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        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
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      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
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      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
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        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
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    • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • Best of The Enchanting Verses 2012
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Words on Rosary of latitudes by Usha Akella
TRANSCENDENT ZERO PRESS,
Houston, USA.
200 pp.

Book Review by ​Pramila Venkateswaran

“Octavio Paz, in November 1951, opened the door of his hotel and plunged into a Mumbai street; a door is a wondrous threshold, an imaginary line between spaces.” Thus begins Usha Akella’s Introduction to Rosary of Latitudes, her latest collection of poems.  Her invocation of the liminality of the threshold space that we encounter in writing poetry acts as a guidepost for the glittering array of poems that take us from country to country, from Macedonia to Israel to India.  Rosary is a meditation on place—the senses, history, language, memory and imagination that a landscape evokes. And the writing that wells up from each place makes her and the poems open the door to discovery. 
 
This doorway opens up in many poems, such as “Istanbul,” “Kalishta Monastery,” “St. Naum,” “Monk’s Cell,” “Dakshineswar 1 and 3,” “Nicaragua,” “Peddling,” “Basilica of G,” “Jerusalem,” “Gethsemane,” “Bethlehem,”  and “The city in which I find my beloved.” These poems compel with their surprising imagery, unexpected leaps and turns, and astonishing endings. There is also a silence in these poems beneath the telling. So, while place becomes the inspiration for Akella, the poems go beyond any compulsion to narrate a story or describe a place. As Keki Daruwalla says, in his laudatory foreword that a writer who is writing about her travels needs something more than sensitivity; she needs “empathy, a feel for people and place, and the alchemy of language to go with it to transform the place into something else.”
 
Some of the poems achieve great formal delicacy as in “Monk’s cell” and “St. Naum”, “Bridges of Struga” and “Kahlista Monastery”. Poems like “Volcano Masaya” startle us with their surprising opening. The first line beginning with the “cigarette stub of Satan” leads to the image of the “prisoners of war” “tossed in” “like pennies in a wishing well,” the lines enjambed and broken with space and line breaks. The form of the poem is like a conceptual poem—the broken lines in the middle of the poem appearing like the bodies thrown into the volcano. Another conceptual poem is “Monk’s cell at Kahlista monastery” that appears like a thread-like line passing through the eye of a needle.
 
“Nicaragua” is another poem that breathes well, is expansive, and imagistic, in the couplet form. It is an ode to a country that is old and replete with the juice of history that the poet tastes in its monuments and speech.
 
Akella has a unique ability to present imagery in surprising ways. Akella reflects on the title in many of the poems, most of all in “St. Naum:” “Perhaps the earth passes through the saint’s fingers as a rosary bead…” opens this poem that invites the reader to listen to the beat of the earth. Punning on “beat” and rosary “bead,” the speaker, a pilgrim-poet, asks the reader a series of questions, all suffused with wonderment about the earth as creative source and human creativity. The haunting melody of “The city in which I find my beloved,” through the echoing naming of Santorini, the poignancy of people opening up their umbrellas and listening to poetry in the rain, startle us with the love people have for poetry in places that are bombarded with war and poverty.
 
The movement of Akella’s lines is reminiscent of South American poets such as Octavio Paz and Coral Bracho, especially in the merry flow of many of her poems, unencumbered by the period; she uses the comma at the end of a line or enjambs a line to continue with the thought onto the next line or stanza, thus breaking the rigidity of English grammar, and allowing us to experience the multilingual voices of the people from Greece to Brazil.
 
Unlike a typical poetry volume, Rosary is punctuated with prose segments that are reflections of some of the places she visited, such as Turkey and Kolkata, and they form the perfect backdrop for many of the poems. We see a poet for whom there is poetry in prose, and therefore the prose and poetry sections feel seamless.
 
Many of the poems are located in places that have seen terrible horrors of war, exile, famine, and poverty. Akella offers us beauty where one feels despair. She is able to show how our perception of color and form, as well as our creativity, offer possibilities in a world that is on edge, weeping “tears of blood.” Her words in Rosary are “balm for [our] wounds.”
 
As Rosary shows, Akella is far more than merely the poetry ambassador for the City of Austin; she brings the globe and a labyrinth of mystical journeys to us in this volume. 

About the reviewer
​
Pramila Venkateswaran, poet laureate of Suffolk County, Long Island (2013-15), and author of Thirtha (Yuganta Press, 2002) Behind Dark Waters (Plain View Press, 2008), Draw Me Inmost (Stockport Flats, 2009), Trace (Finishing Line Press, 2011), and Thirteen Days to Let Go (Aldrich Press, 2015) is an award winning poet who teaches English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, New York. Recently, she won the Local Gems Chapbook contest for her volume, Slow Ripening. Author of numerous essays on poetics as well as creative non-fiction, she is also the 2011 Walt Whitman Birthplace Association Long Island Poet of the Year. For more information, visit www.pramilav.com.


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The Enchanting Verses Literary Review © 2008-2018    ISSN 0974-3057 Published from India. Printed by The Enchanting Verses Poetry Press. International Collaborative Partner: Stremež Literary magazine (1952), supported by the Ministry of culture of the Republic of Macedonia and published by National Institution - Cultural Centre "Marko Cepenkov" – Prilep.


