine Poems) being the second section containing nine poems, she is ‘weaving again tales forgotten”. Through the poems contained in this section, she takes us around the rural landscape with very candid and honest delineation with all natural beauty. ‘Raindrops Kept Falling’ is one such a poem as presents before us -

….palm fronds swaying, soaking wet
of a lone crow sitting under eaves
beating its wings
shaking them dry.

In the first half of life she was enjoying the pattering of rains, feeling embraced with her love, relishing the sap of youth. However, she is sad at heart at the irreparable loss of the cozy moments. In the later part of life, she is all alone with nobody to talk to. She is wet with melancholic tears falling from her heart. She cries out her loneliness-

I sit alone today
sipping coffee as it rains
the rising steam misting my eyes
I listen to the rain weeping with me
comforting me with a message
in a constant tip tap di dah code (Raindrops Kept Falling)

Past assumes immense significance for the poet as she believes in the constructive power of the past times that shape the times to come and the times one lives with. Her temporal conception is philosophically amazing and logically justifiable. She is the view that past is what we are made of, and present is what we are. She rightly says-

The past never leaves .
The past never leaves.
It clings on as fragments of memories
of scenes seen and never forgotten.

She goes on –

“The past is what I am made of;
bearing my present/ on its invisible shoulders
to carry into the future
my id and my ego
till they disintegrate like camphor. (The Past in My Present)

For Indian women, husband is everything, sort of God. Personal loss of her partner creates a void of loneliness and dejection and she very touchingly describes her own sad plight-

I go to bed, forlorn,
the diamond ring lost
my ring finger wearing a vacant pale mark
a vacant sky, with a vanished moon (Things not Complete Anymore)

The melancholic strain or vein also run through the following lines from the poem ‘memories’-“The darkness I shall keep/ and just one little star/ in a teardrop/ on my ring finger”.

The other poems of the Section include “Things not Complete Anymore”, “Memories in the Night”, “Memories” , “Smoke on the Water”, “Alone, Under a Night Sky”, “Lapis Lazuli”, “When Our Paths Crossed “which are wonderful snapshots of memories she has cherished, treasured and enjoyed till date.

In the third section Down the River to the Sea (eight poems), the poet exhibits, with great adroit skill, hewr fascination with nature. Nature has been perennial companion for mankind since time immemorial. Whether in sorrow or joy, it always shares its joy, succor, and sympathy and provides inner strength to cope with the hard times, whatsoever. Objects of nature are not only the adorable things but also our guardians. To tide over her traumas, she often goes to seek inspiration and motivation from Nature. Words like ‘sea’, ‘seashore’, ‘seaside,’ ‘river’, ‘stars’, ‘moon’, ‘sun’, ‘clouds’ used as natural metaphors are of great assistance to the poet. They are creative pieces reflecting poetic vision .The poet personifies it sometimes as ‘giggling siblings’ and sometimes as ‘A mother a father and a friend/ at times a sister too/ the river that led me on to the world of love (The River) Nevertheless, she is saddened to see the aging pail of smoke hovering around her youth and beauty :

The river of my youth
has turned away from me
Has taken a different course
in a different land
painting rainbows in different hearts. (The River)

She is hopeless and hapless and loitering in adverse circumstances. However, she is desperately ‘gasping for a silk thread of hope’, ‘a glimmering hope flickers’. She expresses her antagonized grudges against her life partner who left her in lurch, with her children in her aging times-“Didn’t he think of his loved ones?/Didn’t he ever dream of an old age?/And children of his own? “ (River and the Man)

Though gloomy despair hovers around, yet the optimistic feeling of the poet always infuses in her the courage and unflinching in herself, courage to have patience to deal with the dog days. There is an undercurrent of hopes and enthusiasm in her poetry that makes it more enjoyable and pleasurable. The zeal and fervor to live life despite troubles and move on can be witnessed in the following remarkable lines-

Evening and night move away
paving a path for the marching little souls
towards a new dawn.
A new sun rises from beyond the watery horizon;
young waves rush in
robust and energetic.
A new world waits eager to be reborn. ( A Vision at the Seaside)

Other poems of the section are The River , River and the Man , At the Seashore at Night , A Vision at the Seaside , At the Seaside , Mourning the Waves , Dirge of the Lands , Never again to the Sea that deal with varied manifestations of nature reflecting the poet’s vivid and varied moods and responses thereto.

