The Alphabet of Aliens<\/em> In his previous books, Sabyasachi Nag utilized carefully crafted free-verse poetry with very standard line breaks. His words were often startling, and the content lent itself to careful contemplation. In his newest book, The Alphabet of Aliens, he writes almost exclusively in prose poetry, each piece requiring several reads to absorb unique and often troubling imagery.<\/p>\n The word \u201calien\u201d is used three times in the early part of the poem, \u201cThe Alien Fear\u201d: \u201c…the alien is scared of the heart’s inevitable collapse\u201d; \u201c…corn, cut in halves by the alien green, angled to the horse hooves in the alien sky\u2026\u201d.<\/p>\n This forced me to recall and research various definitions of the word: strange, foreign, exotic, and extraterrestrial. As I considered which definition the author was going for in any particular instance, it occurred to me that more than one might apply to any case. It also made me question who and what is alien.<\/p>\n We are led into the end of the poem with a universally relatable passage: \u201c…they don\u2019t want to be lonely again, because their loneliness has no limits,…because their history burned a hole into the heart and the blue morning is like turned milk and hurt is the only resting place until afternoon.\u201d Acedia, the ennui of noon which brings utter desolation and destroys hope for the rest of the day, becomes a respite from the sourness of the day\u2019s beginning.<\/p>\n In \u201cOnce I Boarded a Spice Train\u201d, the second line reads. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a dream\u201d. This sets us up for a recounting of a history hard to digest. \u201cThe marble mausoleums were real and the museums crammed with objects of art\u2026were still being separated from the dirt excavated out of ancient pits.\u201d Entire civilizations have been commodified, artefacts rendered to mere curiosities, leaving death and destruction in their wake.<\/p>\n There is a brilliant dream sequence as a sort of intermission in this piece, preceded by the narrator depicting views of dancing women and scarecrows from the window of the train. \u201cAnd in the face of their sudden beauty, when I stopped the train and fell on my knees and begged to be saved, the dancing women among the scarecrows said nothing. Not a word when I took one of them in embrace or tied myself in chains around another\u2013its straw body crackling as if it was tickled to laughter even as I drowned myself in tears laced with mood music.\u201d<\/p>\n Soon afterwards, the second line of the poem is repeated: \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a dream. Because the flaming rivers clogged with dead shadows were real, and the volcanoes festering with unclaimed blood flowed everywhere\u2026\u201d. The results of colonialism are stated clearly and with the descriptive powers of the worst nightmare.<\/p>\n The final line: \u201cAnd when the train reached its final destination, I found iceballs dipped in crushed rainbow.\u201d The dream of the pot of gold waiting for newcomers to the Western world has been broken and mixed with remnants of condensation from the frozen north.<\/p>\n \u201cAt a gathering for Long Life\u201d begins with the menu prepared for a banquet: \u201c…salt-crusted salmon was being baked with blood orange, pasta boiled in the blood of oysters\u2026\u201d The reader is situated in taste bud-provoking combinations. Then, the poet turns slant the image of blood.<\/p>\n \u201cOutside\u2026birches with peeled skin stood vigil like rigid anglers in bucket hats reeling in the sun. When the sun slipped in a pool of blood everyone got back in\u2026\u201d. The misidentifiable gore of the imagery is only enhanced by its brilliance, as bright as the setting sun, from which you cannot look away.<\/p>\n Later, in one marvelous sentence, we see a guest occupying themselves with the parlour game of wink murder, another by strumming a guitar, while a third attempts to interrupt the musical interlude with a discussion about the design of a slaughterhouse for sheep. Perhaps not a seafood and pasta fan.<\/p>\n Nag makes the mundane eventful, the surreal commonplace, reality into fantasy and fantasy into reality. The Alphabet of Aliens has something to offer to anyone who will give the attention deserved to cunningly told fable mixed with deeply personal insights, while also having a sense of humour.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Poetry Review The Alphabet of Aliens by Sabyasachi Nag Mawenzi House ISBN: 978-1-77415-201-0 120 pages, $11.99 – $20.95 In his previous books, Sabyasachi Nag utilized carefully crafted free-verse poetry with very standard line breaks. His words were often startling, and the content lent itself to careful contemplation. In his newest book, The Alphabet of Aliens, he writes almost exclusively in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4974,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4955"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5354,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4955\/revisions\/5354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mtls.ca\/issue28\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nby Sabyasachi Nag
\nMawenzi House
\nISBN: 978-1-77415-201-0
\n120 pages, $11.99 – $20.95<\/p>\n