BOOK REVIEW: Leonard Dabydeen
Author: PG RAMA RAO
Paperback: 58 pages
Publisher: Global Fraternity of Poets, Gurugram, India (August 10, 2017)
$12.00 ₹ 140.00
Language: English
ISBN: 978 938375538 7
BOOK REVIEW: Leonard Dabydeen
“Whole life is a search for beauty. But, when the beauty is found inside, the search ends and a beautiful journey begins.” ― Harshit Walia : https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7142044.Harshit_Walia
This book, The Dot and the Line is an intensely euphoric and aesthetic collection of 57 poems in a paquet of 58 pages by Dr. P.G. Rama Rao. It is his sixth poetry anthology, since underscoring his retirement from the P.G. Department of English, Utkal University, Bhubaneswar, India in 1995. He treasures a scintillating career as a teacher of English and American Literature. And this book implodes a rich, feisty outlook of his unequivocal creative impulse. It is as if Rama Rao found that maxim of beauty deeply within himself, only to carry on by leaps and bounds in a philosophic enthrall under a banyan tree, while playing poetic innings as an octogenarian.
True to an idiom, a book should not be judged by the title on its cover. And the title, The Dot and the Line of this book by Rama Rao, almost brought to surface a memory of the Classic 1965 Norton Juster work: A Romance in Lower Mathematics – the love story of a straight line being in love with a dot. However, it is not until the book is opened to its title page inside cover, that the visual changes. This book, ‘The Dot and the Line’ and Other Poems by P.G. Rama Rao takes the reader to a new poetic frontier.
The dot and the line have a mathematical connectivity. According to Steven Bradley of Web Design blog (2010), “Dots working together can form an endless variety of arrangement and complexity. They can become lines and curves. They can form complex shapes, patterns, textures, and any other structure imaginable. Dots in combination can even imply direction and movement, bringing us to lines.” (http://vanseodesign.com/web-design/points-dots-lines/) This being so, and contending that Einstein says that “logic will get you from A to B, Shirley Dent (2009) of the Guardian booksblog consummates that poetry and mathematics have an undisputable love affair. (https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/feb/04/maths-poetry-pi-fibonacci) Almost an amour propre.
Within this concatenation of poetry and mathematics, author Rama Rao has evolved a subtle, aesthetic and spiritual assemblage of poetry in this book, ‘The Dot and the Line’ and Other Poems. In the words of Wordsworth, “Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.” And in the benevolence of Tagore, “I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
Let us take a look at the title poem, The Dot and the Line (pp. 1-2),
In my long search
For myself,
I chanced upon
Several Who’s Who’s,
And Encyclopaedias.
As I laboured through the
Pages of those volumes,
I discovered a dwarf vertical
Line, with a dot hovering
Above, popping up frequently.
The capital ‘I’, egoistic and
Aggressive, demanded my
Attention, but this small ‘I’
Seemed to say timorously,
“i am what you’re looking for”.
For some mysterious reason I
Identified myself with it but
Wondered, “Am I fated
To be a little letter in a great
Book of billions of letters?”
The ‘I’ said in gentle tones:
“I may look small, but I’m
A combination of dot and
Line, which form the basis
Of everything in the universe.
“They make art and letters,
Maths and sciences and,
In fact, the dot makes the
Line, and together they
Work many, many wonders.
“The dot makes a circle and
The globe, and the celestial
Spheres, the smallest dot
Is the atom, which makes
The galaxies and the universe.”
With this title poem, author Rama Rao evidently echoes the cornucopia of Life. The poem ratchets powerfully his self-realization, which crystallises the foundation for building blocks of the ‘other poems’ in the book; a philosophical confidante.
And with erudite poetic intuition, author Rama Rao takes the title of this book, ‘The Dot and the Line’ and Other Poems to this poem (p. 3), Am I a Little Vertical Line? musing (“Like a youth of ancient Athens who had/A stimulating session with Socrates.”), becoming emphatic in the second stanza (p. 3),
I travelled back in time
And discovered “dot and line”
In my mother’s womb.
The wriggling line was little,
And the dot full and still;
The little line joined the dot.
