The Door is Half Open

The Door is Half Open – A collection of poems by Susheel Sharma susheelsharma.avap@gmail.com

Reading Experience by Pritam Bhattacharyya, Editor – Pentasect 

I am not a poet and except a poet or being irradiated by true poetry at some time or other, no one should review a poetic work- leave aside criticizing it. I use the word ‘criticize’ here in the commonly understood Indian sense – which means more or less ‘demolition’. There is a word ‘adhikari’ which roughly translates as being qualified. I am no adhikari to do so. Hence, I shall be considering myself as reader and what I shall do below is to produce my reading experience.

1.  The work is completely free from the vicious, ugly and cultivated abstraction one finds in the works of many Indian writers of English poetry. It is conveniently forgotten by many writers that how gifted a rhyme –master one can be but handling a non-native language for poetry is a super-human task by definition and since inception. The work has been careful on this count. This sincerity permeates the whole work and that I think is the most important quality of the book.

2.  The poet is trying to communicate and not trying to keep the reader guessing as how complex and exotic his mind is. I have read few works of ‘English poetry’ whose sole reason seems to find some non-sentinel beings and for that matter the work ignores any reader of flesh and blood altogether. This is no less virtue for Indian writers just like being polite can itself be considered a sterling and rare virtue for any Indian bureaucrat of any denomination or designation.  

3.  There is complete absence of the deplorable journalistic flow variety (I think time has come now to segment the IQ of media persons against other professionals). These class of men and women consider poetry as an op-ed, word restricted work where there is no editor to check or chastise!

A fine and honest work.  The ‘technical’ aspect of the work has been tough considering overlap of multiple languages – and one of them being Sanskrit.

I wish:

1.  The work could have been bi-lingual, some works could have been more penetrating while written in Hindi and may be followed by English translation. Translator being a traitor, implied

2.  The Gangastotra and the longest poem would have benefitted most  by this bi-lingual method.