Indian interest in Australian Poetry: Dr Anuraag
Sharma on the poetry of James Charlton
An Indian authority on Australian poetry, Dr Anuraag Sharma, who has translated Les Murray's Selected into Hindi, has written an article on the poetry of James Charlton. Dr Sharma is the head of the English Department at Dayanand College in the city of Ajmer. In addition to his translations, Dr Sharma has published a full-length study of Murray's poetry, as well as short stories, poetry and plays. Dr Sharma's interest in Charlton's book Luminous Bodies [Montpelier Press, 2002], is focused on the spiritual influences within the book. Part of the article is reproduced below.
Those of us with an interest in spirituality will recognize the mystical references throughout Charlton's book. His poetry is an alloy of paradoxes. The attempt to synchronize the opposites has resulted in a sort of hypothetical tension, which is both shocking and shamanistic. Shocking because it is deeply volitive and the reader expects some seasoned poetry from a poet running in his mid fifties. Shamanistic because the poet, so the collection impresses upon its readers, seems to poetically control the dualism of matter and reality with an enchanter's wand of non-dualistic vision. A poem like 'Absence' exemplifies this non-dualistic vision:
Your absence
holds the shape
of your face.
A mirror to itself and in itself is an absence until its reflecting space is filled by some shape or figure. However, both need each other for each other's existence. Quite remarkably, one imperfection is defined by another imperfection. And the poet, therefore, is content to say:
We sing
the joy
of imperfection,
the caress
of impermanence.
The concept of 'Brahma satyam, jagan mithya' (only Brahma is the Reality; the world is an illusion) is further strengthened by such concerns of the poet as:
Each of them,
a lamp;
each lamp
the embodiment
of one light.
The theological notion of interdependence (so well propounded by Buddhism) and of eternal impermanence form a part of the poetics of Charlton. His metaphysics is deeply rooted in his senses and perceptions.
And all the unpurchaseable luxuries
- beetles, thunder, pebbles, twigs -
whose lives say, simply,
I accept,
are hidden in each other
and hide all things.
A covert paradox in expressions like 'unpurchaseable luxuries' referring to the surrounding world of nature and of the non-human seems to bind the body poetic into a nuptial cord with sublime philosophy. 'Locating the marvelous in the ordinary', as noted on the cover, is yet another remarkable trait of Charlton's present collection. Images such as the following snap-shot of starlings nail down the momentary flicker on a dissection-tray of poetry with the microscopic lens of imagination unshuttered on top of it.
A gust of starlings
waddles the lawn.
An umbrella opens in a hurry.
A sine qua non of such visual and visionary perceptions is:
...all that matters is embodiment,
these envelopes of sense and soul.
To be faithful to the vision,
to the action.
All that matters
is the experience of communion,
unspeakable communion
in the silent depths.
Only with a gesture of surrender and with a sense of humility, can a poet
like James Charlton establish an unspeakable communion in the silent depths.
The communion is unspeakable but the experience is worth a thousand rebirths.
And a silent depths are the abode of 'Shantih' -- the peace which transcends
understanding. Journeying through Hindusim, Buddhism and Christianity, Charlton
seems to reach the henotheistic wisdom of the Vedic Rishis. Yet Luminous Bodies is
by no means a mulligatawny of false consolation, moral uplift or ego-enhancement.
It is a complete work of art, not excluding the book's high quality production
values. Charlton's art, in general, presents a Now and Here world, through
which and WITHIN which there yet exists possibilities of transcendence. There's
no doctrine propounded and no dogmatism. Yet Charlton manages to suggest an
experience, if not exactly the classical Indian rubric TAT TVAM ASI (Thou
Art That) then of an immanent Presence or presences. It's not a matter of
'believing'. It is more the acceptance or location of transcendence, and of
transformation, in the mirror of one's heart and then in the immediacy of
all relational, indeed creational, life.
Originally published in Famous Reporter, n.28, December 2003.
More reviews: Anne Kellas |: Judith
Beveridge |: Dr Anuraag Sharma |: Tim
Thorne |: Eleanora Court
© James Charlton | 