Arts & Letters September 7 Thursday,2017

Book review
Romantic melancholy in the
poetry of Nadeem Rahman
Rebecca Haque
is Professor,
Department of
English, University
of Dhaka. A poet,
translator, and
literary critic ,she
has published two
books of literary
criticism, and a
book of creative
writing. She
regularly writes
Op-Ed and nonfiction
essays for
The Daily Star.
4
• Rebecca Haque
In my hands I hold a sleek copy of Nadeem Rahman’s new volume of
poetry. The title, One Life Is Not Enough, captivates me with felt echoes
of the labyrinthine travails of the mythic “hero of a thousand faces.” The
deceptively simple title resonates with the passion and complexity of
a Beethoven symphony: It is spoken poetry
incarnate, with its rhythm of a rise and fall of
a lung full of air inhaled and exhaled, sighing
with dreams and yearnings even in ripe
old age. It is suffused with hopes and desires
innate to the mortal human struggle, bound
in time and space, eternally battling the elemental
forces. Allusion to life’s tragicomic
journey evokes a subliminal melancholy, an
elegiac mood. In defining the state of human
existence, it makes me bond with the poet in
universal sympathy.
One Life Is Not Enough, published in November
2016 by the select house of writers.
ink, contains sixteen poems which draw us
into the creative spiral of the poet’s psyche.
The honest confessional mode makes us
identify with Rahman in separate stages of
his mapping of life’s moments of strife and
sweetness. We are led upward and onward
through the developing arcs of his growth
into introspective middle age. Rahman’s
books depict an odyssey spanning thirty
years of a mature man’s journey, and this volume
is the final arc which completes the circle
of poetic self-discovery begun in youthful
exploration of lived experience.
One Life Is Not Enough reveals a man of
charm, wit, and piquancy: Well-read, articulate,
contemplative, often blasé and ironical,
as is the way with men of a philosophical
mind. The poems are self-reflexive, and
formal unity is maintained by adherence
to ritual: Each poem is composed on his birthday. In the prefatory essay, “A
Birthday Ritual,” Rahman provides an account of the process of composition:
“By sheer chance, I happened to write a poem on my forty seventh birthday.
I liked it so much, that I once described it as ‘something of a signature tune,’
and I have included it in all my books of poems so far. It’s the last poem in
this collection. Since then, equally by chance, it has become a birthday ritual.
I have no explanation for this odd occurrence, but it never ceases to surprise
me, every year, and is a source of considerable satisfaction to the creative urge
in my generic composition. Once a year, I am happily reminded that my dwindling
poetic instincts have not yet demised. The candle dims, but the flame
still burns. … “
Rahman’s “signature poem” in One Life Is Not Enough is titled “Our Last
Rendezvous”, and was first composed on 17th May, 1991. It is a passionate
poem, heroic in its melancholy acceptance of flux and finite existence, yet redolent
with the romance of having drunk deep the draught of Life’s immanent
spirit. The title and the sublime metaphysical conceit of this poem bring to
my mind the lyric eloquence of Robert Browning’s “The Last Ride Together”.
Like Browning’s poem, Rahman’s poem is also a dramatic monologue, and
has the same quiet intensity and sacred beauty of the image of two embraced
souls. Like Browning, Rahman also idealises and apotheosises his beloved:
“Let this be our last rendezvous/ when the rivers cease to run/here will you
find me/ in this valley of dying stars/ where my songs have fallen, one by one,
/ and my soul, lies softly crying, …/In my book / of squandered dreams/ and
forfeited schemes/ will I haunt you/from the
shattered/jaws of time, until/ eternity/ here/
in my heartbeat / of wordless speech,/ will I
call you/ to embrace,/ my unrequited/ ghost/
and let my lost hopes/ be the venue, of our
last/ rendezvous.”
The Romantic sensibility has used the motif
of the Wanderer, the questing Traveller to
signify the primordial role of the bard-seer,
be it the quasi-spiritual poetic scop/ minstrel
of Western medieval Courtly tradition, or the
Sufi ‘baul ‘ of Eastern mysticism. Elements of
such mystic self-reflection creep into many
of Nadeem Rahman’s mature poems. For
example, in “When I am Dead and Gone”, he
writes, “When I am dead and gone/ I will have
left one last song,/ …because/ dying is a poem
/ of the undying/heart.” In ”You Who Think”,
Rahman captures the quintessence of mortal
desire: “You, who think, that I in my old
age/ can teach you nothing of love,/ consider
for a moment/ the infant moons that light
my path/ are wrought from the nebula of my
soul/ -- as true a lover’s gift as any, from/ the
black hole of my infernal firmament,/ and the
love that burns your blood, is distilled / from
stars called hope and disappointment,…” In
the 2010 birthday poem, ”Today Is My Birthday”,
Rahman is self-assured and confident,
and mature acceptance of personal failures
makes it a poem of courageous dignity and
not a vehicle for mere braggadocio: “every
birthday is a resurrection,/…I am in no hurry,
for/ fate to shut the door./ I look into the mirror, and I no longer see / the different
faces I have seen before—the curiosity/ the impatience, the anticipation
and the wander lust, / …the flamboyant arrogance of youth have all faded,…”
Rahman’s poetry betrays the influence of major poets in the English and European
Romantic tradition. All writers write under the “anxiety of influence”
to some degree, however, and a poet becomes note-worthy when his unique
“voice” speaks to us directly through his poems. William Wordsworth’s definition
is cogent: “What is a poet?...He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is
true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness,
who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive
soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind;…” Nadeem Rahman
is such a man. And even though, in “A Birthday Ritual,” Rahman writes, “I
don’t expect to be read even a quarter century from now….it’s enough that
I have lived. It’s enough that I have loved … It’s enough that I leave my poems,
like the fragrance of my flesh and blood, the essence of my never-ending
dreams”, I am certain that much of his poetry will be read again and again for
their sustained lyric power and sympathetic vision.•
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017