PoetryMagazine.com
Since 1996 Volume XXI

Reviews

A touch, a tear, a tempest by Sanober Khan
by Mary Barnet

Genre : Poetry
(Cyberwit, 2012)
ISBN: 978-81-8253-206-9
Rs : 200

 

Sanober Khan celebrates the poem. In the first poem of this book “A touch, a tear, a tempest” we find in Poetic Toast :

To moments,
That deserve...
profound poems

She also celebrates nature equally with the every day lives of humanity and Sanober writes in the same poem Poetic Toast :

To the oceans,
That deserve the balletic dance
of the sun

And, as well, celebrates all the mortal human world with her view of the common man :

To the labourers,
Who deserve ice-tea breaks
And a permanent house to come home to

Discussing Life and Death in I Wouldn’t Mind she faces loss of life :

I wouldn’t mind...
if life left me...

wingless

Then in the same wonderful poem (page 17) :

but I would cry with head held in my hands
if it left me...

unfulfilled.

Following another train of thought she considers in the poem Predicament (page 21) the secure experience versus the free and more stimulating experience. She compares

long drives
in the star-spangled deserts
or long walks
along winding tea gardens

Finally she ends this poem by asking

and how can I possibly decide
what is more beautiful

 

moments that I try to preserve,
inside my fragile pages, like painted snowflakes
or the ones that I have yet to live

the wonder...
in a deliriously happy baby's eyes

Her joy in living is simple and all-encompassing as in Sometimes The Rain (page 40)

Simply to salute...
The sheer joy

Of being
Alive.

But this Poet is a realist and the last poem in this wonderful book is called Everything I’ll Leave Behind :

Out of all the things I’ll leave behind
I will miss the silence of the tears I cried,
For everything I had, for everything I couldn’t
For everything I did, for everything I didn’t
For everything I was, for everything I wasn’t

For everything that lived, and everything that died
And for everyone I loved....more than my life.

Sanober Khan is a Mumbai-based poet and freelance writer. Her work has been published in many journals. This is her first book. “A touch, a tear, a tempest” was shortlisted in 2012 for the Muse India National Literary Awards. Her other books  “Turquoise Silence” and “A Thousand Flamingos” are well known. She has read her poems around the world.

In all her poetry Sanober Khans words are delicate, eloquent and wise. I suggest you buy “A touch, a tear, a tempest” and read every word.

 

By Mary Barnet

Copyright 2017, Mary Barnet
All Rights Reserved.
86 Sonnets for the 21st Century (Casa de Snapdragon, 2015) ;
The New American : Selected Poems (Cyberwit, 2006) ;
Arrival (Casa de Snapdragon)
Editor-in-Chief for 20 years of PoetryMagazine.com

 



review 1        review2          review 3          review 4         review 5
HOME

Mary Barnet

Andrena
Zawinski


Grace Cavalieri

Joan Gelfand

Janet Brennan

Reviews

Video

Podcasts

Submissions

Advertising