OUT OF SYLLABUS IBD

Sinopse

á&lsquo,Sumana Roy is one of the most original writers in Indian English today, whose writing easily slides out of the clutches of genres.&rsquo,&mdash,The Indian Express &lsquo,&ldquo,Every relationship is a long-distance relationship,&rdquo, we read in one of Sumana Roy&rsquo,s intriguing new poems. Out of Syllabus brilliantly anatomizes those relationships, viewing them from every disciplinary perspective: chemistry, physics, biology, geography, history, botany&mdash,and finally art. The result is a dazzling dissection of love, longing, and loss in all their conflicting moods and moments. Roy&rsquo,s images and metaphors are as enigmatic as they are precise. However private and personal her subjects, Roy maintains an aesthetic distance, wit and verbal control that recalls Sylvia Plath&mdash,but a Plath less angry, wiser&mdash,even philosophical. This is a very special book&mdash,one that deserves a wide readership.&rsquo, &mdash,Marjorie Perloff, Emeritus Professor, Stanford University &lsquo,Sumana Roy&rsquo,s wonderful book of poems, Out of Syllabus, combines rational ordering with the &ldquo,unreason&rdquo, of striking figures of speech. The rational ordering lies in the naming of sections as items in a comprehensive syllabus: &ldquo,History&rdquo,, &ldquo,Chemistry&rdquo,, &ldquo,Physics&rdquo, and so on. The striking figures of speech are everywhere in these poems. They give &ldquo,out&rdquo, in the book&rsquo,s title a negative as well as a positive meaning. These metaphors are often coupled to what they figure by way of a key word in Out of Syllabus: &ldquo,is.&rdquo, But you must read these powerful and challenging poems for yourself, dear reader, to get a feeling for what they are like and for what they mean as unique poetic experiences.&rsquo, &mdash,J. Hillis Miller, Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus, University of California at Irvine