Inner and Outer

Dheena Subramanian has ambitiously endeavored to fuse the inner and the outer realities of mind in his poetry book, “Inner And Outer.” The poet states,” This collection of poems is the outcome of an inner journey trying to explore mysteries of mind and secrets of cosmos.” Philosophical in its approach the book find man’s mind as mysterious and grand as the universe outside it. The poet finds beauties in those mysteries and that may be the salvation for man for all the pain life causes him. The book also has poems on other aspects of life: living, poetry, earth, and other. Most of the poems are easy to understand. They are generally short, which are interspersed with the longer ones. There seems to be no particular order which organizes the poems.

The poet right in the beginning says that words are divine. Very well said, as the words for a poet are like the colors for a painter, meaningful to him both intellectually and emotionally like in no other form of writing. In the poem, Well Said, the poet describes the voraciousness of human mind:

When stomach is full,
It keeps mum.
But the mind,
More you feed,
More it asks.

In the poem, Disappointment, he writes about how a person may fail to remember even his best friend, pushing him to even more loneliness than before. Human desperation and fragility is stated in this line from the poem, Distance: “I long for a hand-cup of water.” Man’s propensity to destroy is depicted in the following line from the poem, Fusion, Fissure Of Life And Death: But, man fissures and fuses atoms to annihilate one and all. Attempt at demystifying life is made in the poem, Prayer:

What, after all, I am?
Effect of past and
Cause of future!

Another unveiling of life in the poem, Rehearsal: You are a casual byproduct of the entire cosmic dynamics. The value of a song to a human being is very well stated in the poem, Singing Truth:

Sing I must,
In song alone
Truth appears made,
Beautiful, simple and free!

Poetic state of mind is described in the poem, Strange:

I do not remember it,
Its memory is faint, delicate and feeble,
Like a shifting boundary line between dream and reality.
Sometimes dreams appear to be real,
Yet, other times, reality fades out for dream.
Time’s changeling!

The mystery of nature is uncovered in the poem ,The Deep:
So many waves
And so much noise
Still, so big a sea in calm and cool!

The mystery of human life is described in the poem, Transcendence:
Continuity, mystery and eternity
Weave web of times,
Birth, life, and death!

Plumbing the mysterious universe of human unconsciousness in the poem, Unconscious:
It seems to be dark nothingness
That forms the core from a single atom to grand universe
From simple organism to complex man,
Like the vacuous centre of a storm.

The poet has beautifully written about the birth of a poem in the poem, Poetry:
It comes only
When you are no more!
Excepting your heart’s beat
And lungs breathe!

When your eyes see nothingness,
And you mind hears silence,
It comes,
Of its own!

Reflecting on the effect of time on life and agonizing over the future of mankind in the poem, When?:
What is the direction?
Where is the promised land?
Who’ll be the messiah?
When’ll be the end of journey or me?

In the last poem, Light, the poet describes the mystery, beauty, and power of light: Quiet flows that Light in ever creative harmony!

Mr. Dheena Subramanian has assembled a variety of elegant poems, suffused with universal emotions, which touch the heart and make the mind think, and which has been appropriately titled, Inner and Outer. The gamut of intellectualization and poetic emotion has been generously used. The subject is difficult and it lends to reason that a clearer elucidation of the ideas could be made but poetry must have its music and emotion, which may interfere with that.

Maharaj Kaul
12 Zeck Ct., Suffern, New York-10901, USA
Maharaj.Kaul@Yahoo.Com