酷我-北美枫

[anna]

Review of Kamal Parmar’s “In the Rising Mist”

Verses by Kamal Parmar/ FriesenPress 2013

I was surprised to receive an email from Kamal Parmar to ask me to review her new book In the Rising Mist. I was newly elected to be the Ontario representative for the League of Canadian Poets and knew her as an associate member, so I immediately agreed. When I received the book, I was impressed by the beautiful cover, a winding wooded trail to a village in mist among mountains. Inside the book, there is a poem “Early Morning Walk Down a Road to An Indian Village” which clearly depicts quiet and charming images surrounding that exotic yet ordinal village. As the author’s notes say, this book is full of childhood memories of India and the naïve and pure senses of nature and simple life.

It is appropriate that Ms. Parmar quotes Lance Wubbels: “Your life is truly your life… it belongs to you. It is your story to write with love. Day by day, line by line, write it well” as the epigraph for the book. In this book, there are more than 100 poems detailing what she saw, heard, felt and imagined. They create a familiar feeling for past times and for her life such as in her poems: “Time, Can You Ever Return?”, “A Whiff of the Past” and “Raw Memories” etc. These poems show a similar way of approaching her experiences. Some poems tell us what she sees on her journey in a sparkling way which is like encountering a dancing peacock; this makes me wonder if the splendor truly existed or is just a product of her memory. Clearly she has an extensive imaginative ability with rich descriptive language. My problem may only be mine as I write poetry in a compact and spare language. My instinctive approach is to shorten details, and restructure them.

In my view, with some help from a good editor, Ms. Parmar’s images would be more outstanding and powerful if they were not laid out so extensively. Similar to butterflies, the magic of poetry lies in the transformation of stages in poetic composition. In this book, Ms. Parmar quotes from Confucius, “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” Here I would like to add: trust your heart, without telling all the detail fully that we know are there, leave room for readers to explore.

Anna Yin - Jan 16, 2014
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Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com

[[星子安娜]]

Review of Kamal Parmar’s “In the Rising Mist”

Verses by Kamal Parmar/ FriesenPress 2013

I was surprised to receive an email from Kamal Parmar to ask me to review her new book In the Rising Mist. I was newly elected to be the Ontario representative for the League of Canadian Poets and knew her as an associate member, so I immediately agreed. When I received the book, I was impressed by the beautiful cover, a winding wooded trail to a village in mist among mountains. Inside the book, there is a poem “Early Morning Walk Down a Road to An Indian Village” which clearly depicts quiet and charming images surrounding that exotic yet ordinal village. As the author’s notes say, this book is full of childhood memories of India and the naïve and pure senses of nature and simple life.

It is appropriate that Ms. Parmar quotes Lance Wubbels: “Your life is truly your life… it belongs to you. It is your story to write with love. Day by day, line by line, write it well” as the epigraph for the book. In this book, there are more than 100 poems detailing what she saw, heard, felt and imagined. They create a familiar feeling for past times and for her life such as in her poems: “Time, Can You Ever Return?”, “A Whiff of the Past” and “Raw Memories” etc. These poems show a similar way of approaching her experiences. Some poems tell us what she sees on her journey in a sparkling way which is like encountering a dancing peacock; this makes me wonder if the splendor truly existed or is just a product of her memory. Clearly she has an extensive imaginative ability with rich descriptive language. My problem may only be mine as I write poetry in a compact and spare language. My instinctive approach is to shorten details, and restructure them.

In my view, with some help from a good editor, Ms. Parmar’s images would be more outstanding and powerful if they were not laid out so extensively. Similar to butterflies, the magic of poetry lies in the transformation of stages in poetic composition. In this book, Ms. Parmar quotes from Confucius, “Wheresoever you go, go with all your heart.” Here I would like to add: trust your heart, without telling all the detail fully that we know are there, leave room for readers to explore.

Anna Yin - Jan 16, 2014
_________________
---------------------

Anna Yin

《爱的灯塔-星子安娜双语诗选》
<Nightlights> <Seven Nights with the Chinese Zodiac> ...

http://annapoetry.com