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  • Home
  • About Us
    • Contact
    • Media Coverages
    • Copyright Notice
    • The Enchanting Verses Blog
  • Submissions
    • Poetry and Essays Guidelines
    • Book Review Guidelines
    • Research Series Guidelines
  • Masthead
  • Editions
    • Issue Archives >
      • 2008 ISSUES >
        • ISSUE-I March 2008
        • ISSUE-II May 2008
        • ISSUE-III July 2008
        • ISSUE-IV October 2008
      • 2009 ISSUES >
        • ISSUE V JANUARY 2009
        • ISSUE-VI MAY 2009
        • ISSUE-VII August 2009
        • ISSUE-VIII December 2009
    • 2010 Issues >
      • ISSUE-IX April 2010
      • ISSUE-X July 2010
      • ISSUE-XI November 2010
    • 2011 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XII March 2011
      • ISSUE-XIII June 2011
      • ISSUE-XIV November 2011
    • 2012 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XV March 2012
      • ISSUE-XVI July 2012
      • ISSUE-XVII November 2012
    • 2013 Issues >
      • ISSUE-XVIII April 2013
      • ISSUE XIX November 2013
    • 2014 Issues >
      • ISSUE XX May 2014
    • 2015 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXI February 2015
      • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • 2016 Issues >
      • ISSUE XXIII August 2016
      • Poetry From Ireland ISSUE XXIV December 2016
    • 2017 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXV August 2017
      • ISSUE XXVI December 2017
    • 2018 ISSUES >
      • ISSUE XXVII July 2018
      • ISSUE XXVIII November 2018
  • Honours
    • Honour Archives >
      • 2008
      • 2009
    • 2010
    • 2011
    • 2012
    • 2013
    • 2014
    • 2015
    • 2016
    • 2017
    • 2018
  • Collaborations
    • Macedonian Collaboration
    • Collaboration with Dutch Foundation for Literature
  • Interviews
  • Prose on Poetry and Poets
    • 2010-2013 >
      • Sylvia Plath by Dr. Nidhi Mehta >
        • Chapter-1(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-2(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-3(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-4(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-5(Sylvia Plath)
        • Chapter-6(Sylvia Plath)
      • Prose Poems of Tagore by Dr. Bina Biswas >
        • Chapter-1(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-2(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-3(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-4(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-5(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-6(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-7(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-8(Rabindranath Tagore)
        • Chapter-9(Rabindranath Tagore)
      • Kazi Nazrul Islam by Dr. Shamenaz Shaikh >
        • Chapter 1(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 2(Nazrul Islam)
        • Chapter 3(Nazrul Islam)
      • Kabir's Poetry by Dr. Anshu Pandey >
        • Chapter 1(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 2(Kabir's Poetry)
        • Chapter 3(Kabir's Poetry)
      • My mind's not right by Dr. Vicky Gilpin >
        • Chapter- 1 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-2 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-3 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
        • Chapter-4 Dr. Vicky Gilpin
      • On Poetry & Poets by Abhay K.
      • Poetry of Kamla Das –A True Voice Of Bourgeoisie Women In India by Dr.Shikha Saxena
      • Identity Issues in the Poetry of Nissim Ezekiel by Dr.Arvind Nawale & Prashant Mothe*
      • Nissim Ezekiel’s Latter-Day Psalms: His Religious and Philosophical Speculations By Dr. Pallavi Srivastava
      • The Moping Owl : the Epitome of Melancholy by Zinia Mitra
      • Gary Soto’s Vision of Chicano Experiences: The Elements of San Joaquin and Human Nature by Paula Hayes
      • Sri Aurobindo: A Poet By Aju Mukhopadhyay
      • Wordsworthian Romanticism in the Poetry of Jayanta Mahapatra: Nature and the Reflective Capabilities of a Poetic Self by Paula Hayes
      • Reflective Journey of T.S. Eliot: From Philosophy to Poetry by Syed Ahmad Raza Abidi
      • North East Indian Poetry: ‘Peace’ in Violence by Ananya .S. Guha
    • 2014-2015 >
      • From The Hidden World of Poetry: Unravelling Celtic mythology in Contemporary Irish Poetry Adam Wyeth
      • Alchemy’s Drama: Conflict, Resolution and Poiesis in the Poetic Work of Art by Michelle Bitting
      • Amir Khushrau: The Musical Soul of India by Dr. Shamenaz
      • PUT YOUR HANDS ON ME: POETRY'S EROTIC ART by Elena Karina Byrne
      • Celtic and Urban Landscapes in Irish Poetry by Linda Ibbotson
      • Trickster at the African Crossroads and the Bridge to the Blues in America by Michelle Bitting
    • 2015-2016 >
      • Orogeny/Erogeny: The “nonsense” of language and the poetics of Ed Dorn T Thilleman
      • Erika Burkart: Fragments, Shards, and Visions by Marc Vincenz
      • English Women Poets and Indian politics
    • 2016-2017 >
      • Children’s Poetry in India- A Case Study of Adil Jussawalla and Ananya Guha by Shruti Sareen
      • Thirteen Thoughts on Poetry in the Digital Age by Mandy kAHN
    • 2017-2018 >
      • From Self-Portrait with Dogwood: A Route of Evanescence by Christopher Merrill
      • Impure Poetry by Tony Barnstone
      • On the Poets: Contributors in Context by Donald Gardner
      • Punching above its Weight: Dutch Poetry in English, a Selection, 2013-2017 by Jane Draycott
  • Print Editions
    • Contemporary Indian English Poetry ISSUE XXII November 2015
    • Best of The Enchanting Verses 2012
    • Bulletins