A review by anushree
3 Sections: Poems by Vijay Seshadri

4.0

And days afterward, after I have felt the curious release from being human
that these faces give me, and have been
drowned in them and resurrected and drowned again
on the verge of some other sleep, I will be sitting at a meeting
or on the subway,
or in the Greek coffee shop around the corner where I sometimes eat breakfast,
and someone will give me a look, and I will look back
at his or her face and think, Didn't I see that in a trance?
And I did, I did, I did see it in a trance.

4.5 stars. A delighted find after searching Pulitzer Prize winners, stopping after seeing a South Asian name. The poems parse the mind-blowing aspects of existence into the most precise definitions and pieces, from the manufacturing of silk to the almost frenetic energy of Personal Memoir, which takes the unspeakable and unknowable and somehow makes it into prose concrete.

Threes are everywhere- three persons, three apocalyptic visions, three Urdu poems, three sections. The style weaves together the mundane and extraordinary, proclaiming them to be the same. I loved the straightforward writing of Pacific Fishes of Canada, which both gave me chills but also provided a contrast to the rest of the collection, showing me how exactly poetry uses its outsized style to create sentiment. Definitely took some effort to read, though. Still grappling with the technicalities of reading poetry.