Review of Aditya Shankar’s poem ‘Delta’

 Aditya Shankar’s poem ‘Delta’

I request readers to read the poem from the above link first and then only my review. Thanks.

A poem enhances the power of words by the use of metaphors. What the metaphor symbolizes makes the words convey a more powerful meaning than in normal usage. Metaphors translate poet’s complex and abstract visualization for the reader. In this poem there are several metaphors. The title delta is a metaphor of a stream of thought branching out and new thoughts merging into a vision. The ending line ‘A travelogue in the handwriting of knives on wounds,’ gives the reader the depth of the poet’s distancing from the lack of human values all around. Between him and his poem the expression of the insurmountable gap between minds and their exclusiveness is the knitting thread; and the inevitable suffocation he suffers pulsates within always pairs with words. The pairing words are a poem.

We must probably list the metaphors now:

1.Lines (of empathy) never found expressed

2.Dream (full of kindness) they never met

3.Places they saw only in pictures but never visited

4.An unfinished story

5.An unexpressed love

6.A mourning too silent

7.A frog too far from the land to leap (and in the bush of a pond)

8.A poor nation deep in debts

9.A car’s mirror that can reflect a big truck.

10.The prison (camera) and the prisoner (photograph) side by side independently

11.A table lamp angled towards the sun

12.The shadow of the murder reminding the murderer of his crime.(Hallucinating)

13.A rare warmth (before the alienation) a lovelorn got

14.The gruesome way of writing on a heart with a knife

The gaps in communication, failures in sharing and in empathizing and being inclusive and the aggression in pushing a fellow being into deep anguish or failure is expressed powerfully by these metaphors. But the metaphors are like a bouquet of synthetic and normal flowers knotted together. In a way this hampers a wholesome experience of getting lost in the whole new world of the poem. The last line is so poetic, disturbing and powerful that makes up for this.