Singing in the Rain (three poems), next section of the book under review, reveal the ecstatic feeling of the poet overwhelmed by the sweet and soothing showers of rains and the yearning for them. As a poet of music and songs, she also expresses in her poetry her intense yearning for love. Her longing is still alive with nostalgia and the imaginary rains of love seem to be quenching her parched throat in different way. Rains are a metaphor that expresses her tears, the tears fallen due to loss of her love. She also reveals- “an yearning in my heart/ a restlessness within/ to see you/ and embrace and kiss/ That makes me toss and turn.” (Yearning for Rain) She writes ‘ a love poem ‘ only to ‘release my pain pangs’ so that she ‘shall wake up happy tomorrow /to a soothing grey sky’. The rains of her heart, and also outside wash away her grief. She further describes-

The heavens poured down all the pent up passions
and melting away with love
the world swooned in ecstasy.

“Rain: A Drama in Five Acts” and ‘Unwelcome Rain” also deserve our attention here.

On the Top of the World : Sky Clouds and the Hills (four Poems), another section, has four Poems- ‘Sun and Rain in the Hills’ , ‘At the Hills’, ‘I Go to the Hills’ and ‘Among the Clouds’ which present a wonderful landscape of the floating clouds over the vales and hills, reminding one of Wordsworth’s treatment of clouds. The poetess describes her feelings against such picturesque skyscape-

I stand on the deck
my ship sails into the sky
waves of clouds surge all around
From beyond rise
the snow peaks
glowing icebergs of the sky
Here there is no horizon
no end
to this limitless portent void
There is forever but a new beginning
there, sailing across the sky (At the Hills)

Philosophy of life with intricate mysticism also gets reflected in her poetry. When sadness exceeds its limit, the mind of the poet starts roaming about, sometimes over the hills, the sea etc. She tries to explore the way to purge herself off all the mundane dirges of despair. And the inner journey as such soothes her, wiping of the tears of heart. The vision of the unseen is like a beacon that leads her to the enlightened world of joy and happiness, peace and comforts. She vividly divulges-

Unseen mysteries wait
at every turn of a winding road
a green darkness whispers
as the pines listen
I keep going back to the hills
away from the seen .” (I Go to the Hills)

She further remarks-

I wrote my poems in the air there
gave all of myself to the clouds
back now/emptied
of thoughts of care
free at last
to untie past knots
and begin anew
with loving memories of the caressing clouds. (Among the Clouds)

Yet another section Seasons in the Sun (seventeen Poems) highlights the growth of love in beautiful surroundings of the seasons through the poems under this section. Seasons find a very special, symbolic mention in her poetry. The names of seasons employed in the collection function as a metaphor to state different states of her mind, with varied thoughts with mélange of feelings and emotions. Seasons are also used to represent stages of human life. She waits for the rains to cool down the heated crust of the earth, so to the muffed heart of hers. She also gets nostalgic feelings and remembers her summer holiday spent in the village. Depicting a very realistic picture of a summer holiday, she presents the’ tranquil world’ as it is, far from the city life, with all its picturesque ‘a beauty long passed by’-

I remember the summers of yore
Grandma pouring water on our heads
cool water drawn by a pulley
Buckets of water smelling of the deep dark well
Homework done
With grandma it was time for love and lore. (Summer Holiday)

Amidst passing of the seasons she is in search of her love, to feel her warmth in Winter, her soothing, heaving bosom in Summer but she finds nothing as such as she only traverses the and undertakes the lonely journey of life along the memories that have still got stuck to her feminine consciousness that gives birth to Spring thoughts like ‘cuckoos calls’. Winter is ‘ the time of harvest;/plentifulness celebrated/ in feast and fun/ hearts warm, embracing one another with love.’, Autumn is’ mist’, ‘mellow fruitfulness’, ‘blue sky’,’ a month of festivities/ a month of joy’. Summer is ‘time for joy / smelling the heady musk rose’, a holiday for ‘Warmth and love’. Keen attachment with the seasons have memories associated with . She has longing for soaring high with joy, ‘fly to the sun/span and scan the sky/looking for you’. She expresses her desire to celebrate her womanhood-

Spring is in the air
a spring in my step
dancing into the third month of the year
looking forward to the next nine months
Have lost some dear ones
have been worried about some
best wishes for all around me
for the months now to come. (Spring Thoughts I)

In between duality of times, of season lies the hope, joy, and warmth with full of optimism as ‘hope flitters about on dappled wings’.

Love is the most delicate and tender form of feeling and emotion that carries on the essence of humanity. Loving woos are sweet filled and felt with intense passion throughout her poems of love. She is right in saying that love happens by chance and if it happens, lover or beloved is led to ‘an unknown destination/down unknown unseen paths’, inundated in the overflowing waves of light/swam and glided down/towards a treasure hidden/lying deep down below somewhere.’ In true love, body parts are not counted that much and this is the quintessence of loving till eternity and her realization of this divine, eternal love is the testimony to this fact. However, ‘The Chaste Unchaste Woman’ is the radical voice of a woman in love. She reveals and openly accepts –

Two men I have loved
and been with
in my heart;
loyal and in love with both.

