Review by mgasda -- Walking In Blind: A Collection of Po...

[mgasda]

[Following is a volunteer review of "Walking In Blind: A Collection of Poetry" by Kaviru Gayathri Samarawickrama.]

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1 out of 4 stars

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As Oscar Wilde wrote, “All bad poetry springs from genuine feeling. To be natural is to be obvious, and to be obvious is to be inartistic.” This is the risk that poet Kaviru Gayathri seems willing to run. Gayathri’s poetry is genuine, obvious, and profoundly bad as art.

These battles I endure,
thousand echoes of the screams in my head,
I can picture women endlessly weeping and gauging their eyes out.
invisible smoke flying out of my ears like train smoke,
I can remember harry potter at this point.

The above is the beginning of Gayathri’s poem “Thousand Echoes.” Not only does it contain obviously spelling and grammatical errors, the final stanza of the line is so comically out of place, out of rhythm, out of joint, that whatever seriousness or pathos the poem is trying to express is immediately shattered. Why does the poet remember “harry potter” in a moment of psychological trauma? A clear answer, a clear anything is never given. Like so many of the poems in the inexorably long Walking In Blind, the only point of “Thousand Echoes” seems to be emotional release; even if that release takes the form of banalities and cliches.

Gayathri talks about her emotions, but she seems only able to write about suffering and torment; if Gayathri has insights or ideas about other aspects of human experience, she does not write about them. Walking In Blind exhausts the reader with its repetitions and its obsessions.

Diving to the deep depths of my heart,
It has pushed its limit to goodness
and now it remains in the dark,
depressed and escaping from the world

The tone and subject matter of Walking In Blind, in fact, is so consistent, that there is no real difference from poem to poem; the poems bleed together, literally: they are variations on a single cry of despair. Walking In Blind reads like the diary of a depressed teenager, only with the lines enjambed to make them look more poetic.

The only charitable defense I can offer Gayathri is that is unclear whether she is interested writing anything resembling good poetry. The purpose of the book seems to be purely expressive or cathartic. As Gayathri writes in her preface:

I am not ashamed of my feelings. I am not afraid of other people's opinions of my emotions. I have learnt that, my words healed someone's wounds. It was a ray of hope, motivation for them. I believe words have power and with this power i want to show that i can make a difference. I may not be good at my writing but who was ever good at writing feelings down?

It feels then, like something of a critical trap to review a book that states its own indifference to criticism and defines its purpose as something other than excellence. There is no pleasure in or point to criticizing a book by standards it does not accept; as an exercise in authenticity and honesty, Walking In Blind can be viewed as a success, even if remains an aesthetic failure.

If poetry is about richness, beauty, and originality, then Gayathri’s collection is simply a sad distraction from real writing. If poetry is about the expression of feelings, then it can perhaps interest the reader who wants to learn more about a young person’s depression and resilience.

Rating: 1 out of 4 stars

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Walking In Blind: A Collection of Poetry
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