And author Rama Rao holds affirmatively to the thought that,
The potential universe is the atomic dot;
Vedic “Purnam” (SELF) is the metaphysical dot.
The dot is the most perfect of all things.
The dot is God Himself radiating grace;
At the moment “I’m” a humble vertical line,
But hope to merge in the “Great Dot” some day.
Thus lighting the spiritual amphitheatre as we continue to view the heart-throb of more poems with a random scythe and an esoteric eye. In the Dot-Line-Dot (p. 6), the author speaks of “God’s grace” to fetch a mysterious notion (of the dot) “Bothering his mind.” In The World of My Vision (Inspired by Gurudev Tagore) he says (p.7),
I have a vision of a world governed by
Love, tolerance, peace, and bliss as the
Directive principles of its constitution.
Discrimination based on race, creed,
Class, and gender is not known there.
Here author Rama Rao appears to nuance socio-political rhetoric in poetic narrative versification. Perhaps his exuberant academic career of being a Fulbright Research Fellow and Adjunct Professor in the University of Massachusetts in Boston in the late 20th century, in conjunction with his home-run work on Hemingway papers, and tour-de-la-tour in several highly acclaimed academic institutions around the world, would suffice for his visionary world view.
In this poem, The Buddha and Valmiki (p.19), author Rama Rao tells a story of his respite under a peepal tree where he was “disturbed/By a cuckoo’s song”. He reminisced that,
I opened my eyes
To espy this bird,
And saw a cruel hawk.
Swoop upon a squirrel.
Rama Rao was so overwhelmed with grief, cursing the hawk for its cruelty, he assiduously declared (last stanza of this poem),
I set out to become
The Buddha but
Ended up as Valmiki,
And wrote this poem.
Valmiki was the great composer of the first Sanskrit poem (the Adikavya) known as the epic Ramayana (the story of Lord Rama).
In our continuing engagement of human activities in this new millennium, we encounter atrocities and anomalies that deeply affect our good standing as human beings. The eye of author Rama Rao does not fake pretense over our actions. Here in this poem, Doom and Bloom (p. 39), he espouses that,
The world does bloom
As each day dawns;
Put to flight are all
Shadows of gloom.
In the words of T.S Eliot (1888-1965), “We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”
In the last poem of this book, ‘The Dot and the Line’ and Other Poems, author Rama Rao speaks to the title, The End of the World (p. 57) in stanza 2,
It has survived deluges,
Wars, volcanic eruptions,
Plagues and earthquakes;
Still life goes on.
We continue to speak of symmetry in an asymmetrical world.
In this book, ‘The Dot and the Line’ and Other Poems, there are five Japanese Haiku poems defined by their syllabic count of 5/7/5. They reflect a bouquet of intensity in nature with aplomb directness, including Bronze and Gold (p. 16),
The small-minded boast
Unlike the kind and worthy,
Does gold sound like bronze?
[From the 16th century Telugu sint-poet, Vemana]
And ‘Vaaman’(p. 29)
Three feet fill three worlds;
Haiku is poetry’s ‘Vaaman’;
Three lines mean so much.
‘Vaaman’ signifies the name of Lord Vishnu.
And, Greatness (p 32),
What makes for greatness?
A large heart and a high mind
Make one wise and great.
And, Movie Screen (p. 36)
Wars are fought on it;
The movie screen stays peaceful;
Let’s keep our mind so.
And, Seer’s School (p. 50),
Where did they study,
The vedic seers of yore?
Spirit’s intuition.
When author Rama Rao first posted a caption of this book, ‘The Dot and the Line’ and Other Poems on FaceBook towards the end of 2017, the cover caught my attention. I suggested in a comment that it would be interesting to do a book review. I was more than surprised, in fact overjoyed, to receive four of his latest books of poetry in the mail. Including this title. The exhilaration and jubilant feelings I have experienced in reading and reviewing this book are beyond expression. Any poetry enthusiast or English Literature connoisseur will unequivocally be overjoyed to have this book in their reading gallery. It is certainly worthy of digesting; every poem a must to read.
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