Exploring Directness in My Poems

I have just finished a workshop with Rachel Kann. Rachel's overall feedback to me was: I need to challenge myself to write more directly. I have been thinking about that a lot in the past few days. I do have a tendency to play with language, with the inherent symbolism of it. But I think my tendency to use indirect language comes from two things:

1. Having grown up around lots of ganasangeet, and people trying to write "socialist-realist" poems, plays and stories, I have a tendency to keep myself deliberately away from what I call Red Sun and Internationale Aesthetic. I want to explore the political through different kinds of images, through different kinds of symbolisms. Hence, a lot of my indirect explorations.

2. Since I also write short stories, essays, and political pamphlets, I don't always feel the need to explore experiences and languages in straight, direct ways in my poems. I feel my prose can do that better, in a different way. What I therefore, try to do in my poems is to explore the abstract, the magical. I like to stretch the limits of an image, a word, a sentence, the inherent symbolism of a form.

But it is also equally true, my writing tends to get more indirect and immersed in language and image plays whenever I am not exploring something very deeply. In short, in my own writing, obscurity in the guise of beautiful language often follows my own lack of clarity about a topic. So, when Rachel pushed me to think about more direct ways to write my material, she had done me an immense service in trying to make me see something.

I am trying to think this through as I am revising my first manuscript.

PS. the word ganasangeet in Bangla means "people's songs."

Revision, Taking Out Things

KRA's suggestion was that I need to trim down my manuscript. I have decided to take out the series on Briseis and the Crow/Sparrow poems. Both of those series need more time to ferment, and more space to bloom fully. In fact, I think, both of them will do good as stand-alone chapbook projects. That way, the collection I have can also become a much more focussed one on fairytales/folklore and the Woolf re-writings. I have some ideas about the revision, let's see how it develops.

Have finished revising chapter two of the dissertation. Need to send it out to the co-directors.

Writing Notes in Poems

My post-colonial training had taught me to be suspicious of readers who want the "ethnic" writer to do the work of the native informant. I am against providing extensive notes for the poems I am writing. I don't want to explain the historical context of the Arun-Barun-Kiranmala story too much, I don't want to provide a glossary of each and every Bangla word I use in the poem. Instead, I want the reader to do some amount of work. I want them to look things up. I want them to think about the world I am writing in. But after getting back the manuscript with KRA's detailed feedback, I am wondering about certain things. For example, I have learnt that not only shouldn't I take for granted my American readers' knowledge of South Asian/Third World fairytales, I shouldn't also take for granted their knowledge of Greek mythology. Like, I discovered very few of my readers recognized who Briseis is. This made me think about ways of reading a lot.

One can argue that Briseis is a minor character. So it's not too hard to miss out the segments where she appears. But on the other hand, "missing out" on things also reveals ways in which we are taught to see things in a text. If an epic is all about valorizing male military heroes, and most of the readers go to the text expecting that and without questioning the basic premises of male martial heroism, chances are they would miss out on lots of things. What this means is that, any writer who is "revising/rewriting" into existing narratives, is also trying to show the readers different ways of reading the canon. As a poet, I have the responsibility of opening certain doors for the readers. And I should do that. If writing a slightly longer note helps me in that task, I will do it. Because at the end of the day, it's not my erudition that's at stake. What is at stake is that I am trying to show the readers that there are other things to think about while they approach a very familiar canonical text. That arrogance, that I won't really add a note to it, I would rather have the readers struggle through it, seems to be kind of an academic elitist exhibitionism which I can do away with.

Food and Growing Up

I didn't grow up eating lots of poppy-seed (posto) curries. My mother wasn't especially fond of them, and would tell me, posto is more of a ghoti thing. Meaning, it's more of a food that belongs traditionally to the people who are from West Bengal than us, the bangals, who are originally from East Bengal(now Bangladesh). Bengali cuisine is not something one easily gets in US. In lots of ways, Bengali food doesn't share a lot of the characteristics of Punjabi food, which has come to be understood as the India food in US. It's not as spicy, less greasy, more flavorful. Spices are used more to season things rather than to blunt the original smell of the vegetables, fish or meat. It does frustrate me sometimes that I cannot walk into a Bengali restaurant and order the delicacies I have grown up eating. On the other hand, I do like the fact that Bengali food hasn't been assimilated into the mainstream of American food cultural, the commercial culinary tourism. Whenever I cook something Bengali, I feel as if I am cooking up a secret, which I can (and do) share with my loved friends and only loved friends here. Today I cooked posto-murgi (chicken with poppy seeds). It is not something I have had ever tasted while growing up. But I would consider this dish irrevocably Bengali--the phoron (throwing of whole spices into hot sizzling oil), the poppy-seed paste, adding a little bit of sugar for the whole dish to have a caramelized taint. It does make me think about what constitutes authenticity when it comes to food? How does one take into account the regional/local/familial variations? What do those variations reveal in terms of the social historical and political dynamics of things? I made it based on these two recipes here and here. The result was delicious. The poppy-seeds gave the chicken pieces a very different kind of texture.

