Jayanta Mahapatra’s Shadow Space, published for first time in 1997, <br />Opens with Living In Orissa poem, <br />Followed by Landscape, A Hunt of Grief,1992, Heroism, Trying To Keep Still, <br />The Shadow of Day, Widow, Saving Ourselves, Illness <br />And others <br />To tell the story of same kind and narration <br />As they mean it not, <br />What he says and what he means. <br /> <br />Abstract and reflecting, he is a poet of light and darkness, <br />Random descent and random reflection, <br />Nothing is what it seems to be <br />And what it seems to be is nothing, <br />There is nothing as that exists <br />And this forms the poetic base of the poet, <br />The vacuum writ large, <br />The space infinite. <br /> <br />Bazaar Scene, Possessions, Aftermath, Season, Still Life, June Rain, <br />Village Evening, The Quiet, Greeting, Raining, Cloak of White, <br />Defeat, Shadows, Octave, Walls, Denials, The Fear, Enterprise, <br />Awe, Afterward, Life, Ashes, Late, The Stories In Poetry, <br />Telling the tales in their own way, <br />What the poetic tale, what the poetic truth, <br />The poetry of nothingness that he writes, <br />Life but an absurd waiting, that he relays to. <br /> <br />Abstract thought, blank mood, vacant thinking, pervade <br />The poetic spirit of the poet, <br />The colours of loneliness that he sees and feels, <br />The toy clockwork of poetry, <br />What makes one wait, <br />A brief history of losses never to be written, <br />Obscure face, the blue sky hanging above his palms, <br />Shadows can never open their mouths <br />Are the things of his reckoning. <br /> <br />His is a poetry based on suppositions, <br />A lot of proposition, a lot of conjecture is therein <br />And the poet contradicting and contrasting, <br />Comparing and presenting, <br />Laughter always on the lookout for grief is similar to <br />Hardy’s happiness is but a bubble in man’s life <br />And Gray’s obscure destiny of village forefathers, <br />Childhood sitting in shadow to remember <br />And to see the changed appearances.<br /><br />Bijay Kant Dubey<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/shadow-space-by-jayanta-mahapatra/
