Usha Kishore's Night Sky Between the Stars, exploring stories of goddesses in Hindu mythology, is a powerful testament to female power and energy. She retells the stories of goddesses and places them in the milieu of everyday experiences of women. She writes about women planting trees, laughing, celebrating the birth of baby girls, all this despite misogyny. The baby girl "chuckling in her cradle" becomes the icon of the mother goddess; myth transformed into reality. In fact, Kishore's poems blur the line between myth and reality. For every creative venture to flourish, the universe depends on the goddesses. They are the rain makers--"As rice bowl / after rice bowl dries up in the blistering plains..."--and the truth tellers--"Do the hands that build nations, wreck them beyond repair?"
Invoking Sita and Mira, two goddesses who are separated from their spouses, the poet commands Sita: "Banish him, as he banished you," for Rama has not been her grand savior--"Arms of power / have pierced man's heart / and bled it to stone." Thus Kishore sums up her indictment against patriarchy--it is inscrutable and appears invulnerable.
Kishore manages interesting twists in her explorations, one being "Five Virgins"--Ahalya, Draupadi, Tara, Kunti, Mandodari, "star-crossed women" who "fan fires of revenge." They are fiery stars defying their fate. Kishore shows the underbelly of the myths that are presented traditionally as romantic, female power glossed over in the telling. Kishore's retelling brings the hidden powers of the goddesses-as-women to the foreground. The poet desires "to extol them," not to redeem herself but to enlighten us about their power.
Yet she does not abandon the strength of tradition that lend power to the female voice, as in "Kamakhya." It is the icon of Shakti, the mother goddess, whose yantra or iconography is the yoni or vagina, a triangle. In this concept poem, written in the form of the triangle, Kishore brings to life images of the goddess: she is "stone.../ incarnadined, fecund," "lush labyrinth of triangles," "fluid spring," "psychic song." Goddess and speaker merge in "My psychic song flows in your veins;" the elements enter the speaker and she is endowed with the richness of the cosmos, thus myth becomes demystified in "laden cloud," "twilight rain," "breath", "fertile hum," and inhabits the speaker composing the words.
In the ekphrastic poems, based on Raja Ravi Varma's paintings, Kishore pursues her quest to understand and reawaken within her and in her poetry the meta-stories of the goddesses. Ahalya's story does not end in her being transformed into stone; she awaits her transformation into "fluid feminine form." Thus Kishore seems to hold on to the hope of a changing patriarchal attitude toward women. Woman is also part of nature, as we see in the poem addressed to goddess Ganga ("Decent of Ganga"). Woman is not a fixed concept. She is not stone. She is fluid. Kishore asks,"who dares to bind her turbulent waters?" No one can break her spirit!
Kishore's language is flawless; she manages to wed Sanskrit lexicon and imagery with English meter, thus producing lyrical, limpidly flowing verse.
As a lover of Sanskrit poetry and Indian classical music, I am enthralled by Usha Kishore's use of these sources to create beautiful poetry in English. As a feminist, I relish Kishore's delving into Hindu tradition of a living goddess culture to show the path of feminist ideas.
Kishore's poems are a pleasure to read--they are sensual and intellectual at the same time, a rare combination.
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