{"id":395426,"date":"2018-04-18T14:00:00","date_gmt":"2018-04-18T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wdev.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent-dev\/2018\/04\/18\/things-that-happen-by-bhaskar-chakrabart-why-this-book-should-win\/"},"modified":"2018-05-07T14:16:59","modified_gmt":"2018-05-07T14:16:59","slug":"things-that-happen-by-bhaskar-chakrabart-why-this-book-should-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/2018\/04\/18\/things-that-happen-by-bhaskar-chakrabart-why-this-book-should-win\/","title":{"rendered":"“Things That Happen” by Bhaskar Chakrabart [Why This Book Should Win]"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s entry from the BTBA<\/span> poetry longlist is from writer and translator Tess Lewis, who also has a title longlisted on the fiction side of things.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Things That Happen<\/em><\/a> by Bhaskar Chakrabart, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha (India, Seagull Books)<\/b><\/p>\n

I love ordinariness. Rejected, pedestrian conversations and scenes, days and nights left behind are all things that move me. And I feel a desire to dress them in new clothes. Perhaps I wanted to capture an enormous pleasure in my poetry . . .<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cPoetry on Poetry\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The city of Calcutta is constant presence in Bhaskar Chakrabarti\u2019s poetry, although an elusive and ghostly one. Chakrabarti is every bit the city poet that Baudelaire is, but he wends his way through his beloved metropolis as a swimmer rather than a fl\u00e2neur<\/em>. In some poems he merely dips a toe into the stream that swirls around and past him. In others he submerges himself fully and lets himself be carried by the current. In still others he sits on the bank, his back to the city, and looks inward or simply remembers. The Calcutta Chakrabarti evokes and celebrates is not, however, the one we have often heard or read about elsewhere. There is little sign of the bustling streets filled with life and affliction, the faded grandeur offset by vivid colors and heady Coffee House intellectuals usually associated with this city of many goddesses and cultures. Chakrabarti\u2019s Calcutta is a city of memories and particulars, of loneliness and melancholy, of beautiful women glimpsed from a distance and fleeting deities.<\/p>\n

For Chakrabarti (1945\u20132005), there is little point in looking for the exotic half-way around the world or even in nearby neighborhoods. The crucial thing is to find a connection to the mundane, the familiar; \u201ceven writing four or five ordinary lines \/ Ä¢¹½´«Ã½ tender blades of grass is better\u201d than \u201cstruggling on with symbol, imagery and resonance\u201d in poems from the day before yesterday. Observed with the proper attention, the foreign becomes familiar and the familiar is seen fresh.<\/p>\n

Arunava Sinha\u2019s translation from the Bengali deftly navigates these poems\u2019 shifts in register from elevated reflection to earthy exclamation. In the title poem, the poet reflects on the small but real joys a life dedicated to art can bring, yet quickly deflates the swelling sentimentality.<\/p>\n

The days aren\u2019t passing badly for the two of us
\nThough it\u2019s true we haven\u2019t been to the hills,
\nWe haven\u2019t been to the seaside for three years now
\nAnd poverty, it\u2019s no small annoyance
\nConstantly borrowing money and asking my sister for help
\nStill, one or two interesting things do happen
\nTonight, for instance, you exclaimed: There, it\u2019s raining:
\nWe went up to the window
\nBut it was only the sound of someone pissing on the roof next door
\nOr the other night, I was writing in the tiny room
\nWith the light on\u2014someone from the street said loudly:
\nGo to sleep, motherfucker.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThings That Happen\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Most of the poems in this collection, however, are in a more reflective tone of sober nostalgia. Indeed, many were written after Chakrabarti began treatment for an illness that brought him frequent hospitalization and regular confrontations with mortality. Sinha\u2019s sonorous, sinuous lines evoke the elusive comforts Chakrabarti finds in poetry that calls up, however futilely, absent beloveds and lost familiars.<\/p>\n

Because you\u2019ll come, I\u2019ve snagged a wicker chair
\nI wonder, will you come? Will you really come?
\nTwo decades have passed\u2014or four? I still sit in the darkness
\nWhy this loneliness, why this pulse in my veins
\nYou are mild (fragrant air), peace, peace in my nerves, panacea<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u201cThe Language of Giraffes\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Readers of Things That Happen<\/em> are quickly swept up by the soothing, inviting flow of Chakrabarti\u2019s poetry, but sooner or later a gentle tug of danger even despair between the lines will send them back to firm ground, unsettled but with senses sharpened.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s entry from the BTBA poetry longlist is from writer and translator Tess Lewis, who also has a title longlisted on the fiction side of things. Things That Happen by Bhaskar Chakrabart, translated from Bengali by Arunava Sinha (India, Seagull Books) I love ordinariness. Rejected, pedestrian conversations and scenes, days and nights left behind are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":292,"featured_media":397952,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67476],"tags":[67736,67716,66446,49386,34536,22526,67726,37876],"class_list":["post-395426","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-best-translated-book-awards","tag-arunava-sinha","tag-bhaskr-chakrabart","tag-btba-2018","tag-btba-poetry","tag-seagull-books","tag-tess-lewis","tag-things-that-happen","tag-why-this-book-should-win"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395426","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/292"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395426"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395426\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397962,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395426\/revisions\/397962"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397952"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395426"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395426"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/College\/translation\/threepercent\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395426"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}