Book Review | A masterclass in the art of poetry

Jeet Thayil's new collection of poetry that has arrived after a 16-year-wait is intense, introspective and unforgettable, says Srividya Sivakumar

‘60 Indian Poets’ (2008) was my first introduction to poet Jeet Thayil. The poems and the intriguing division of the book, “presented not chronologically, but with a view of verticality,” gave me a glimpse of who the poet was. I then read his ‘Collected Poems’ (2015) and found myself re-reading some and parsing others to understand better. Today, I ask, who is the poet now?

Jeet Thayil’s new book, ‘I’ll Have It Here,’ can, perhaps, answer that question. It feels familiar and new all at once.

The familiarity comes from the poet’s tremendous command of free verse and the more formal rigidity of rhyme, and in many poems in his collection, he blends them in ingenious ways. The rhyme scheme asks for poems to be read out, creating a delightful mouthfeel. The unfamiliarity comes from the themes and terms he uses, and rightly so — it has been 16 years since his last poetry collection, the Sahitya Akademi Award winner ‘These Errors are Correct.'

In his new book, the poet juxtaposes playful rhyme with serious themes. In ‘I’m Grieving, Aren’t You?’ he creates imagery dripping with sarcasm, rhyming along the way, 'pay', 'forte', 'cray-cray', and 'bae'. Yes, bae. In a poem about gun control, this creates a curious mix of theme and vehicle.

Going through the enjambments in the book is a masterclass in how to get better at the craft. Each time I read ‘Birth Dirge’ (My neighbour’s pregnant/daughter dropped. The baby still/moving/gently inside her), I see a reserve, a holding space for the idea, and a liberation from what constitutes a sentence. I find that paradox interesting.

There are other poems where the line breaks add layers to the writing and thought. In ‘Speak, Amnesia,’ the poet says, “I can’t remember why/my line breaks this way. In November/I cracked the day/to see what might fall out.”

“We disappear. We simmer. The day turns from doom to doom. In the fall, I may remember/to whisper your name from room to room,” he ends ‘Seven-Year Season,’ with.

And then there is the imagery. Jeet Thayil uses startling images (a coma of cows, sudden whip/ of/ ice in a/ childhood/river they/know to wait), often jarring, sometimes provocative (Why, if it isn’t Gandhi,/returned as a house gecko).

The book carries multiple references to urban life across the world — Whole Foods, Second Avenue, and a president who is “(…) a big guy with a small, strange/mushroom for a penis and a brain.” Rene Ricard and his French bulldog, Janis, appear at dinner; Shams al-Din introduces himself as Ibn Battuta, and the British, “(…) whose genius was to use the correct insult/for each caste, one word/ to drive us properly insane,” show up in the “turmeric-stained avenues,” of the searing poem, ‘Lateral Violence Among The Model Minorities.’

I was moved by the powerful lines of ‘Friday Night on the Ark,’ a poem for his early collaborator, the late Vijay Nambisan. “There is no right way to say goodbye,” Jeet Thayil says at the end of the first stanza. At the end of the poem appears this sentence, “Nothing prepares you for the spurt of loved blood.”

From scorching political poems (“We’re dead if we don’t and dead if we do,” he says in ‘A Kind of Anthem’), we move to the love poetry at the end of the book. The poet’s prowess in ghazal is well-documented, and in this section, we have the ‘Stress-test ghazal,’ where he declares, “Jeet, I hear you say, you’ll never find me,/ not even if you look among ten thousand years.” (Look out for ‘February 2020 ' and 'December 2020' in the second section, the latter with an interesting twist on the ghazal refrain.) In ‘Mind If I Smoke,’ he asks, “What can I say/to one I lost and cannot find/ through sixteen years of tedium.” One cannot imagine such loss, let alone claim to understand, but one still feels the agony of absence.

Jeet Thayil has created a piece of music in ‘I’ll Have It Here.’ This musicality, a nod to his jazz background, is seen not only in the poems but in their order, too. The book starts with light improvisation, as though sussing out the room, then builds momentum with commanding sounds as it gains speed, where it proceeds to quieten down, leaving profound contemplation in its wake. ‘I’ll Have It Here’ is intense, introspective, and unforgettable.

I hope I don’t have to wait another 16 years for the next collection from the poet.

World in Verse is a monthly column on the best of new (and old) poetry. The writer is a poet, teacher, voice actor and speaker. She has published two collections of poetry. Send your thoughts to her at [e-mail]