Auto-Didacticism

In one of the list-serves I am in, there is a discussion on whether an MFA is necessary for being a poet/writer. Well, I obviously I don't have one. Although I tend to think, it's going to be nice to get a chance to read/write extensively as a writer-in-training for two/three years. And and and...it is my dream to get an MFA someday. Not because I think the degree will be prestigious, or I need another graduate degree. But it would be nice to get that structured time when I am expected (and paid) to write, write and write. It would be nice to be within a community of writers, it would be nice to get some intense feedback. Although from my classes at UCLA Extension, I also happen to know that it's not going to be easy. What I write/will write will not be easily accessible to folks. My politics, the place I am writing from will be lost to many (most). But still, it will be nice to have that time to write.

There were also a few non-MFA people in the listserve who described themselves as auto-didacts. Now, I tend to think, anyone worth his/her salt in anything, has to be an auto-didact. There is no class, no school in this world that will teach one everything about something. What courses/programs do is to provide one with certain openings. My Phd program has provided me with certain openings. It had allowed me to walk in through some doors. And that is indeed a huge advantage over people who do not get that opportunity to have those doors opened to them by some program/course/school (it can be an advantage too, though:)). But what the PhD program had done for me was to provide me with time to read and think about the world and cultural productions almost 24/7. Think about them in a really intense way. If I didn't get that chance, I don't think I would have thought seriously about taking up writing. I would have written fleetingly, but I wouldn't have taken it up in the way I have done. But then, there were a lot of things I had to teach myself even within the program. And I wouldn't have it any other way.

So, if I have to sum up my opinion, it goes like this: an MFA wouldn't necessarily hurt. Because it would give you lots of structured time and space to write. It will give you a community. It will give you mentors. It will provide you with lots of openings, that is. Now once you walk through the doors opened by the program, you will still have to stumble around, teach yourself how to stand straight, and how to walk forward. Don't expect the program will do that work for you. But on the other hand, if you decide not to go for an MFA, that is not the end of the world either. You can still learn things.

There is no one way to writerhood. But whatever way one choses, one has to work damn hard, examine oneself closely, and get into the habit of being honest with oneself. Even if that hurts.

Revising Dissertation Chap 2

I am trying to revise chapter two of my dissertation. It is not proving to be easy. It is not that I don't have a grip over what I want to say. I do. But where I am struggling, is how to say it. A lot of the comments I got back from my advisor and the other dissertating colleagues is that, I need to paste more signposts before I launch into specific arguments. That is where I am struggling. It is as if I know where I am taking my readers, but I am not necessarily keen on telling them where I am going to take them. I think, I need to see some other dissertations to see how this has been achieved. Or maybe even book chapters. Natasha Tinsley's book? Christina Sharpe's book? LM's dissertation? That's what I will do tonight. Also, I need to make a quick library trip. Books I need to pick up:

1. Stephanie Li's Book

2. Louise Gluck's Ararat

3. Nationalism vs. Internationalism

Will do that tomorrow morning.

Conflict, Writing, My Poems

One of my co-workshoppers in the UCLA Extension class I am taking said something interesting about my poems. According to her, my poems have a sense of conflict which is largely missing from the poems she reads. This made me think a lot about readership. For one thing, I don't really know who she reads. But the poets I read and love to read, all engage with conflict, and sometimes multiple forms of conflicts. Maybe I read "political" poets more. Although, I would say, all poems, all texts are political. It's what kind of politics they are engaging in, and how, that makes all the difference. I am thinking, what does it mean to write about conflict? That there are inequalities in the world? That people who do not enjoy power and privileges question their own locations, and ultimately engage in resistance? That we all occupy contradictory material and subjective positions in life? All of the above?

Something I need to think about more.

This somehow also makes me think about Mary Pipher's book Writing to Change the World, which I just finished. It has lots of great insights to begin with. But, what I find lacking is specifically an engagement with the question: how does one write from a place of simultaneous anger and hope? What if one is expressing one's love in writing through an expression of anger? Personally, I think, Pipher is not that willing to deal with systemic dimensions of power. Consequently, she also does not think of writing as something that can sharpen the contradictions inherent within the workings of power. At the end of the day, although I don't think she intends it that way, the book ends up suggesting ways to dissolve the conflicts, rather than let them ripen.

If I have to be non-pc about it, it's a little too hippie-dippie for me. Although there were some great insights, from which I can learn. Also, she has a good bibliography of all kinds of books-- children's books, novels, memoirs---and I need to dig into some of them!