Indran Amirthanayagam’s newest poetry book “The Runner’s Almanac” is a creatively expressed mosaic of feelings, passions, and deep thoughts woven around his real-life experiences and expectations, taking the readers along on his odyssey.
A known poetic presence on the contemporary literary scene, Amirthanayagam candidly deals with the timeless themes of life, love, relations, and perceptions. Indeed, some of the poems represent sincerely penned accounts of his life to the extent that the poet appears to be delineating them on the borders of poetry and ingenuous storytelling.
Probably, the most striking feature that a first reading of the poems reveals is that the poet shares his diverse and complex experiences in a straight-shooting yet modern individualistic energetic writing style. The poems treat both personal and everyday experiences with a scheme of words intelligible to even first-time readers of his work.
At the same time, there is well-orchestrated imagery that permeates the collection such as the recurring metaphors that lend the book a thematic unity and enrich the readers with a tapestry of the poet’s views on the past and current dimensions of his story.
Take, for instance, the poems where Amirthanayagam talks about his faith and care for his mother. The two factors shed light on how they shape his outlook on the vicissitudes of life.
In the poem The Dream, he says:
“I write verses to express myself. I can cry out loud walking in the woods, or buy canvas and make a crude painting in primary colors. I can sing, dance before the mirror listening to the radio from Rio. So thank you God!”
In another poem God Walking, Amirthanayagam says”
You think God does not exist,
or if he does that he has gone
missing? I tell you.
you are wrong. I tell you
God is walking towards me now. This morning
I saw him wearing white,
my son arriving at National
airport, my mother dressed
to the nines, in green
batik blouse, green pantsuit
walking out of the house
with a cane. No more
walker. Not today…
However, it is the enigmatic title of the work “The Runner’s Almanac” that evokes a multitude of possible meanings, inviting readers to interpret it their different ways. Amirthanayagam’s assimilation of cultures and traditional values and modern poetic expression makes his poetry taste like a savory soup cooked with a secret recipe of spices.
Who is the runner, and what is the kind of almanac we are to discover in this somewhat prosaic-sounding title of a poetic work?
Well, the two interlinked questions get some of the answers in the poems. All the same, the metaphors, particularly the runner, leave room for readers to take joy in musing about them from different perspectives.
The book sets the introduction to the runner in the first poem, “The Runner’s Almanac.”
The runner runs in my blood, in my mind
and heart; feeds from light and water,
wind and fire; recites recipes for food
I prepare, dreams I inhabit, books
I choose to bring to term. The runner
is a sign in the sky, a voice inside
the skin, a phrase in a poem. The runner
carries two x chromosomes to my x
and y but is not opposed, shares
the enterprise.
Yet, in other poems, the runner sometimes appears to be the muse, the conscience, and the very life of the poet’s intellectual, emotional, and spiritual existence. The collection becomes a love song to dynamism.
The metaphors and symbols the poet employs range from running to frequently used activities like walking and a river to a bridge. They offer many connotations in space and time. The runner could be the heart and soul of the poet, the throbbing heart itself, the restless soul, and the driving force of life. Together both the running and the walking activities represent life’s dynamism, a flow of things in the cosmos that has been in a constant state of flux.
Similarly, the poems titled after the color blue have fascinating symbolic meanings.
Through the autobiographical verses, Amirthanayagam connects some important links of his life that stem from his cosmopolitan citizen outlook, from early life in Sri Lanka to the United States, from the U.S. to other parts of the world as a diplomat, and now an anchor poet and publisher in Washington D.C. area.
