A Violent Spring & Other Poems

In an irate world full of confusions and its miasma, the spring finally comes. It has to. But Nature responds not in the way it should. The screams of the world and the dilapidation of the human spirit mar with the first buds that sprout. There are ""muffled cries"" here and there. As if an unnecessary foliage spoils the flowers of life as weeds do. Thus, the fulcrum of perfectibility is burnt to ashes. This time, the spring is not amiable but ""violent.""

A Violent Spring & Other Poems captures this silent malady inherent in existence, in whatever we do. Gaps continue to sprout in the way history is narrated; lovers, perfectly content with themselves ultimately find this tranquility illusory, a sub-tropical storm shows that nothing will be the same again, no matter what we do. If the limiting factor is human nature and the uncertain world wherein we eke out a routine, then springs will continue to be violent, regeneration will be short-lived and Banquo will eternally return, failing not this feast of life and death.

Arnab Chatterjee's poems weave the most delicate of images, to bring out the complex interplay that is always on between time and words. Words, flowing on ceaselessly, to paint in verse the passing of time, through seasonal motions of the vernal to the stormy to the autumnal, and yet the words themselves being all too self-conscious about the possible inadequacy in doing the same efficaciously, mark the fundamental quest that Arnab takes his readers on.

Prof. Saugata Bhaduri
School of Language, Literature and Culture Studies
Jawaharlal Nehru University
New Delhi