2.8 Small Towns and Rivers (Appreciation)

 

English Poem Appreciations 12th HSC Board
Section Two (Poetry)

Unit 2.8

Small Towns and Rivers

Small Towns and Rivers

                                     - Mamang Dai

Small towns always remind me of death.

My hometown lies calmly amidst the trees,

it is always the same, 

in summer or winter,

with the dust flying, 

or the wind howling down the gorge.

Just the other day someone died.

In the dreadful silence we wept

looking at the sad wreath of tuberoses.

Life and death, life and death,

only the rituals are permanent.

The river has a soul.

In the summer it cuts through the land

like a torrent of grief. Sometimes,

sometimes, I think it holds its breath

seeking a land of fish and stars

The river has a soul.

It knows, stretching past the town,

from the first drop of rain to dry earth

and mist on the mountaintops,

the river knows

the immortality of water.

A shrine of happy pictures

marks the days of childhood.

Small towns grow with anxiety

for the future.

The dead are placed pointing west.

When the soul rises

it will walk into the golden east, 

into the house of the sun.

In the cool bamboo,

restored in sunlight,

life matters, like this.

In small towns by the river

we all want to walk with the gods.

                                   - Mamang Dai

Q.  With the help of the following points, write a poetic appreciation of the poem      'Small Towns and Rivers.'

• About the poem/poet and the title

• The theme

• Poetic style

• The language/ poetic devices used in the poem    

• Special features

• Message, values, morals in the poem

• Your opinion about the poem

 

Appreciation of the poem :-

Small Towns and Rivers

The title indicates that the poem is related to nature. The poem is written by Mamang Dai, who is also a novelist, journalist and former civil servant from Itanagar, she writes in English as well as in Adi language. This poem is taken from the collection of the poems,  ' The River Poems', published in 2004.

The theme shows in the way she begins the poem that small towns remind her of death. It is shocking. She implies the town is unchanging in all weathers, but development comes along and changes everything. The poem describes a landscape and nature where river is a dominant phenomenon. The poetess finds that even life and death are transient, but the nature and rituals are permanent, the poetess has expressed anxiety at the developments in the small towns. The towns, she implies, have prospered when nature has been destroyed. It is a nature poem, but with a difference that while celebrating nature around her hometown, the poet also laments the destruction of that nature to make way for the lifeless small towns along the river. The poem contains seven stanzas of unequal length and it is written in free verse. The lines are short and the verses are lucid. The poetic devices used in the poem are Alliteration, Antithesis, Personification, Metaphor, Euphemism, Repetition, Transferred Epithet, Simile, Onomatopoeia. The depiction of towns during the summer and winter seasons adds to the visual Imagery in the poem.

We can all feel the sorrow of the poetess when we read about how nature's beauty is damaged for man's greed, which is euphemistically called 'progress'. I like the poem because it is interesting read and for its curious mix of the positive and negative aspects.

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