A new poetry title is a meditative look at parts of the natural world that don’t appear to belong
Siddhartha Menon’s poems are inspired by the natural world, including river mornings, leaves and fog. REPRESENTATION PIC/ISTOCK
SIDDHARTHA Menon’s new poetry collection Lone Pine (Hachette India) carries 68 poems, most of which have titles inspired by the natural world: leaves, fog, river mornings. Topography teaches the poet and his readers about life. The book has been divided into three parts: Settings, Stirrings, and Bearings.
In the first part, Menon sets the tone of the book, catching the world around him in its displacement. Everything is ‘out of sync’, ‘out of place’, or ‘out of time’. A lone pine in an unfrequented alley, a eucalyptus plant that’s an outsider to the native earth, coolness arriving unexpectedly one summer morning. “Out-of-syncness is a threat. / But here disparate noises are harmonized,” he writes in a later poem ‘Concert’.
Siddhartha Menon
This forms the essence of Menon’s writing, whether noted through tender observations or active participation. The second part, Stirrings takes us into hidden spaces: the trees that bend more than usual. “There are limits to what they will carry / and they are dark with it,” he observes. Other characters feature people trying to hold on to time and steadiness, a throbbing bird attacked by a scavenger, and old jaded peacocks being chased by young boys.
The third and final part is the one that stands out, and that sees Menon at his best, with poems such as the Excavator, Road Roller, and Paradise Flycatcher. These give us a glimpse of the intrusive arrival of the machine age and our consequent recognition of so little of the world beyond what we know through mobile applications. He presents us with startling images like becoming the earth’s tremor through the vibrations of the roller or being cocooned with a push button console. The poet magnifies the people and parts of nature that are outsiders — the lone pines. Menon’s gentle meditative voice prods us to take a closer look at the world around us. It tells us that we are not alone and unseen.
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Other new poetry releases
- It Remains to be Said, in Time, in Wilderness by Adil Jussawalla (Paperwall)
- So That You Know by Mani Rao (HarperCollins India)
- A Different Story by Amlanjyoti Goswami (Paperwall)
- They Gather Around Us, These Animals by Kunjana Parashar (National Federation of State Poetry Societies)
- The City Under the City by John Kinsella and Jeet Thayil (HarperCollins India)
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