Escape Artist

by Sridala Swami

Sridala Swami's Escape Artist maps the dilemmas of the bodied self, and offers a diviner's eloquent testimony to survival in a world of dissolving certitudes, precarious relationships, transcontinental mobility and political cataclysm. Poised, subtle, luminous, Swami's poetry clothes the ephemera of everyday life in an intimate tangibility and secures them against the insistent attritions of history and nature. The finely gauged frame is Swami's chosen instrument. Through it, she effects surprising juxtapositions of myth and contemporary experience, investigates whether the finality of extinction is preferable to the self-parody of repetition, revisits Paul Celan's cryptic notations, Odilon Redon's enigmatic images, Abbas Kiarostami's deceptively quotidian cinema, and pays homage to that re-discoverer of lost myths, Giorgos Seferis. At the Core Escape Artist is a visceral awareness of what words can do: they can induce "temporary insanity", voice "inaudible stories", and remind us that "the measure of love is not loss but residue".

Genres: Poetry

73 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Marcy · Rating 4 out of 5]

An eloquent and powerful set of images pervade these poems. They are deeply moving poems, often quite personal such as "Hospital Catalogues: Coda," about the very real feelings people are left with after having cared for loved ones in a hospital. There are also gorgeous poems about nature or what once was, such as "Chimera" about a wooden door's relationship with the trees just in its view through the window. This is a book to ponder and to cherish because the imagery is absolutely vivid and luscious.

[Moushumi Ghosh · Rating 2 out of 5]

It's rather strange but I started out thinking that I will like Sridala Swami's poems so much but ended up feeling rather disillusioned by them. Swami has really worked on her craft but I found the tone rather flat. There were flashes of brilliance in 'Twisting', 'Syneasthetic', 'Spare Name' and 'Not loss but residue'. On another day in another frame of mind perhaps Swami's poems will speak to me. Right now, I feel no emotional connect with these poems. I was really looking forward to reading her poetry so I am a bit sad about this.