Love & Romance (A Collection of Poems)
Poet: Jyotirmaya Thakur
Year: 2017, Kindle Edition Rs.: 117/-
Publisher: MyBooks Publication

Love, as has been universally acknowledged, is the quintessence of human life and the exuberant force that satiates the creative urge of the poet who feels the height of romantic feeling with full of emotional intensity. This is the reason why it has been a favourite and dormant theme of poetry since ages. The poetry of love is basically a romantic expression of powerful spontaneous feeling. It is imbued with the poet's simplicity and purity of heart and intensity of impulses marked with sincerity, loyalty and innocence. However, as a mode of subjective outlet poetry is also a self-revelation of romantic desires and scarlet thoughts and deep agony and anguish of the romantic heart. It is abundantly enriched with imaginative meandering and whirling of sensibility in the beautiful sky of heart. Greatest love poems across the world have been written by male and women poets alike to emphasise their feelings and experiences of love and relationship.

In this respect, female perspective on all-inclusive aspects of love is more cardinal and oft-sought curiosity of literary readers. A female heart harbours love in all sacrosanct, selfless and honest ways. In this collection, Jyotirmaya Thakur, the poet, intends to illustrate the aspects of love, its beauty and grandeur, its therapeutic power, dreams and longings of lovers, melody of love, gain and loss in love etc.....

Love and Romance is Jyotirmaya Thakur’s outstanding anthology of love poems reflecting her feeling, and emotions towards the ethereal and supernal aspects of this, most tender form of emotion. Love in all facets is the dormant theme of her poetry. Almost all the titles of her poems, except a few ones, contain the word “love’ and it is indicative of her stress, more than anything else, on this beautiful emotion and feeling. Her perspective on love is quite remarkable. She has added several dimensions to love and defined it in several ways. The volume opens with a lovely poem “God is Love” bespeaking of the divine aspect of love. She treats LOVE as an acronym in which every letter stands for something meaningful. She reveals:

Love is a metaphor of absolute surrender,
Unspeakable closeness with every breath together.
L, is for the laughter we share every day,
We hold on to each other in every way.
O, is for opulence that we treasure each other,
Knowing our wealth will never wither.
V, is for the values of our unconditional smiles,
As we walk through troubles miles after miles.
E, is for everything amazing at all times,
True love is measured by how deeply heart rhymes.

She employs many other metaphors to redefine love in her own way. Love, to her, is “a river of never ending stream”, “the thirst drowned in ocean blue”, “a never ending story”, “tolerance triumphant in life, ’“Respect for each other,’ “open sky with a beautiful sight’, ‘cosmic energy of natural synergy’, “gift from God and God is a gift of love.’

In the poem “Grandeur of Love”, she speaks volume of splendour of love. Love has its own enchanting beauty that overwhelms a heart dipped in romantic exuberance of innermost feeling. Love is ever endowed with an aesthetic appeal. She rightly says that “Grandeur of love is in heart of the beholder/A little hug in kind is a grand gesture”. She celebrates love with a universal vision-

The vision of love is beyond description,
Once found it loses all limitations,
Love belongs to all in universal celebration,
Every atom is attached to another in jubilation.

She is well aware that beauity of love is not confined to the mundane bondage. Rather it is always vibrant and thrives in the heart of human beings, ‘in all seasons hot or cold’’ and it has eternal power to soften even a toughest heart. Indeed, the feel of love ennobles people.

“Love Is the Breath of Life” is another beautiful poem that defines love brilliantly. She uses several objects of nature to depict the picture of love and its power to sharpen romantic and natural sensibility to realise the profundity of this soft feeling. She further reveals:

Love is the breath of life sacred ,
Hope in scope to fill every void ,
Light of the eyes when blind in hatred,
Elixir of survival even when wasted.

For the sake of love, she doesn’t reject the world; she is strongly rooted into the worldly affairs and regards the earth as wonderland of beautiful things of life. She loves it so much and expresses her gratitude to it as it enables her to enjoy soothing glimpse of “Morning of magnificent radiance, /Twilight of enlightened manifestation.” She is enthralled by the fascinating beauty of nature engulfing the world in its embrace. Her poem “I love the World” gives a vivid account of the world:

World is painted in glorious aurora,
Cosmic energy vibrant in splendour,
I am lucky witness of beautiful creation,
Awestruck in flawless fascination.

I Love The World, Letter of Love I Dream To Pen, Love Lengthens Lofty Living, Love Is The Breath of Life, The Moment I Fell In Love, Loving You, Loving Me, Love Letter –Sonnet, The Bond of Love, Love In Splendour, Melody of Love, The Power of Love, Lovely Life, The Elixir of Love, Genuine Love, Let Love Flow, The Reign of Love, An Oasis of Love In Desert of Hearts, Lost Love, First Impressions of Love, Loved And Lost, My Valentine etc are some of her remarkable poems of love imbued with her romantic sensibility.

Blossoming Romance, Midnight Dance, Moonlight Romance, Boatman’s Song Marriage, Gaze Yonder, Gaze Across The Shore, Rapture of Romance, Romantic Interlude, Elegance of Romance etc are lovely poems of romance that have the inherent power to smoothen and sweeten the lives of couples and those madly in love. In the poem “Blossoming Romance”, she expresses her lovely experience s of romance:

Romance is full of pleasure,
When our bodies measure
Merging deep in each other,
Discovering new treasures.

The earth smells sweet
When grass is so green ,
Sweeping each other's feet
With daisies on heels.

There are also some poems expressing yearlings and longings, intimate passions of loving hearts. Some poems also reflect melancholy swings of romantic exuberance. In this way, the poet makes an attempt to present, through her poems joy of love and at the same time the pain of love, though not felt that much. “ My Ultimate Desire” gives a touch of sensuousness, a part and parcel of intimate form of love:

My flesh and body is passionate at every step of love,
My spirit and soul embark into unknown places like dove.
You've enslaved and made captive of my total being,
When I sit with you at dawn till dusk seems slipping.

The concluding poem of the collection, “Marriage” sums up the essence of love culminating in solemnisation of marriage. This is what reflects Indian sensibility of the poet singing the glory of traditional form of love. She underlines:

Marriage is a mutual contract solemnized,
Apparently at the altar of God, venerable elders,
Live in togetherness eternally, society as witness,
Build a home that shelters joy-tears in all weathers.
****
Marriage veils melancholy at temple of delight
The strenuous tongue is curbed and tamed at the shrine
The twists and turns of summer winter times,
Melts and bursts as sweet chocolate to palate refine.

As a matter of fact, Jyotirmaya Thakur’s volume of love verses, Love And Romance, is going to be a unique addition to the progress of love poetry writing in Indian English.

I wish her all the best for treading the path of poetry through her love and romance!

(Written as Foreword to Jyotirmaya Thakur’s anthology Love & Romance)