Her candid confession is very unique of a woman who declares that she is a chaste woman as she loves two at a time with full loyalty. She points out-“I remember him/who never was mine/yet was mine alone/The man of my past dreams/remains with my present;/for me alone.” (The Chaste Unchaste Woman)

Other poems of the section are - A Chance Meeting , Happy Love , Being in Love , Eternal Love , The Way I Love , p.s. I Love You , Barbecue Party , Finding You Waiting for Rain in Summer , Summer Holiday , Summer Dance , Summer, Here, and There , Autumn , Remembering Autumn , Winter , December: There and Here , Looking for You , Snow , Spring Thoughts I , Spring Thoughts II , Seasons , Summer’s Sun, Autumn Leaves , Winter and the Sun , Colours of Spring

Falling in Love, with You (nine Poems) is a casket of ‘lost fond memories’ of her love- the love of the present and of the past. All the experiences of falling in love with them are well depicted. The caring attitudes of the people who love her find wonderful mention in her poetry through which she expresses herself and her feeling for them. With a nostalgic feeling, she recalls those romantic days-

He stood there, in front of me
and held out his hand
the sun hid itself behind a screening cloud
the cars stopped
windows rolled down, all gazed at us
as I took his hand
and was led by him, to an unknown destination
down unknown unseen paths
listening to the music of the rains (A Chance Meeting)

With all the romantic dreams realized, she still yearns for the eternal companionship with her lover. Now that she has surrendered herself to the love, she wants to go beyond with the eternity of love she harbors in her tender heart. She makes urges-

Dreaming and melting within
I have given all of myself away.
Will you hold my hand
when I go to the clouds alone
Will you take
all that I will leave behind? (Being in Love)

It is a point to be noted that she is fond of not only physical intimacy but also the soulful ecstasy. However, she doesn’t attach that much importance to the physical aspect of love. Her perception of love is very unique. Let’s observe her elemental lines that reveal spiritual aspect of love also

I have not ever
and will never
count our body parts in our love

My lovers you all
I have loved you too
………………………
But it was never the body
or the vital parts (The Way I Love)

With a confessional mode in the fashion of Kamala Das, the poetess also gives up the conventional inhibitions characteristics of woman and dares to speak up her mind, unlocking her heart–

Two men I have loved
and been with
in my heart;
loyal and in love with both
He knows
and he knows too
And I know not
why I miss one when
I am with the other (The Chaste Unchaste Woman)

The past love still haunts her in her present, even in the presence of her present love with her loneliness. She is very honest and candid in true expression of her feeling of love. She confesses with great aplomb-

I remember him
who never was mine
yet was mine alone
The man of my past dreams
remains with my present;
for me alone

Love’s a Lonely Song (ten poems) contains the poems of love dedicated to her muse. These poems show different forms of love- from physical aspect to the sublime. They bring to us both the pangs of separation and the blissful moments spent with the love. She sometimes tells the tales of past love, and sometimes laments over the loss of love. She again revisits the haunting garden of love carved on time and sips the sap from the memories singing songs of love. Fed up, she also asks Cupid not to strike her poor self with the passionate arrow. She feels proximity with her lover though staying away. Romantic imagination is at its best in the poems under this section. She says-

We love to our hearts’ content
and are happy flying
our minds free
and happy to be in love.

Treatment of nature to heighten the intensity of love is enchanting, these lines being the exemplary illustrations-The moon came tonight/dressed in all her finery/the bridesmaid stars carrying her train trailing/across the sky/when the nastiest fog came rushing/to blind all/and the bride in the sky wore black. (A Silly Wise Love Poem)

Other poems like My Valentine , Love, 2014 , With You, Staying Away , Love Song , In Love , Dying Love , Love Story , Lost Love, Revisited , Une Lettre d’amour are her passionate lyrics, crooning of her heart.

