About "Prismatic Celluloid"
by
Perie Longo
Santa Barbara, California Poet Laureate Emerita
On Sept. 29, 1012, I attended a reading in Santa Barbara, California for the “1000 Poets for Change,” an event being staged in many cities around the world. Poets of all ages and experience stood in the public space outside a Café reading their poems, all with the hope that someone would listen to what they felt the country, if not the world, needed. Some were critical, others more staid. There were political poems and lyric poems of love gone wrong, poems of disgust for war, and desire for peace and change. I was struck with the power of the voices of the young: demanding strong, passionate and searching, much like Sonnet Mondal’s poems in this, his eighth book of verse. Poetry, like music, allows us to experience each other’s humanness no matter how far apart we are from each other. In whatever language we speak, poetry is there to point the way to understanding something we otherwise would not: hopefully, to become more compassionate fellow travellers on our different journeys. Mondal is such a traveller with his significant poems.
With serendipity, I had sitting on my desk the Spring/Summer issue of Atlanta Review, editor and publisher Dan Veach. It featured the poetry of India, edited by Bhisham Bherwani. I read his superb introduction with great interest, and other articles about the diversity of Indian poetry, including the controversial role of English in Indian literature, as well as Mondal’s prolific publishing career and stellar reviews. Once I delved into his poetry, however, I set all that aside. He had me gripped in the energy of his language, subject matter and craft, poem after poem. I feel fortunate I had the privilege to cross the seas of my ignorance and come face to face with the poetic, if not political face of India.
His poems cover a wide swath of subject matter, none too vast for Mondal to tackle: his own desires for love in the face of sorrow, his lust for women and life itself, the constant search for self, politics of India, failures of government, war, a country torn, disillusionment, isolation, religion, destiny, hope for the downtrodden and for himself. There is something for every reader, and readers will find themselves in many poems. If I were to pick one that embraces his fervor,
and his struggle, it would be “The Priest in Me.” He writes:
My muse blinks
as a beacon
in a moonless night.
The virtue of forgiveness
struggles to escape through
the calm rain forests of my mind…
A fight between
the immortal and mortal
make me a priest standing
in front of a warfare.
by
Perie Longo
Santa Barbara, California Poet Laureate Emerita
On Sept. 29, 1012, I attended a reading in Santa Barbara, California for the “1000 Poets for Change,” an event being staged in many cities around the world. Poets of all ages and experience stood in the public space outside a Café reading their poems, all with the hope that someone would listen to what they felt the country, if not the world, needed. Some were critical, others more staid. There were political poems and lyric poems of love gone wrong, poems of disgust for war, and desire for peace and change. I was struck with the power of the voices of the young: demanding strong, passionate and searching, much like Sonnet Mondal’s poems in this, his eighth book of verse. Poetry, like music, allows us to experience each other’s humanness no matter how far apart we are from each other. In whatever language we speak, poetry is there to point the way to understanding something we otherwise would not: hopefully, to become more compassionate fellow travellers on our different journeys. Mondal is such a traveller with his significant poems.
With serendipity, I had sitting on my desk the Spring/Summer issue of Atlanta Review, editor and publisher Dan Veach. It featured the poetry of India, edited by Bhisham Bherwani. I read his superb introduction with great interest, and other articles about the diversity of Indian poetry, including the controversial role of English in Indian literature, as well as Mondal’s prolific publishing career and stellar reviews. Once I delved into his poetry, however, I set all that aside. He had me gripped in the energy of his language, subject matter and craft, poem after poem. I feel fortunate I had the privilege to cross the seas of my ignorance and come face to face with the poetic, if not political face of India.
His poems cover a wide swath of subject matter, none too vast for Mondal to tackle: his own desires for love in the face of sorrow, his lust for women and life itself, the constant search for self, politics of India, failures of government, war, a country torn, disillusionment, isolation, religion, destiny, hope for the downtrodden and for himself. There is something for every reader, and readers will find themselves in many poems. If I were to pick one that embraces his fervor,
and his struggle, it would be “The Priest in Me.” He writes:
My muse blinks
as a beacon
in a moonless night.
The virtue of forgiveness
struggles to escape through
the calm rain forests of my mind…
A fight between
the immortal and mortal
make me a priest standing
in front of a warfare.
