Rain Incarnations

Hardcover, 80 pages

English language

Published Feb. 15, 2025 by Speaking Tiger Books.

ISBN:
9789354479427
3 stars (1 review)

A book of poems about rain -- in image, metaphor, and symbol -- that speak truths about the natural world, and the world of the human heart and mind. Exquisite poems, translated into English from the original Odia.

"Bishnu Mohapatra, in these viscerally beautiful poems, unearths the spiritual in us that rain will nourish and destroy. Socrates and Ambedkar, anarchy and accident, silence and mystery, love and safety, nothingness and infinity, fever and death, all are made to fall within the metaphorical power of rain. Only a poet can take an idea to these places and these depths." - Akeel Bilgrami, Professor of Philosohpy, Columbia University

1 edition

rain!! yay!!

3 stars

it's fine. the description hypes it up way too much for essentially just being a compendium of short poems about rain, and the translation should not have been praised so extensively, even if it would have been ostensibly difficult, since the original material is lacking in the substance that would have necessitated such a methodical transformation

this book is also completely unknown to goodreads, which made looking for anything about this book an absolute joy(!)

the only article about the book online is a short review which somehow got published by Frontline, so ???

also the book has the gall to quote early wittgenstein and imply a failing of his philosophical capability on the empty space and i'm not sure what that intends to do or critique considering wittgenstein and everyone of his successors or followers had stopped believing that for decades

Subjects

  • Poetry
  • Rain