Poems from America
Gopikrishnan Kottoor
Price INR 299
Red River, 2024
PP 101
What can one say about a book of a hundred pages, with a cover photograph depicting New York Harbour, City in Background?
That it has been impeccably published by Red River, which has gradually carved a snug niche for itself through joyous diligence and a sharp eye for aesthetics.
That the poems in it have been penned by a poet, in love with life, breathing poetry even in the most mundane things?
That the introduction by Cyrus Cassels, [PP 11 – 13] the Poet Laureate of Texas, is immensely erudite and insightful?
That I loved each poem, now a part of my heart, which has suddenly started beating with a greater ardour?
As Cyrus Cassels says, “many of the often eyewitness poems in this eclectic volume have the similar capacity to invoke a scene, situation or person with remarkable concision and artful juxtaposition, inviting us to enter the landscape, and become co- travelers and co -dreamers with the poet in picturing the vivid world…”
Divided into three sections, [Poems from America, Earth Feast and Moon metaphor], each poem makes your heart palpitate a little faster, and unbeknownst to you, an itinerant tear starts cascading down your cheeks, or a wistful sigh escapes the lips.
Kottoor says: “There was poetry everywhere in America, country roads, downtown, up in the trees, among the pecans and the oak seeds in the breeze, the squirrels, the wild flowers, the rivers and the laughing mouths of the pumpkins lit for Halloween.” [P99]
I was swept away by the very first poem about the old man, and found myself sitting next to him, resisting the urge to remove the sad wrinkles from his face.
So poignantly stunning was the imagery of this man sitting on the back seat by the window of a train in Seattle, telling all passengers that he has three daughters whom he had not seen since Covid, that I wanted to take him in a hug, and show him the way him to his daughters who, had forgotten of his existence.
“Where in California is your daughter?
Oh, Amanda?
I’ll step out into California
And California will show me the way to her home”
[The Old Man on the Train, Seattle, P 17]
Besides the Old Man on the Train, Seattle, the mentally challenged child, the homeless Piano man, Amtrak Union station, LA, girl playing cards, Amtrak Train, El Paso, Old Man asleep by the Niagara falls, Lady Crying at Florida Bus Station, 2 AM, Homeless at Hollywood Vine, Hollywood, have emblazoned themselves on the walls of my heart, where I often feel an unexpected itching, a tremor or a whimper -perhaps coming from a chunk of beleaguered humanity he so heart- wrenchingly talks of, and which is now a part of my heart.
I am notorious for my tears, which catch me unawares. While reading the poems, nay, visualizing them, those tears, once again caught me unawares!
In Father, Wake us in passing, he says,
“Did you then say
I will come to your arms in December?
And on the phone, you asked me,
Son, what is there in America? Come back”.
And the poet’s words waft across to us again:
“The breathless beauty of the fall
I hear the bat wings of your voice on the wires” p 44
While reading the poems about his unwell and comatose father, Dylan Thomas’ words rang in my ears, urging his father to resist the imminent death, “Do not go gentle into that Good Night”, he exhorts in his iconic villanelle.
In the very touching poem, Thinking of Father in Texas [P 27] Kottoor says,
“Nine months later,
There comes the unrecorded voice again.
And it is telling me,” I’ll soon be asleep.
How’s the December mist in Texas, son?”
“I want to tell my father
all about a late misty December night in San Marcos, Texas,
if only he would pick up the phone.”
For a person like me, who is perennially in love with life, with flowers and animals, with squirrels and peacocks, and every human being on the pavement or in his Spartan cottage, with the colours of spring and the colours of Fall; this book is one long, love poem.
Multi–hued. Multi- nuanced. An unending rainbow.
A rainbow which seems to flaunt one more colour, every time I look at it.
The line, “the quaint brilliance of the fall, turning leaves yellow, red, scarlet, and rosy for miles,” P 100, catapulted me to my homeland Kashmir.
Kottoor’s anguish seems so palpable, when he juxtaposes the plight of the homeless, the impoverished, the unloved, and the loneliness, the desperation of those who have spent most of their lives in Amtrak trains, against the folks frequenting Starbucks and Espresso Coffee bars.
“All along something that struck me as weird was all that loneliness, the sadness, the homeless, unloved, feeling that many Americans go through.”
P 99 Author’s Note: The Making of these Poems
While reading it, I was reminded of Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech, delivered on August 28, 1963, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial:
“Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy… Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children,”
Even sixty-two years later, this dream remains an unfulfilled dream.
Alas, poverty, homelessness and racism continue to be a part of the American scenario. We find Kottoor, the sensitive poet that he is, writing about certain conditions with a forlorn air: the hippie sleeping under the sofa in the LA airport lounge and asking the poet to join him, the black woman begging for a dollar for a cup of tea, a lady sitting all alone on a cold, metal bench, at Florida Bus Station crying, a woman hitting her head against the glass of the train, crying, I want to die…
The poet confesses and I feel that this book is drenched in slivers of memories that are sad, pleasant, and strange.
Long after I closed the book, I could see the Piano Man with ‘his long grey hair’ before me and hear his voice,
“as his song floats, and I recede far, far away,
among the early morning nightingales
that he sets free into the coffee –hamburger air.” P 19.
With each flutter of the wings of the nightingales, I feel a poem being born in my mind and heart.
That is the power of Kottoor’s Poetry- evocative, revealing, and inspiring. Like the old man asleep by the Niagra Falls, waking up from his Rip van Winkle sleep, into another dawn, his poetry also whispers our languorous souls “into another dawn’ where nature serenades everyone with vibrant songs, we can admire the ‘Earth feast in all its grandeur’, and cheer the birds adding more notes to their crooning.
And I echo Kottoor’s words:
“Ah, the poet will be with his poetry,
until the end,
the poet will be the poet…” [Street Side Poet, P73]
When the poetry-loving audience listening to the street poet has slowly trailed away, it is then that I feel the flutter of homing hummingbirds.
And I smile.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Santosh Bakaya is an academician, poet, essayist, novelist, and TEDx speaker, with more than twenty published books to her credit. Multiple award-winning poet, essayist, novelist, biographer, TEDx Speaker, and creative writing mentor, acclaimed for her poetic biography of Bapu, Ballad of Bapu, Dr. Santosh Bakaya’s more than thirty books encompass multiple genres.
She runs two popular columns, Morning Meanderings [Learning and Creativity. Com], and Trigger that creative Spark in Kashmir Pen.
Her TEDx talk on The Myth of Writer’s Block is very popular in creative writing circles. Her latest book is: Din about Chins [PENPRINTS, 2025]
