THE POETICS OF R. K. SINGH



The best poetry
is a woman
concrete, personal, delightful
greater than all

R. K .Singh considers best poetry as a woman. ‘Woman’ is a metaphor that the poet has used for poetry. His concept of poetry and woman is so merged that poetry seems to be dissolved in woman, and woman appears as poetry personified, concrete, personal and delightful.

Both poetry and woman, for the poet, are most treasured entities because they are real. Both can be experienced by the senses; both incite passion, both are intimate; and, above all, both have the power to delight and elevate. Poetry and woman are, thus, conceived as accessories to the higher levels of consciousness. The greatness of poetry, therefore, lies in its power to transcend the physical through physical. For example:

Woman is the flesh
and spirit of poetry
eternal love thirst

growing younger as
one grows older day by day
perfecting the body


Perfecting the body of poetry and woman is the crux of the argument of the poem. The same idea is reiterated in the following lines:
A woman
in poet’s vision
howsoever strange
is ever new;

pierce like diamond
or thread like pearl
to weld in her depth
her nudity

I love for
all her mystery
perfect poetry
beyond the sky



The poet’s basic ideology of art and poetry is expounded in his idea of woman who is all encompassing and constitutes the major content of his poetry. The other significant themes such as love and sex are but different facets of his core ideology with different manifestations. In one of his interviews given to Kanwar Dinesh Singh in New Indian English Poetry: An Alternative Voice, the poet says: “Woman in my poetry…is a universal woman, the invisible part of the primordial pairs we know as Purush – Prakriti, or Yin-Yang, unchanging over time and culture”.


When the poet mentions purush and prakriti in harmony or as one, he emphasizes the presence of maleness and femaleness in each individual. Each person is naturally endowed with both male and female energy or quality and this needs to be harmoniously nurtured to make unadulterated expression of life, celebration and delight, or to feel innocent joy, or to be perfect or whole. Creation is not possible in the absence of feminine principle or prakriti. Therefore, for creation masculine and feminine principles need to be harmonized into a single whole.

The poet appreciates that with their pragmatism and ability to cope with reality, women are earth bound: man leans towards the sky and woman is rooted in the earth; the deeper the roots of a tree go the higher the branches rise. The poet stands for man and woman in deep synchronicity: woman provides the roots and man provides the flowers. The harmony between the two is basic to physical, emotional, sexual and social existence.



This principle of harmony of the two opposite elements in fact evinces the poet’s craving for union in all the spheres of life. Since most of the problems originate due to discordance of ideas, modern world is full of elements of disintegration and destruction threatening existence of humanity as well as of creativity.

Poetry, like a woman, conceals beauty in its form, which provides emotional pleasure and spiritual calm, leading to creativity. This creativity is the result of the amalgamation of the two poetic elements: the form and the content that unite to make an inseparable whole. This view is beautifully brought out by the poet in the following lines:

A poem is
like life

sound
and silence

movement
and stillness

fragment
and wholeness

Avibhiktam
Vibhakteshu

like Shiva
and Shakti

lotus
and mud




Reference to “Avibhiktam Vibhakteshu” is made to present the philosophy of the Bhagvat Gita in a nutshell by the poet. The idea is interpreted in the Bhagvat Gita as “Even when it is fragment, even in that fragment the whole world resides.”

Woman: The Source of Love

Love is the guiding of emotion that leads to unity as well as harmony. This love springs from charm and beauty. R.K.Singh’s concept of love facilitates the exploration of various related aspects of his ideology. The poet advocates physical love and glorifies it without any reticence, as a reinforcer of emotional and spiritual bond. Physical love, for the poet, is in no way demeaning, because it is a fact of life. Inhibition or hideousness in the matter, therefore, underlies hypocrisy. It is in this form that sex becomes instrumental in exposing the pretensions imbued in all walks of modern life.



In an interview given to K.D.Singh, the poet says: “I see woman (and her nudity) as the mainspring of our being (and art) as “ the major incident in man’s life,” shaping the psyche and constituting the sensory experience. She is eternal and there is no poetry possible without her.” R.S.Tiwary’s remark also seems apt when he says; “Woman is the chief source of his (R.K.Singh’s) creative afflatus; woman not as an imaginary angel but woman in her all corporeal riches....” It is on this account that Tiwary studies the poet’s frequent references to sexual imagery and symbols like “eyes”, “thighs” and “breast”, as part of the influence of ancient Indian erotic poetry.


It is perceived that the poet’s treatment of love reinforces his fundamental idea related to unity. This unity, however, is not limited to bodily union but touches one’s consciousness. It results in the evolution of a harmonious society. The following poem also contains an identical thought, but the attention, here, can be transferred to the technical part of poetry:
A poem is madness
unique fascination
liberating language
re-creates, re-symbolises
disfiguring the known
secured norms
inverting the safe
existence


A poem is, hence, a camouflage, because it means something different from what it appears to be suggesting. This multiplicity fascinates and is equated to madness. The logic behind the liberation of language is to “re-create”, “re-symbolise” and “disfigure” the conventional norms to refresh them and ensure safe existence.


