The first volume of Voyages is a collection of poetry that is perfect for the readers who feel they would not be able to understand complex flow of words and various figures of speech embedded in each poem. Debjeet Mukherjee has broken it down into several easy elements and simple words without, of course, taking away the beauty of poetry. You would find hidden meanings, as expected in any poetry, metaphors, and several parts that are open for interpretation.
To me, poetry is a form of art. Since any art is open for interpretation, same is the case with poetry. The poet may be singing praises of mountains; however, a listener (or a reader) may identify the metaphors with a determined man/woman. Half the fun in poetry is figuring out the poet’s intention in writing a particular piece. Nevertheless, for a lot of beginners, this gets extremely frustrating and overwhelming. Debjeet Mukherjee has helped this category of readers by adding a tidbit at the end of every poem, which provides a direction to the readers.
A constant rhyming scheme is evident in most of the poems, and these are the ones that touched my heart more than the ones where the rhyming scheme was not so clear. Certain poems reflect poet’s pain of losing his father; whereas, the others are about hope, friendship, love, and death. Each poem is quite different from the other one. The one may be about the loss of a loved one and the next one would talk saving the earth. It is quite refreshing to get so much variety. The joy of reading something beautiful was increased multi-fold due to this diversity.
These poems were absolutely divine to me: Heaven’s Face, Earth, Soul & The Flower, A Rose to Say Goodbye, Some Moments at the Train Station, Modern Anne, Frank. Sharing an extract from A Rose to Say Goodbye:
So one day when the little girl sleeps,
She wakes up again in measured weeps.
She finds that grandma is gone to a land,
Where roses will guide her every hand.
Owing to its simplicity, a Summary at the end of every poetry, and easy metaphors, I would recommend Voyages Volume 1 – A Collection of Poetry by Debjeet Mukherjee to the readers who are either beginners or who wish to enjoy poetry in all its beauty without being overwhelmed by all the complexities that the poetry is known to carry. They would get so much variety that they might start reading more poetry pretty soon.
Book cover credit: https://www.amazon.in/VOYAGES-Collection-Poetry-Debjeet-Mukherjee-ebook/dp/B07H4JJ47D
