Soothing Serenades: A Poetic Romance

pixabay photo

By

Manikant Sharma

‘Soothing Serenades: Straight from the Heart‘ is Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar’s soothing tale of love– A Poetic Romance.

Mark Flanagan said, “…defining poetry is like grasping at the wind—once you catch it, it is no longer wind.” Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar’s 62 poems published by Authorspress, New Delhi testify Mark Flanagan’s definition of poetry. His poems are like wind or white linen— like Mimosa sensitiva– most beautiful, intense, full of passion, elevating, transcendental, poignant having chants of the beads of Philosophy, with long threads of metaphysics, full of romance, spontaneous.

Out of many kinds of poetry, Love poetry is the most sought after. Love poems contain that opulence of adornments the other forms hardly provide. It is said that Venus and Adonis, God’s own creations descended upon earth to write the sagas of love. It looks as if they are the mute witness to Bhaskar Jha’s spunk of writing these poems or these poems have been composed under their supernatural influence with great precision or they have catalyzed his excursions to these poems.

These poems are soothing analgesics showing the eternal art of wooing, with beautiful monologues, sometimes physical, sometimes shapeless, artless without the mask of ingenuity like morning’s first breeze after night’s long ordeal or like Abou Ben Adhem’s message of brotherhood to mankind.

For the poet humanity and divinity are the most important aspects of life:

“I form a bigger part
Of the ramparts of humanity;
Vicious vices apart,
True self gets sparks of divinity.” (I Am)

and

“Strain out your scarlet passions
Of the bohemian, secret world
Bloated and gloated with soaring ecstasy
And realize with your consciousness
The true, inherent worth
And pure essence of agape love.” (Definition of Love)

In “Vernal Breeze” and “Healing Power of Love” the poet finds in love the panacea for all the mundane problems of life.

“The pleasant fragrant breeze
That gushes from yours
Sweeps away
The chronic stinks
Of widespread gloom
And sullenness
Stagnating in my heart..” (Vernal Breeze)

“Breaking fetters of gloomy heart
Locked in cranky casket of life,
Love consoles the unheard sobs
Healing the deep wounds of life.” (Healing Power of Love).

The poet tries to pinpoint love to reach at some conclusion but the conclusion is hazy and amorphous.-

“But within the realm of soulful heart
Tempting the youths of all ages
To understand and measure its profundity” (Love)

Here the poet has a beautiful walk from physicality to metaphysical—towards non-dualism seeking unison with God where ‘I’ merges with the ‘other’ and becomes ‘I’.

“Yearning for the unison
desiring you to delve deep
into mine –
a sunken pool I have within,
to fill it to the brim
with soothing showers
of joyous moments:
O Muse of my heart!
Sprinkle on me some splashes
of cozy love
like beauteous beads
trickling down
your neck and nape,
dripping and dribbling
as lovely drops
mellowing out of sizzling embrace!” (Splashes of Love in Summer of Life)

The poet feels as if the ligaments of his heart are torn asunder and his limbs writhe in pain as he reminisces his hankering for his beloved—

“All the riveting ripples
of thoughts for her
do shape up,
making a furrow, far-flung
on the broad breast
of the ocean,
purging all the dirges
of heaving humane heart
deeply dipped
into the fresh blood
splurged in the gorge
in the deep blue
to write and recite
by churning out, and out
a very sweet tale of love!” (A Tale of Love)

Probably the most beautiful aspect of Bhaskar Jha’s poetry is when he masquerades his pining for his beloved as being masochistic:

“Soft breezes blow pleasantly
From the vale profound
Of a nostalgic love,
Passing and caressing
A swooning heart in me,
Sunken and sullen,
But as a mourning dove
Long nestled in a broken nest”. (Soft Breezes Blow)

While reading Bhaskar Jha’s poems the reader sometimes marvels where the Serenade is until it comes to him/her in its strange form of ecstasy:

“’Sullen, I brood within soul
In contemplative solitude;
Amid serenades of Nature
And feel soul-felt beatitude”( Serenade of Solitude)

Sometimes the poet’s “Love in Dreams” becomes the essence of his life:

“we were sucking the sweet canes
as if extracting the essence of life
in the midnight’s dream
through the secret rendezvous” (Love in Dreams)

In the poem “Love Birds On The Branch Of A Poetree” the poet’s imagery turns more fanciful when his ecstatic mind carves out a way for the Lovebirds that descend from the blue sky of emotions…from the green pasture of romance.

