Mid-Term Assignment - Ways of Reading- Rashi Bareja

1. Write two poems, each in the voice of any historical or mythological character of your choice. You may want to choose a particular moment in that character's life and attempt to explore how they would respond to that moment. 

i) Vincent Van Gogh-  Vincent Van Gogh was a Post-Impressionist painter whose paintings have been one of the most influential works in the history of Modern art. In this poem, I have tried to focus on various aspects( mainly mental illness) of his life. 

Remembering Vincent// 

On some days, how I wish the prostitute

knew that I loved her when

I gave her my ear. 

On some days, I am my words

of hope and on others,

I’m my own 

suicide letter.

They often ask 

how did I go from

a man who was perfectly fine

to someone who became

suicidal in six weeks.

I mumble subtly,

life can do the 

worse things to you and

you can just 

stare at those

terrible things.

I ate a lot of yellow

paint today

hoping, 

believing,

Yellow

would take away

all my life

which is all black and white.

Only, it couldn’t. 

So I turned to the sunflowers. 

Sunflowers 

always made me

happy but,

I guess, all the force 

of the universe wanted

me to do what

I’m going to do now. 

They always say how

Art

can save people from dying.

I wish they knew, 

Art will always

save people, it always has. 

Only, it couldn’t

save the 

artist this time.

Dear Van Gogh, 

I wish I could repeat Shahid Sahib’s 

“Mad heart, be brave”

every time 

even yellow couldn’t 

make you happy. 

We live in a strange world where people lose

hope faster than anything.

Because when loss happens, 

eating yellow paint

doesn’t work

and nor does staring at the sky

which looks like your painting like The Starry Night 

When loss happens, 

All your words of hope

don't ring a bell in our ears 

But you said that 

“One morning the wind turns, and there’s a thaw and so I must still have hope."

So nowadays, hope looks

like your painting

Blossoming Almond Tree

and most of the days, hope looks

like poetry and art 

But sometimes, 

I wish your mad heart

was brave like Shahid,

and your art had

saved you

like it has been saving us 

day 

after

day. 

ii) Bishan Singh- Toba Tek Singh is a short story by Saadat Hasan Manto where a man called Bishan Singh is in the quest of finding his home after partition. My poem talks about the aftermath of partition on Bishan Singh. 

 

I haven’t slept

a wink in 15 years, 

because there’s a

question I haven't

got an answer to. 

I have repeated the

question over and over again,  

such that, my words have

reduced to gibberish and

language seems to 

break down so every time I

end up speaking, 

Uper the gur gur the annexe the be dayana mung the dal of Toba Tek Singh. 

I often feel that the

God I pray to sometimes

is a Muslim God, 

Had it been a Sikh God, 

I wouldn’t end up speaking 

Uper the gur gur the annexe the be dayana mung the dal of Toba Tek Singh everytime I asked 

Where is Toba Tek Singh?

Fazal is speaking to me right now, 

Telling me about... well something...

His words aren’t registering in my mind. 

All I can think about is 

Toba Tek Singh.

I repeat the same question again. 

It’s ironic how a sane man doesn’t

have an answer to a lunatic’s question. 

They call me

a lunatic. They have put me

in a mental asylum. They don’t know

that my identity is at stake. 

For them, Partition was a dividing line. 

For me, it’s a line that has rendered me homeless. 

I can’t find my home... 

Uper the gur gur the annexe the be dayana mung the dal of Toba Tek Singh 

I am hearing a faint

voice that is telling me that Toba Tek Singh is in Pakistan. 

NO! NO! 

It seems that the answer for which I was living for is answered now. I can feel myself 

disintegrating. 

There are two wires. 

Behind one, lay... 

In..dia... 

Behind other, lay... 

Pa..kistan... 

in a no man’s land 

lay.. 

Uper the gur gur the annexe the be dayana mung the dal of 

Toba Tek 

Singh... 

2- Write two poems where each poem has at least two deliberate line-breaks using any of the "Wagner’s six S’s: speed, sound, syntax, surprise, sense, and space." In a small note after each poem, explain your usages of these line-breaks. 

i) An Ode to Dead Writers//

Virginia Woolf left

a suicide note to

Leonard Woolf before

she killed herself. 

The note said, “ If anybody could have saved me,

it would have been you.”

But in reality, even he

couldn’t really save her. 

The last line of her letter read 

“I don’t think two people

could have been happier than

we have been.” 

And that was the last time

she felt happy. 

She fought sadness as much as

she craved for it. 

And in the last, she couldn’t

take it anymore and therefore

she drowned herself. 

She stuffed stones in her

pockets before

drowning herself because maybe

she didn’t want

to be found at all. 

Her whole life had been a series of 

mental breakdowns to which

the doctors suggested

‘rest cure’: something which made

no sense to her. 

In the 19th century, doctors didn’t

understand completely how dangerous

mental illness could be, and this problem 

still exists in the 21st century.

But people have actually

killed themselves because

of mental illness. 

Sylvia Plath killed herself by

putting her head

in the oven. 

Things should have been pretty clear to everyone when she wrote in Lady Lazarus, “ I have done it again. One year in every ten. I manage it- "

Maybe she wanted to escape

Grief. 

But grief comes back to you when

you try to escape it. It comes back to you

especially then. 

 

Maybe we won’t be able to

eradicate mental illness

completely, but we can try. 

Murakami said that,

" Human beings in their final analysis have to survive on their own.” 

So maybe we can

start from ourselves because

the only person who’d be with 

us until the very end is 

the person who

stares you back when 

you look into the mirror. 

We can try and not 

let our mind control

us 

every single time. 

