Violets in Hand - Srivalli Rekha

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Author: Srivalli Rekha

Genre: Poetry
Rating: 4 stars.

I have had this book on my agenda for a long time. But books are meant to come in our lives at the right time. And this was the right time for me to take some “violets in hand”.Srivalli’s first book, ‘Violets in Hand’ is a collection of 50 poems that she wrote either for online competitions or for her own creative fulfilment. What makes this different is that she doesn’t just put across one poem after another. For each poem, she adds a note detailing some information such as the poetic prompt wherever applicable, her thought process while writing the poem, some information about the poetic style, and a question to the reader related to the poem. These notes made a big difference to my experience.

On the whole, the poems were more complex than my meagre poetic capacities are capable of understanding. By "complex", I don’t mean verbose or metaphorical. On the contrary, the words are simple and the thoughts clear. But these felt like true poems, where I had to concentrate on getting their subtext, rather than prose-style poems that I can understand just by reading them as prose. So for most of her poems, I read the verse, then read her notes, and then went back to the poem to reread it with the new insight. Her explanation made a lot of difference to my understanding.

For most of the poems, the word that came to my mind was "haunting." Quite a few of the poems have deep underlying feelings such as pain or sorrow or helplessness. Reading them felt like getting what poems are about – human emotions – and left an afterglow of poignancy.

There is a great variety of poetic styles she has covered – couplets, sonnets, haiku, acrostics,… (Don’t look so impressed – I am just replicating the names from her notes. 😛) Some were names I have never heard of in my life – tanka, nonet, cherita?!?!?! She explains a few of these but not all. I would have loved knowing a bit more about every style because telling me that a poem is a “tanka” doesn’t tell me anything. My prose-loving head was left craving more on this aspect.

On the whole, a beautiful collection for poem aficionados.

4 stars from me. (Don’t forget, there's no poetic bone in me. I am sure poetry lovers will enjoy it even more.)

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