The next section of the anthology, Pain, Destruction and Death (nine poems) deals with the poems of melancholy and poignancy. Love being the oft-recurring theme of majority of her poems, melancholic strains also runs through in the vein of her poetry. Poems as presented hereunder, like My Heart in a Bell Jar , Suffering , Dance of Destruction , Dead World , At the Crematorium , A Death Call , Cremation , The River of Death , Suicide are songs of her severe pain , sorrow and sadness. She, ‘blinded with sorrow’ has “kept my heart in a bell jar/shut tight/floating in formalin/in an antiseptic dark room.” ‘Dance of Destruction’ is rampant in ‘Dead World’. Now smiles have no true love for her. Nevertheless, Her ‘Sighs echo on the river bank/waiting for a certain new sunrise.’ Her sadness ultimately leads her to evolve philosophical outlook. She develops an eternal quest to realize the ultimate reality of life, and hence she questions-

Whose murky carcass floats down the river?
Where is he who lived and dreamed one day? (The River of Death)

Woman (ten poems), the women-centric section, contains some brilliantly remarkable poems suffused with feminine sensibilities. She draws out attention towards some of her woman-specific poems. Poems such as She ,Woman , Femme Fatale, Desire Woman , Mermaid Maiden ,You Stranger Woman, Barbecued , The Witch , Padmini Woman , I am She reflect her feministic concerns, serious issues of woman and attempt to explore the feministic consciousness behind the layers of multi-faceted personality of a woman. She defines various roles of woman that she plays in our life. “With sighs and tears/And the most winning smile”, she is a figure, not only adored, adorned but also worshipped like a deity. She is a creative force behind every creation, and hence assumes a place of paramount significance. She opines-

In silence she hears your heart speak.
You feed on the pastures that lay across in her
You sprinkle your seeds and watch them sprout and grow;
You trample on her and mutilate
Chew and gorge on her.
She lies desiccated, shriveled and sapless
Too weak to move yet strong enough to forgive.
She is the stronger of the two. you failed to see. (She)

Positive aspect apart, she also brings out the negative trait of woman as a ‘witch’, ‘appetizing female flesh’, ‘full of venom in her false heart’, ‘a Medusa with serpents in her hair’ , a ‘Padmini Woman’ with immense ‘Love raging within’ that burns man’s passions and purges him off all the dirges, soothing his soul in her arms. Not only this, she also bemoans her sad plight in today’s male-dominated society. She is saddened to see that woman is treated as ‘the daily meal/a hurried breakfast’, ‘weaker yet stronger’ with stupendous power in her bower that man often fails to fathom and measure. She desires-

I desire to have wings
to fly across the sky
with the high flying birds my companions
I wish to go deep into the earth
digging with paws of desire
to bask in the warmth that lay underneath

I desire to outlive them all
the sun, the moon, the earth
I never could do without them (Desire Woman)

Here, There and Everywhere (eleven poems) contains some poems composed at different places. They are At the Fortress , At the Crossroads , The Actor , Theatre , The Dance of the Masks , A Night: There and Here , Fireflies , Running a Race , Looking for Oasis , An Evening at the Village , Street Theatre. Time spares none. All, be it man or things, small or big, have to face assaults of time. Helplessness before time is apparent in her poetry. She depicts a deplorable image of ‘a throne’ as a metaphor to reveal this temporal reality in these lines-

The throne stands alone, forlorn,
shorn of regal splendor
a lone spider daring to own it all. (At the fortress).

Her poetry is pregnant with philosophy of life that makes us aware of the ultimate end of life. Like Shakespeare, she also compares man with an actor and underlines the hard reality when she refers to an actor’s vanishing from this stage of life- he went away to where life beckoned/for him to play another familiar role.” (The Actor)She further brings her point that –‘It is the truth that lives there/ onstage, illumined by arc lights/or groping in the dark’(Theatre) and when don’t realize this fact it means we have not played our role in our real life and failed to understand the hidden meaning of these philosophical lines. She further expresses herself on the deplorable condition of the people in the world through her own portrayal-

Where am I
walking along a rocky terrain
stumbling, faltering
in a dizzy rapture
dreaming of flowers to be caressed
at a green grassy field somewhere ahead? (The Dance of the Masks)

She is afraid of her life that sometimes crushes ‘love and hope’. The duality of life is reflected philosophically in her poem “A Night: There and Here” which is a juxtaposition between joy at one time and sorrow at another and in between lingers our life. Being alive to this fact of life, she is looking for an ‘oasis’ for ‘cool of mind’ and love at heart rather than running after momentary ‘fame and name’. Her keen observation of human life has been beautifully described through the appropriate use of a metaphor ‘street’. She says-

A tiny speck of joy lies
alone, at the edge of the street
holding on with its little hands to the kerb
Sorrow rides past in cars
zooming away
sighs hidden carefully beneath shirts.(Street Theatre)

