Book Review: Some Suitable Words, a book of poems

The poems capture the author’s emotions in a unique way.

The author frequently asks engaging questions, which help the readers to connect with the tenor of the poems and reflect on them.

This poetry is also an allegory of the poet’s consciousness. For example, in the poem ‘If Thou Hadst Become Hot Summer Of Darling May’, he makes allegorical use of the sun, rain, humming birds, and the garden.

Again, in ‘The Sun and the Moon’, he talks about how both the sun and the moon fills his mind with bliss when he looks at them.

His work has an allegorical, literary, and a symbolic significance, which helps us embark on a beautiful journey through the mind’s eye of the author.

The tone of the poems reveals a sense of self-introspection and serious realization by the writer, who seems to make profound observations of the happenings around him.

However, he is not all despondent and forlorn, but full of hope for a brighter future that awaits.

We also note the author’s usage of archaic English here.

His treatment of the language consists of old English words like thou, hadst, thy, thee, etc, which gives a lyrical tone to the poems.

Titles of the poems also reveal much about the writer’s love for nature. Poems like ‘Spring Love’, ‘Summer Is Mere a Dream’, ‘Winter’, ‘The Rainy Season’, and ‘As I Wander To Seek Beauty’ tell us how mesmerized he is by the nature around him.

He sees nature in everything—the daffodils, birds cooing, humming of the bees, gardens sprouting lovely flowers, the fountains, and the hills. He admirably expresses the simplicity and tranquility of nature.

He also asks everyone to come forward and do their bit in the development of the country.

In many poems, emotions like love, pity, and mercy have been dealt with in a sublime manner.

Imagery is a key theme of his poetry, where the poet has invoked nature and its different aspects as symbolic to the mood described in the poems.

Some Suitable Words is a highly recommendable book for all, an insight into the deep thoughts, which come out through nature’s beautiful depictions and creative introspection.

Let’s look at some lovely lines from the poem ‘Winter’:
Now, Winter, Spring’s colonial bride
Steeped into ornaments—
White snowflakes, and bare trees.
And waits awhile to capture her domain
While the dying year passes by.

(Reviewed by Sukanya Sur)