LOVE IN A TIME OF TECHNOLOGY

Love in a Time of Technology

Forthcoming in the Fall - From TSAR Books:

TSAR Books - Love in a Time of Technology

Sasenarine Persaud website

Whether in the heart of downtown Toronto, a bookstore in Boston, the courtyard of the Taj Mahal—through the portals of cyberspace—on the banks of a Tampa river, or a journey through time to Georgetown, an old colonial capital, love circumscribes everything. But this book is no wide-eyed outpouring; it probes and questions concepts and beliefs, pokes fun at age, companions taken for granted, and the realization that, like a mannequin in a Manhattan storefront, love is “faceless and, almost, raceless.” If love circumscribes everything, these poems show that everything—economics, politics, ambitions and exiles—also circumscribes love.

20th Festival of Reading - St Petersburg, FL

University of South Florida, St. Petersburg campus

In a time of wistful recovery from a Great Recession and of kindles and tablets, the organizers of any festival of books deserve lavish praise. Last Saturday’s festival, the 20th Festival of Reading was held on the University of South Florida St. Petersburg campus, an urban satellite of USF headquartered across the Bay in Tampa. It’s a pretty campus bisected by city streets you’d say, if you mean to be politically correct. This is a college in the heart of downtown, with a frail fence hiding it from the Albert Whitted Airport immediately to the east. The tails of small planes back up to the fence almost on the campus and in your face. The events were scattered across more than five buildings.


As might be expected of a one day event with multiple readers, there were simultaneous and overlapping presentations, which meant that there were talks you had to miss, or interrupt by entering midway. Perhaps, it is time the event be spread over two days and moved to the spacious and much larger main campus in Tampa; a facility that is far better equipped for such an event. I had a chance to sample three events: a talk by the poet Peter Meinke, part of a reading by Melanie Hubbard and part of a talk by the journalist-turned-author, Michael Grunwald promoting his second book, The New New Deal: The Hidden Story of Change in the Obama Era. Grunwald’s talk in the University Student Center was well attended.

In response to a question, Grunwald stated that he was an independent. You would not know this from the highfalutin sub-phrase of the title, “Obama Era.” Not MLK era, or Gandhi era, or Mandela era. Prophetic, perhaps, but it is as trite as the Nobel Committee’s Peace Award—for what contribution to peace, at the time? The speaker came across as a democrat using the mantle of “independent” to project impartial journalism. There is no such thing as impartial journalism. His book on a President seeking reelection is released in the middle of a presidential election campaign. Perhaps, this says all. There is more than an echo of an utterance of the poet, Peter Meinke earlier in the afternoon: “emotional truth.” A poet dabbling with this would probably come out with the “emotional facts” of journalism.

Meinke is a formalist. He makes a valid case for formalism, if you are a formalist, or a 19th century, or early 20th century poet: How can you write poetry if you don’t know about poetic metrics, or of the names and definitions of various poetic forms etc. This is like saying; how can you make babies if you don’t know about the uterus, or the fallopian tube, or about sperms, or about the composition and functions and names of the various organs of the human body. Formalists, or new formalists, or new new formalists and neo-formalists may well be the literary equivalents of colonialists, neocolonialists and new new colonialists. At least Meinke is honest. And that earns respect.

There is nothing quite like a book festival to stir up readers and writers and listeners.

Tampa & the Republican National Convention



Hickson Park, Tampa



The Republican National Convention (RNC) is in town: Tampa. If you live in this city, or any city that hosts a major national, or international event, there are mixed feelings. For a little time, however brief, your city is in the spotlight. You want it to look well. Some 50,000 to 70,000 visitors will descend on your city for a week. There are all sorts of concerns. There will be protests. There were will be traffic tie-ups. There will be speeches and presences—potentially the next president of one of, if not, the most important nations in the world—people who will go on to make a mark globally. And then there is the presence of a hurricane. School is cancelled. Work goes on: business as usual. Dark clouds hover: Rain and wind and flooding. Will you not see this city as we see it, as we love it, as we would have you love it?