For the poet, poetry is not “…just functional/ like brief-case” (Memories Unmemoried), it is an extension of his self. R.K.Singh advocates subjectivity in poetry. He approves personal poetry because it can serve as an instrument of self- exploration. In the following statement he stresses the same idea:“I think, I often talk about myself, withdrawn into my personal world, to me, perhaps, it is a means of defying the disgusting socio-political world outside…By writing brief personal lyrics...I make my life a work of art or enlarge myself to the universal sameness of human feeling.”

Some poems by the poet give clue to his sources of inspiration which lie mainly in his past experiences and memories, as the construct of the given poems suggests: “What I write shows/my past….” and “Oasis in memories/of desert rhythm of wilderness/ sound is the poetry” .

Memory is a vision device to collect a timeless frame to express the consciousness. It is free and can make illusion of a truth as well as truth of an illusion. What is being unmemoried is the expression, which is the visible aspect of awareness. The poet’s consciousness guides him towards the realization and acceptance of differences and thus manifests his broad and unconventional outlook.



He advocates brevity of expression. His belief in precision is proved by his own poems, which are mostly brief in structure. As he articulates in one of his poems: “moon is the poem in sky/silence sounds in brevity” .He compares poetry to the moon, which occupies a small space in the vast sky, but its smallness becomes significant with the effect it casts. The poet practices brevity by following the imagistic and symbolic patterns.

Irony is another remarkable feature of R.K.Singh’s poetic style. He employs subtle irony in his poems by means of symbols and images. For example: “A monkey turned the coat/to let off snakes/hidden in velvet lining”

Another important aspect of R.K.Singh’s poetics is that he does not give titles to his poems nor does he use punctuation marks; thereby he individualizes his style availing himself of poetic freedom. By not using punctuation, such as a comma at the end of the line or a period at the end of the sentence,the poet frequently ends up using enjambment. As a result, the meaning flows as the lines progress. The reader has the freedom to understand one or more meanings from the poem. The instances of this kind of verse can be found in e.e.cummings who created enjambment combined with the use of punctuation as an art form.

Regarding the poems without titles I.K.Sharma’s remark calls for one’s attention when he says “To a common reader a title is a big help that makes a poem accessible.” Obviously, a common reader cannot be assumed an expert of the nuances of poetic language. So, there remain chances of misinterpretation. This even increases when the content of poetry is as unconventional as sex. However, the poet believes that poems without titles and punctuation marks allow greater freedom to the reader to imagine and interpret the meaning. Even if “titles tell too much”, as R.K.Singh believes, they limit the meaning and lessen the effect of the poem.

SOME MORE FORMAL FEATURES

R.K.Singh adopts Japanese form of three-line seventeen syllables haiku and uses it as stanza unit in many of his poems. Although he does not always conform to the traditional pattern of haiku (5-7-5 syllable) and tanka (5-7-5-7-7), he has uses three- line stanza pattern that appear haiku-like and thus seems to nativize the foreign form in his style. In addition, one finds two- line, four- line, five- line stanza patterns but they have an occasional occurrence. Haiku in different beats, 3-5-3, 4-6-4, 5-7-5 or in free form, are individually composed by the poet in his haiku collections as well as in stanza form in his longer poems. His poems are without rhyme but there is always some or the other sort of rhythm that the poet creatively develops.

R.K.Singh does not believe in conforming to the conventional or the outmoded but wishes to ‘shatter’ them by creating, what he calls ‘rebel rays’ in plain unadorned language. He also discards the high sounding or philosophical issues and rejoices giving vent to the ordinary or personal impressions because these are true to one’s experiences.


The poetics of R.K.Singh echoes what Wordsworth talks about a perfect woman:

She was a phantom of delight
A perfect woman, nobly planned,
To warn, to comfort, and command;
And yet a spirit still, and bright
With something of angelic light.


R.K.Singh’s poetics,thus, signifies the new momentum Indian English Poetry has now gained. He not only sings love lyrics and glorifies human body but also talks about existential issues and ecological and social environment. His verses with the use of enjambment add richness of meaning to the images and metaphors that he uses in typical Indian contexts. The chief aim of his poetry is to:

...discover essence of beauty
spring a move toward self harmony
perfection and peace, prelude to nude
enlightenment to carve life in full


To sum up, R.K. Singh’s poetic belief is oriented towards Beauty, Self- Harmony, and Peace, with its base in Indian thought and culture which considers search for beauty or truth as the chief aim of life.

References:

1. Singh, R.K. My silence and Other Selected Poems. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot,
1994.
2. Singh, R.K. Above the Earth’s Green. Calcutta: Writer’s workshop, 1997.

3. Sharma, I.K. ed. New Indian English Poetry: An Alternative voice. Jaipur: Book enclave,
2004, p.277.
4. Radhakrishnan, S.ed. The Principal Upanisads, New York: Harper & Brother
Publishers, 1953.
5. Hayden, John O.ed. William Wordsworth: The Poems, Vol.I, Penguin Books,1990.


By: Jindagi Kumar and Rajni Singh, Indian School of Mines University, Dhanbad 826004, India.Copyright


--R.K.SINGH