Poems showcased under Celebrations and Paeans (five poems) are suffused with various festivities of life and paeans that have found wonderful expressions in her poetry. Love and romance, sorrow and joy, hope and despair apart, she has also well delineated festivities of life to beat the monotony. As a matter of fact, celebrations provide a break from the stereotyped life styles. Contemporary world is burning in the fire of violence, atrocities, corruptions etc. national and international warring forces are at loggerheads. Through her poetry she wishes to establish and restore peace, brotherhood and harmony. With this global symphony she prays ‘with folded hands for a miracle-a miracle is the need of the hour/Today/May an eternal child be born/a savior/of souls putrefied/in Mathura/or Bethlehem’ (Janmashtami-the Birth of Lord Krishna). In her “Durga Puja” she is paying obeisance to the Mother who ‘kills the demon-asura, Myopic asuras in us’. Glorifying woman she says that ‘divine Mother and earthly wives’ are ‘alike

Woman, you are goddess,
beautiful in your grace and love’, ‘Mrinmoyee, the clay-soul
one with the conscious mortal
Chinmoyee.’

My Wishes My Voice, (forty two poems) is the last section of the anthology. It sums up her wishes, desires, longings, longings, dreams, hopes, comforts, grievances, and aspirations in the poems contained in this section. Woman’s heart is a secret chamber of her deepest feelings and intense emotions. The poetess probes into her female psyche and explores different ways and modes of expression for voicing them out. Though she wants to soar in the sky of love, of freedom, yet the social chains of the times always clip her wings resulting into her inability and helplessness. She wishes- ‘I’d be a cloud in the sky/sailing towards the sun/looking down on earth/ seeing myself poring over/a much yellowed book (In the Sky, among the Clouds). In the poem “Yearning” she makes a plea to

Carry me away
borne on clouds dark and deep
to lands unknown
Suck me deep into eddies ebullient
Dizzy, I’d forget my static self
Have me coiled around the whorls
with a host of colours for company
I am tired of standing alone
swaying in the storm

The above lies have Shelleyan touch and reveal her agonizing pain of the world where woman is subjected to cruel treatment. To evade the pains of the present she wishes to fly away in the distant land of futurity in search of joy and comfort. The followings lines are reflective of her escapist view point only for unfolding the realm of better tomorrow-

If wishes were horses
I’d ride them to those summer morns
When there would be no sadness or loss
No yearning for a better tomorrow (I Wish)

Nevertheless, she recalls the memories of the past. Her nostalgic feeling gets reflected with candid assertion when she expresses-

When twilight is about to usurp
the last flickering rays
a dawn from a past
long lost but never forgotten (At the End of the Day)

Ignition of love even in the old age adds another interesting dimension to the total comprehensibility of this liquid and deep feeling that’s has been irrigating the creative process of human life. Even an old love carefully wrapped in fond memories can be a source of joyous feeling. The poetess exudes the aroma of love-

A fifty year old heart beats again
in arrhythmia, not cardiac this time
but with the joy of love to rediscover
to be united with old love
kept hidden wrapped with care
in the silk of fond memories. (At the End of the Day)

Loving memories fascinate her and reactivate and intensify her search for the love. The nostalgic feeling is at its best her-

My eyes searched for you
waiting across Time
as I stood tranfixed
chained to a present,
memories tugging at my heart. (Through the Door of My Dream)

In her poetry, the poetess has also reflected certain aging issues. “The morose mirror reflects a sad old woman “(A Face in the Mirror). She unwraps the aging warp:

Dessicated and fragile
it lies alone
on the cold hard street bed
nonchalant
and stoica (Time to Leave)

While probing deep into various aspects of love, she gets philosophical and reflective in her poetry. Thoughts of love lead her to the realm beyond and thus she turns inward to be alive to the ultimate and naked reality of life. Though she enjoys good times of her life, her realization of approaching the final destination makes her make a compromise with existential reality but with a positive note-

Memories of a life well-lived,
it is now time to say good bye
make space
for new leaves to grow (Time to Leave)

Her existential concerns tend to culminate in her deep understanding of intricate mysteries of life and its transience nature. She accepts and expresses her bewilderment, in indirect way, at her inability to resolve the eternal puzzle of human predicament in the world-

I forget I am but puny
a dot in the universe
completing the universal jigsaw puzzle (Man and the Universe)

The poetess, further, makes us realize the eternal significance of ethereal things of life over ephemeral things of the world-

It was the brain of a fool that
worked itself for non-material things and ideas. (The Last Journey)

In short, My Poetry My Voice of Madhumita Ghosh is a comprehensive manifestation of her poetic experience with adroit craftsmanship with multiple characteristics of literary relevance and significance. The poetic diction, imagery grabbed the world of nature, romantic philosophy and the mystical strains and pathces together make the book quite enjoyable and readble.