That way,

Maybe

we can save a Sylvia Plath.

That way,

Maybe 

we can save

a Virginia Woolf

from killing herself. 

Note- I tried to use the surprise element that Wagner talked about in this poem. I wanted to create some sort of suspense, especially in the beginning as to why Woolf wrote the letter and to whom and also in the part where I talked about another writer who performed the same act as Woolf. I tried using the syntax element towards the end where I broke the sentences in parts to give emphasis to certain words; especially 'maybe' and ' we can save' to give them certain weight of their own. 

ii) An Odd Beauty//

I am the girl who has been told that

she is beautiful but made feel that 

she is not. 

For too long, I’ve been wearing

the face of insecurity. 

You see, even Darcy couldn’t find Elizabeth handsome enough

to tempt him. 

But was that the point of it all? To tempt someone?Is that even worth it?

People would always have a

shining board of

validation in their hands, telling you, 

You could be a little broader

from the hips, 

A little wider from the bottom,

A little taller because

that’s the way he’d like it.

How about I ask you to be

what you are because 

that’s the way you have always been? 

How about I ask you not to

give up cigarettes because you think

society would look you 

in the eye and 

call you

a whore? 

How about I ask you to be yourself? 

Save yourself the pain and stop

being with people who make

you feel you are not enough.

Stop quoting Faiz's verses to someone

whose eyes never gleam when you

recite your favorite line. 

Stop painting your nails in

their favorite color and stop

coloring your lips in darker shades. 

Stop chasing

everything for a while

and let it come to you. 

Stop, 

For 

A 

While. 

Because you my dear, are

a universe that’s

complete in itself.

So next time when 

people would hold a

validation board in their hands, have enough audacity to 

smile on your 

imperfections and walk

away because 

You are beautiful 

You

are

beautiful.

Note-  In this poem, I have used line breaks by using Wagner's sense element where I wanted the whole meaning of the poem to be as clear, especially when the speaker talked about the idea of not changing oneself according to others. I have also repeated some words like 'stop' to add meaning to the sense that I wanted to create. The last line, 'you are beautiful' is repeated twice using different line breaks to lay emphasis on the importance of 'you' and to lend weight to the idea that I wanted to put forward. 

3. Write two poems, each using repetition of a word or a phrase. Think of our classroom discussion where we realized how repetition achieves different effects, whether it be lending weight, creating irony, exploring multiple meanings of the same word or phrase, among others.  

i)Of November and Homes 

When I was shifting to

another home this year, I realized that

Home was more than a

four letter word. 

Passenger sings Home is

where the heart is , 

It would be an understatement if I say,

I’d not felt at Home

for a long time because 

for me, Home is more than a

four letter word. 

Sometimes, it is the feeling 

you get after looking at the sky which 

looks nothing less than a painting. 

Home for me is a feeling, not a

four letter word

and it would be an understatement

if I say

I haven’t felt at Home

for a long time. 

We both are sitting beside each other but

universes apart in our Home, 

Today is the 6th anniversary of

our marriage and the day we bought this 

Home. 

And now I understand why 

we should not make Homes

out of skin and bones. 

Our Home is almost empty today, 

just like it was 6 years ago. 

Only, 6 years before Home was a 

four letter word, 

And now it’s an empty space

with loss spilling over every brick. 

So when I say that I haven’t 

felt Home in a long time, 

It is because we were slow dancing

in a burning room all this while without

even knowing how. 

Home, 6 years before was just

a four letter word 

Home, 4 years before was a 

space where each brick reeked of love 

Home, 2 years stopped being

a four letter word and 

became a feeling 

Home, is today empty just like our marriage. 

I once read in a book that it’s hard

to say goodbye to the place you’ve lived. It can be as hard as saying goodbye to a person.   

So it would be an understatement if I say, 

that I haven’t felt at Home

for a long time.  

Phil Kaye said that

if you repeat something

over and over again, it loses 

its meaning. 

Home 

Ho

Me 

H 

..

See, nothing. 

ii) 11:11

We miss 11:11

by three minutes

sitting on our porch, almost 

silent like unread books 

in a library, waiting for

numbers to set straight 

what we couldn’t. 

Sometimes I think of the 

weight we lend on the

stars to fulfill our wishes. 

So when the clock strikes 

11:11, 

we stop writing poetry,

close our screens which 

have been blinking for hours, and  

close our eyes to

confess to the universe what we

couldn’t confess to humans. 

11:11:: a lifetime away 

I often find my neighbour

screaming at her husband, completely

helpless about the fact of

how love can be everything but

never be enough. 

So, every 11:11, she wishes

for a love which will stay. 

11:11 :: a lifetime away 

I see people at the temple 

praying with subtle hint of

tears in their eyes for a

loved one, hoping their loss 

would make sense to God. Only, sometimes,

it doesn’t. 

So they keep praying, every hour 

including 11:11 for a 

life of a human whom 

they love dearly. 

But, 11:11 :: a lifetime away. 

My friend often tells me

she needs to see a therapist. I ask her

if it’s because there’s no one

to listen to her. 

At dawn, she wishes for

someone who’d listen to her. Just listen. Because therapy is expensive. 

11:11 :: a lifetime away. 

A girl in my class keeps

making art as if

it’ll save her. When not making art, 

she reads books. Books; she says, 

will save her if 

11:11 couldn’t. 

She thinks 

it’s a lifetime away. 

My mother keeps

 a journal beside her and 

makes sure that she writes 

her wishes in it

everyday before sleeping. She says that 

the world isn’t a wish granting factory so she doesn’t believe in the

universe, because she believes

suffering isn’t optional and

 11:11 :: a lifetime away.