"The poems in Deepening Groove proceed in elegant triplets that drift effortlessly down the page on waves of sound, serenely self-confident. The subjects are animals, trees, flowers, fish, the weather, and the human condition, all mixed up in a heady stew that simmers quietly one minute, and shimmers brightly the next. This is a book of savvy, delicious surprises." -Wyn Cooper "In Deepening Groove, Ravi Shankar's poems are small wonders of defining, seeing, and sound. He is a poet fascinated with transformations and here are shiftings of dust and sand, loon calls, flutterings of insects, changing tides and splendid cascades- always information-driven, often rapturous with Hopkins-like intensities, imperatives, and trochaic stresses. What I'm most taken by is how the poems both see and feel simultaneously: In "Dark," "Darkness in New England has a flavor close / to anise, a texture plush as peat moss." In "Bats," the bats' flight is "carrying away pieces of us, / a maelstrom too faint to see, turning to ellipsis...." In virtually all these poems, to quote words from "Willard Pond," there is "a sense // that the distance between the alternate / universes humans" [and other creatures on Earth] "inhabit is smaller / than ever imagined and more astonishing." And although the poems give special pleasures on first encounters, they contain-as in "The Oyster"-"secrets that require / a knife to pry open and vinegar to serve." Deepening Groove shows Ravi Shankar is truly, now, one of America's finest younger poets." -Dick Allen Ravi Shankar is Executive Director of Drunken Boat and Co-Director of the Creative Writing Program at Central Connecticut State University. His first full length book was Instrumentality (Word Press, 2004). Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond (W.W. Norton & Co.). He has appeared in the New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, and on the BBC and NPR. He teaches in Fairfield University's MFA Program and in the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong.
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RAVI SHANKAR is the founding editor and Executive Director of Drunken Boat
[http://www.drunkenboat.com}, one of the world's oldest electronic journals of the arts. He has published or edited seven books and chapbooks of poetry, including the 2011 National Poetry Review Prize winner, Deepening Groove. Along with Tina Chang and Nathalie Handal, he edited W.W. Norton's Language for a New Century: Contemporary Poetry from Asia, the Middle East & Beyond, called "a beautiful achievement for world literature" by Nobel Laureate Nadine Gordimer. He has won a Pushcart Prize, been featured in The New York Times and the Chronicle of Higher Education, appeared as a commentator on the BBC and NPR, received fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and the Connecticut Commission on the Arts, and has performed his work around the world. He is currently Chairman of the Connecticut Young Writers Trust, on the faculty of the first international MFA Program at City University of Hong Kong and an Associate Professor of English at CCSU.
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0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By M.E. Mali
Format:Paperback
Most of the poems in Deepening Groove are comprised of detailed observations of nature in tercets and 4 stanzas (12 lines total), with titles like, "Buzzards," "Ants," and "Tomato." It's incredible what Shankar can pack into such tight spaces. Attention to detail, image, metaphor, music, and meter come together to widen out into reflections on humanity, the natural world, relationships, even politics. Several poems break the pattern, by being longer or in a different form, so that it never becomes monotonous. Here's one of my favorite parts, which speaks to the all-encompassing quality of Shankar's mind, the ending of "Before Monsoon":
a garland wallah doing brisk business
selling lotus flowers in an alleyway damp
with fresh urine. How the city points out
evidence of a seamless continuum:
heavens, earth, underworld--conjoint.
Most of the book is set in New England where the poet lives. Listen to the music of the first stanza of "Willard Pond":
Across the pine-fringed pond, a loon croons
once, twice, easily three times it fills the air
with half-laugh, half-warning. Beautiful & alien
And this line from "Dust," a poem that moves from under the dresser to comets to this ending: "mote chanced to be born, like us."
I very much enjoyed the poems in this book and look forward to reading it again and again, and to looking at the world around me with more attention as a result. Pick up this book. You won't regret it.
a garland wallah doing brisk business
selling lotus flowers in an alleyway damp
with fresh urine. How the city points out
evidence of a seamless continuum:
heavens, earth, underworld--conjoint.
Most of the book is set in New England where the poet lives. Listen to the music of the first stanza of "Willard Pond":
Across the pine-fringed pond, a loon croons
once, twice, easily three times it fills the air
with half-laugh, half-warning. Beautiful & alien
And this line from "Dust," a poem that moves from under the dresser to comets to this ending: "mote chanced to be born, like us."
I very much enjoyed the poems in this book and look forward to reading it again and again, and to looking at the world around me with more attention as a result. Pick up this book. You won't regret it.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful
By angel5
Format:Paperback
Deepening Groove, by Ravi Shankar is a classic. In these days of machinary and mundane chores creeping in on us every day, talented writers are rare! Computer jobs fil up our pockets but we need more than money to fill up our intellect. The cover design is also superb. I strongly recommend this stimulating book of poems to anyone!
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