Poems by Gopal Lahiri

Wasp and Filament is a thoughtfully curated collection of seventy-five poems, exploring a broad range of themes including meditation, ecological awareness, nature, urban environments, and surreal experiences.

The poems are arranged into five distinct sections, with titles such as Hibiscus Eyes and Renewal, Gossamers and Strands, Abundant Seeing, Urban Reverberations and Shorts which features concise poetic forms, including haiku and haibun, enriching the book’s textual variety.

These divisions are based primarily on tones, textures and resonances of the poems. As the readers go on reading, the poetic landscape suspends time and space and allow them to attune to the moments of seeing that perforate each day.

Through vivid imagery and layered metaphors, these poems conjure a rich and evocative poetic landscape. The verses traverse with a measured intensity, inviting readers to accompany the poet on a journey that is both introspective and outward-looking.

Evocative and soulful, the seventy-five poems in this collection reflect the collective threads of humanity and our quest for knowing the boundary between real and unreal across the uneven terrain of human existence. And they flow with a quiet ferocity urging readers to join in this poetic journey.

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“Here is my gift, not roses on your grave,” a Russian woman wrote long ago (In Memory of M. B.) on the death of a troubled, exalted man. The poem, indirectly—due to Soviet censorship and repression—emblematized the determination that the poem’s subject, Mikhail Bulgakov, maintained, despite the general despair that had taken hold after the Czar gave way to the commissars. And then an Indian man, in our own age of war and terror, responded with his own poem (Akhmatova, Are you still there?). Where her work was, by necessity and craft, oblique and understated, his is bold and vivid. The deaths come alive. By analogy, this is the effect that Gopal Lahiri affects throughout Wasp and Filament, his latest collection of poetry. He subtly transforms the mostly unnoticed ghosts that surround us into vivid, searing spirits that won’t be exorcized, while letting the reader fill their bones with personal imagination and invention. “No roses this time on the mass grave.” Read this book with your mind and eyes wide open.

Duane Vorhees

Poet and Critic