Sometime a gloom shadows poet’s mind but when the clouds of gloom dispel from his mind’s firmament, the poet becomes a “VOYEUR” where,

“Amorous streams
Of her aromatic beauty
Surging up on her cute countenance…
The crystalline flesh
Clothed in her sober modesty
Strikes the cords of a loving heart…”

These poems of Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar are straight from the heart, again conforming to the definition of poetry by England’s Poetry Society,” There is poetry in everything we say or do, and if something is presented to me as a poem by its creator or by an observer, I accept that ‘something’ as a poem”. See in “Thorny Rose”-

“A rose is beautiful
Till it is beheld
From afar;
If held closely,
It pricks the fingers
Lo! Throes ajar..!”

Sulman Rushdie says “A poet’s work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to take sides, start arguments, shape the world and stop it going to sleep.” Bhaskar Jha’s lines too, stop the world going to sleep:

“The white-washed ceiling stares still
At her loneliness, her mute sufferings
The alienated bedspread crinkles blue
Sensing her insomniac encircled self
Locked, suppressed, oppressed long
Around the four-cornered stony walls
Of life’s dejection and despondency…” (Sad Saga of Love)

The words/contents of these poems have not been channelized into predesigned moulds for casting, flow freely as clouds do in the sky, neither have these been forced to travel into long rivulets of blood leading to dialysis for selective management. That is why the poems retain their natural aroma of pleasantness or unpleasantness for that matter.

All these 62 poems by Bhaskar Jha are a soothing mantra and a quotidian promise providing a bounty of love to anyone who wishes to read these poems.

Soothing Serenades – Straight from the Heart by Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar – 2018 – Publisher: Author Press, New Delhi Price: INR 250/- ISBN 978-93-87281-59-2

Manikant Sharma

Manikant Sharma, Former Manager QC at Food Corporation of India, is an ardent book reviewer, poet and blogger living in Saharanpur, UP, India. He blogs on poetry and literature at www.poesynow.com

Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar

Bhaskaranand Jha Bhaskar is a trilingual poet (Maithili, Hindi and English), short story writer, critic and reviewer, based in Kolkata. He is regularly published in various national and international magazines, both printed and online. His poetry springs straight from heart and mind as unification of sensibility. He uses catchy lines, expressions and images. In his poetry, social issues, romance and love are tackled with equal passion. Resonant with profound spirituality and intricate mysticism his poems are stunning and enlightening, buoyant sometimes and intense at other times and always have a deep meaning beautiful enough to touch hearts of avid readers. One of his poems on Nelson Mandela is included in the academic syllabus prescribed for the school students of Philippines.

Soothing Serenades: Straight From the Heart is his first volume of poems and Two Indias and Other Poems is in the pipeline. He is also a contributor to journals like The Criterion: An International Journal in English, IJML (International Journal On Multicultural Literature), The Anvil (Forum of Literature & Academic Research in English) and Harvests of New Millennium, The Interiors, Taj Mahal Review, IJES (The Indian Journal of English Studies). He is also a part of several anthologies like ‘Epitaphs’, ‘Purple Hues”, “Whispering Winds”, “Just For You, My Love”, “Heavenly Hymns”, ‘I Am a Woman”, “The Significant Anthology”, “Umbilical Cords”, “A- Divine-Madness” (Five Volumes), “Poetic Prism” – 2015 & 16, “Searching For Sublime” (Australian-Indo Poetry), “She the Shakti”, “Whispering Heart”, etc.

He is also the Review Editor of Asian Signature, a literary e-journal, managed from Kolkata.