Ponder Awhile by Mohit Misra – Book Review

Poetry collections are meant to entertain, enlighten, delight, please and push people into momentary postures of intellectual reflexes that refresh their minds and offer some new food for thought. Mohit Misra’s poetry collection Ponder Awhile is the same book. It is a poetry collection that will offer a reader many dishes for thought rather than plain food. Isn’t that interesting?

I have been reading poetry for more than ten years now. I have read erudite like Nirala to mystics like Aurobindo, a visionary like T S Eliot to contemporary spice sellers who add anything but sense to poetry. Mohit Misra’s poetry collection, however, beats many contemporary poets with its blunt, direct, and peculiar content – something that compels you to think and think a lot. He has that unique strength to say complex things in an unaesthetic way. Yes, at times, it might become irritating for many readers of conventional poetry… those who like to see metre, rhythm and music in the lines of poems might be mostly harassed by the unaesthetic lines in the poems of Mohit. Nevertheless, the same people and those who like to read between the lines will find Mohit Misra’s poetry collection full of wonderful thoughts, flashes of realisation, and sincere appeal to the world citizens to come together in harmony, under the shade of equality. I liked the ideas that Mohit proposes and also liked the way he expresses his ideas.

Mohit writes about love, life, death, spirituality, complexities of religion, faith and beliefs. He also writes about people he loves, people he lost, heartbreaks, friends, foes, moments and many other things. Though his poems are purely subjective expressions (whose is not), many readers will find a reflection of the conditions in their lives in the lines by Mohit.

I chase something it just goes away,
Nothing is meant forever to stay.
Then I say forget it, let me be free,
Out of nowhere it is right in front of me.

In a poem titled Confusion, the poet expresses his illusion. Who does not feel like this in life? We all have such situations when we feel what we like just pushes away and what we want to forget stands in front, all the time. Well, you can notice apparently that the poet is direct, sans decorations and embellishments of poetry, and blunt, rather. However, in an unpleasing way, he is stating the reality of life – the bitter reality we all accept and approve of.

Who is God?
He, she and it is God.
God is, has, was, will.
Where is God?
Everywhere is God, nowhere is God.

In another poem titled God, the poet expresses what we often feel. We know God is everywhere. However, we often doubt God’s presence and we can never be sure of it, howsoever we try. And these lines, once again, might appear unaesthetic to the eyes and sound unlyrical to the ears, to the mind, however, the same lines express way too much.

This is the story of the poetry collection by Mohit Misra. He has appealed directly to the minds of the readers. He strikes the right chords and compels the readers to think with him, ponder for more than a while, keep thinking and sail with him to the unknown and unseen destinations. I could have enjoyed it more with rhythm and rhyme. However, raw poetry is a thing, isn’t it?

You can get this poetry collection from Amazon India by clicking the link below:

Buy the poetry collection by Mohit – click here to go to the Amazon book page

Review by Vidyananda for Literature News