A special place for many is the Hickson Park, on the Hillsborough River across from the University of Tampa, perhaps, the finest legacy of the last Mayor, Pam Iorio. A slice of Tampa in the following poem, recently published in South Asian Ensemble (Toronto).

HICKSON PARK: TAMPA ON THE RIVER


I want to take you
where white lights
glow on deleafed winter
oaks like icicles,
where the dark river
floats a rubber slipper
inland – away from the bay
invading our souls,
where water erupts
under spotlights
like our love once
I want to take you
where laughter fills the night.




The Hillsborough River and spires of the University of Tampa, acorss from Hickson Park

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There is no Metaphor for Murder

From The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka

34. ATTACKS FROM THE AIR

This was not what the Vedantists
Had in mind when they flew
Into the skies, their Sanskrit scribes
And engineers recording to scale
Replicas Germans created before
And during The War. Before those
Wrights. This was not what the Wrights
Contemplated before Kitty Hawk.
There is no metaphor for murder.


35.

The casualties at Gettysburg are unsecret.
They were combatants. Not a civilian father
Having his first coffee break of the morning.
Somebody’s mother is somebody’s daughter
Just looking up from the morning numbers.
Smoke. Last words on a cell phone.
Today you ride a bike. You live in Toronto.
Today you ride a bike. You live in Tampa.
Today you always take the stairs.
How many bombs in Vietnam, or Japan?
One in Hiroshima. Just one in Nagasaki.
The count? You will never be popular.
Why is one more sacred that 3,000, than
40,000 Tamils disappeared in two weeks.
There is no metaphor for murder.

from The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka

from The Killing Fields of Sri Lanka

31. Le Repentir

There, with queen palms roaring
They walled you in. Tombs and septic
Tanks look alike. Worms feast in both.
Who gyrates in graveyards? Jumbies
And poets. Both celebrate satanic verses.

©Sasenarine Persaud

Lantana Strangling Ixora

This collection is as much about love and people in and out of relationships as it is about origins and the process of estrangement. The lantana is a flower of South American origin, and the ixora of Asian origin. The lantana, a creeper that grows profusely, often engulfing other plants, provides a ready metaphor for the consciousness of the Americas overcoming that of India in the Americas—the mainstreaming and divesting of yoga from its Hindu origins being the most visible manifestation. This collection ranges widely in its geographical and historical concerns, from Canada to Guyana to India and places in between, exploring the contradictions in our lives: familial influences, terrorism, literature, politics, race, and the power of language and representation. As always in Persaud’s work, love is ever present. This is a collection that displays mastery over nuances of language, and is at once quirky and humorous as it continues an engagement with the theme of “place as muse.”

POETRY ISBN 978-1-894770-72-9,
$17.95 pb, 5.75” x 8.75”, 112 pages
September 2011

Also by Sasenarine Persaud:
In a Boston Night (poetry), ISBN 978-1-894770-49-1, $16.95
Canada Geese and Apple Chatney (fiction), ISBN 978-0-920661-72-7, $15.95

Praise for Sasenarine Persaud’s poetry:

Persaud's poems . . . are like miniature raags, sensuous units of Indian music obeying conventions mysterious to western ears. —The Globe and Mail

COURAGE - 64 DAYS INTO A HUNGER STRIKE

Courage, these days, is not as rare as we would like to think. Raj Bhat, a pharmacist, dared to challenge his former employer, Medco-a Fortune 500 company with 2009 revenues of $59.8 Billion USD (Wikipedia). He (and other pharmacists) filed a complaint with the Florida Board of Pharmacy. He was subsequently fired. His is a timely story as we observe Labor Day. Today is the 64th day of his hunger strike in an unfolding story with Medco. Follow his story at http://ihungerstrike.blogspot.com/ Perhaps, courage is Raj Bhat.

THE 64th DAY OF A HUNGER STRIKE
for Raj Bhat

On the 64th day of a hunger strike
An apple still waits a bite.
For the one-eyed giant, it’s a numbers game
And we are numbers. Numbers that think
Numbers have souls; numbers have names
And tongues to taste a wounding of silence
On the 64th day of a hunger strike
who can quiet Gandhi’s unquiet?

© Sasenarine Persaud