Robustly colourful collection
Reviewed by Dushy Parakrama
This robustly colourful collection of poems, skilfully put together
by young Jeron Daniel, a protagonist in contemporary poetry practice, is
a ready vade mecum which identifies trends and drives the direction of
contemporary verse.
A distinguished collection, it is somewhat masculine, but with an
individual poetic perspective and an air of internationalism. The poet
remains open-minded and passionate, a rare combination - and this is
what makes it an indispensable read.
Jeron Daniel belongs to that breed of poets who have a flair for
blending the intellectual and the sensual. Many of the poems enable a
kind of telepathy between reader and the poet. Instead of analysis, the
poems encourage emotional involvement.
There are lots of fingers on pulses of topicality, with an appetite
for the collision rather than collusion. The poems sometimes feel
vertiginous, at other times heady, and we experience the illusion of
falling though cracks - in reason, in consciousness, in time. They
sometimes portray disconcerting alterations in perception that can be
produced by little hiccups in the confident patterns of mundane
experiences. The constant rhythm of the flowing and ebbing lines outline
man's strengths and weakness, breaking wave-like to intermingle with
haunting images.
Sketches - Jeron Daniel's first collection - confirms him to be a
time-traveller in a shape-shifting mental universe. His intensely
focused, sensuously inflected poems are both entranced and entrancing -
a poet for whom thoughts are sensations and sensations are thoughts.
As an editor (and certainly an attentive one!) I was delighted to
find that many of Jeron Daniel's poems offer peculiarly sweet rewards to
the reader.
They often act as the sonar devices of contemporary consciousness,
restlessly scanning the sounds and breath, speech and rhythms of life -
as the poet reaches out to make it a better world.
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