13 Untitled and Weird Poems by Alok Mishra – Review

Alok Mishra’s latest (debut as well) poetry collection has been launched recently and it has dawned fairly well on Amazon Kindle platform as it has become the category’s number one in the latest and hot releases section, poetry genre. Alok’s collection contains only 13 poems and all of them are weird and untitled and so goes the title – 13 Untitled and Weird poems. So, what do you get off it?

For every fan of poetry out there, this 10-minute read will certainly be enlightening as well as entertaining for the poems in the collection are really different – different in tone and tenure as well as reflecting the modern chaotic thinking which has dug quite a deep hole in the modern world’s human beings. Poems do not represent any particular part of our life but are very much connected to us in many different ways. Once you begin reading the collection, you will find many lines which might be sung by you every minute in your subconscious and you might not have noticed. Who the hell has so much time these days?

“Mystery
is myth.
Myth,
the new mystery
and I
lie
unconscious,
forgotten,
remembering where,
when did I begin
before I ended.
Sometimes I am.
I am not, then.”

This is the first stanza of the very first poem in the collection and it has left me bemused; where am I? Where are you? Who was the beginner? Humanity? God? The chaos? I deliberately left the final (and the last as well) stanza of the poem because that would give out the whole and for that, one certainly has to read the collection.

Moving ahead, one thing can be noticed that Alok Mishra, as a poet, does not want to consume so much of the readers’ time. He has kept his poems smaller and smaller and nothing has really gone more than 15 lines (I might be missing one or two maybe). So, a pocket-friendly and a time-friendly poet as well.

“Truth is the common stranger
we see every day
on the road, in the room,
on the roof, in the café,
on the way, in the way.”

Now, this comes as the first stanza of the third poem and we are once again left with a common expression – who does not know that? Well, that’s what the poet wants to ask – why do we know that but not acknowledge? Do we foresee? Do we ignore? Or have we come on terms with this ‘truth’? Well, artistically, the last line in this stanza strikes or forces a strike. ‘On the way’ and ‘in the way’ are two different expressions in the same line – do they mean two different things? Does that make a clear sense to you? Do write in the comments section if you read the complete poem someday.

On a whole, if I am to conclude, poetry writing has seen different ages and periods. This is, not to deny, the most chaotic and hectic of them with a rather shrinking readership for poetry. I would like to tell the readers that if this collection of 13 really weird poems is missed, just, to be honest, a big chunk is deemed to be missed! Do read this amazingly composed poems with open-ends which lead you everywhere and, at the same time, nowhere. These poems are a strick to the blind and a blinding light to the one with a pair of seeing eyes… a paradoxical collection which contradicts itself and also moves ahead forcefully!

You can get your Kindle copies from Amazon store. You can get one for yourself by clicking the link below:

Alok Mishra’s collection – 13 Untitled and Weird Poems – buy now

Review by Rajeev for Literature News