New | Book Review | Paradise Isn't Artificial by Hoshang Merchant | Reviewed by Gankhu Sumnyan

Ezra Pound by Wyndham Lewis, Wikiart

Hoshang Merchant mentions the Modernist great Ezra Pound as an inspiration for his latest book of poetry Paradise isn’t Artificial. This should tell us the kind of poetry to expect in the forty-four cantos of the book. While there are breakages, linkages, puns and other Modernist techniques employed, we are  rewarded with the added quality of a narrative voice that is meditative as well as gossipy, high-minded and humorous, self-important and self-deprecating, all at once.    

            Typical of a modern voice/poet, multiplicities abound – of characters and their voices, consciousness, events, emotions, imaginings, etc. The lines are quick, staccato statements, and with the poet’s particular use of enjambments or line breaks, the effect is of pause and move, pause and move, jumping from line to line, event to event, voice to voice. Many poems end with a falling breath, like a prayer or an incantation or a wish . This falling relates to the disappearance of the personality or the self – the poet whispering in the name of all of us. Merchant’s poetic efforts are acts of encapsulation, to bring together the multiple voices, characters, and events, and arrange them for us according to his vision.

            Where the connections are made well, Merchant achieves an almost transcendental, ecstatic effect, providing much to be drunk in. His touches are light, the jumps and the connections graceful, and the observations sharp. The tone is steady and bracing, at the breathing decibel of a prayer. The “Elpenor Canto,” the “Jonah Canto,” and “Egyptian Canto” are some examples. An arresting effect in some of the cantos is of tender observations among events of larger scale. So, in “Jonah Canto,” enmeshed within the narrative fragments drawn from the Bible and biographical history, we find:

            “And the mint scent in rain on tentflap at night

                                                                                       was balm

            The sight of Helen’s breasts at first light

                                                                                       was balm:”

            The book being inspired by Pound, he makes a number of appearances as Ole Ez. Along with Ole Ez, there’s also the Italian poet Pasolini, Anais Nin, close family figures, and other people from the author’s life. In many of the cantos, Merchant conjoins personal history with other histories and stories. This act of conjoining or the poet speaking of other histories and the events of his life in one breath leads to a sublimation of the poet’s own feelings. So, Dante’s attachment to Beatrice, Pound learning to love Pasolini, Shahid Ali rowing on Dal Lake is on the same ontological plane with Merchant grieving for his father, travelling with his sister, meeting his lovers. What that does is to elevate the poet’s feelings and thoughts and illuminate them with a sense of literary permanence. So, even if there is loss – loss because of love; loss of Beatrice for Dante – it is reworked into a gain. And the poet in the act of sublimation, in trying to understand the “quality of affection” that was shared, brings out a marvellous sense of poignancy and controlled feeling, which is one of the major achievements of the book. For example, the lines for a “Sir”:

            “Sir is at the top of the stairs

            Imitating a Tamil lady hiding her giggle

                        awaiting an imitation Parsi lady

                        who climbs up the stairs” (from “The ‘Sir’ Canto”)

 

and on the death of his father:

            “…                                          I wept not

                                                            nor attended funerals

                                                            but worked, taught, elucidated:

            Read the seven poems (published) to him

                        with the refrain, My father! My father!

                                                            Pio, Pita, Pitamah…”

                                                                                    (from “Daddy Canto”)  

 

            There are also cantos where the concerns and visions do not cohere. The statements read like a barrage and the generalities drawn by the poet seem uneven. Here, the voice is strident, prosaic, with the statements even more staccato and factual. But Merchant tells us to look at this as an aesthetic choice –­ “It does not cohere/why want it to?” (“Canto XXV The Broken Tower/The Ruined City”), and we also need to remember that Merchant calls his poem as a pastiche, and pastiches always carry within them the possibility for subversion and even negation. One is never far in Merchant’s poetry – with a voice that is self-deprecating, utterly blunt, unafraid of laughing at the world – from subversion and negation. So, Merchant makes tenuous connections, uses puns of the utterly common type, and street lingo to address God, provides moments of uproarious laughter, and all of these infuse the cantos with their own vibrant energy. What we see is a manner of playing with poetry, taking it right to the limit of being considered as poetry. The idea of poetry as only a way of  speaking emerges from this, which is the husk of what poetry is, and in the reaches of which Merchant explores the possibilities for literature. This, then, is his radical aesthetic, with a Faust-like aim of grasping and including and connecting everything, even at the cost of order . 

            Besides these, smaller verse pieces also turn up unexpectedly among the longer cantos. They are condensed,  and beautifully observed, showing the range and versatility of the poet:

            “Pound paces the land of mist and pine above Genoa

             Crossing life’s flood on a reed, a Bodhi-dharma.” 

                                                                                                (“End-piece”)

 

            “A pound of my flesh

                            for Pound’s rhyme:

             Poor me! forever condemned to be

                                          Pound-manque”

                                                                        (from “Silly Ditties”)

            This is how Merchant traverses through this latest collection of poetry, which he considers to be worth 40 years of experience. As per this reviewer, this is the poet’s best collection of poetry till date, rich with voices, visions, observations, poetic attitude, rhythm, and other poetic effects. The poet humbles himself here before Pound and other masters, and among the many roles in his life – as a teacher, as a lover, as a gay icon – writes his best poems as a student.

 

Gankhu Sumnyan teaches English at a government college in Arunachal Pradesh. He writes fiction and poetry. His poetry book Old Friends’ Parade (Writers Workshop, Kolkata) was shortlisted for Satish Verma Young Writers’ Award 2015. His stories have been published in various magazines, including Kitaab’s The Best Asian Short Stories 2021 anthology. He can be reached at gankhu.sumnyan@gmail.com.