Life

I had a privilege to meet poet Ram Prasad Bisoi, a man of great humility and enthusiasm during my visit to Bhuwaneshwar on 4th March 2018. Bisoi kindly offered to email me some of his poems for my reading which I not only enjoyed with a sense of fulfillment, but it also made me contemplate on the common spirit of the creative people across the world.And it is no surprise that his poems to a large extent helped me find an answer to it. For an instance, in his title poem from his collection Life, The Splendor the poet very particularly writes, “I live my life of my own choice”. This motive is just an open secret. This sense of freedom is at the core of our creative endeavors which recurrently appears in Bisoi’s poetry. The poet seems to be aware of the mechanization of our lives. But the story doesn’t end there. He smells something uncanny. And his wrath comes louder through his words. “Let machine prevail”, he writes in his poem titled “Consciousness”.In the time when we are more assured by the artificial intelligence of the robots than in the creative human minds, he questions what is important: technological advancement or the human consciousness? Bisoi’s poems are not only commentary on social evils of modern times. Many of his poems celebrate the aesthetics of our social designs, nature and humanity. In a poem titled “The Lady Hawk”, the poet readily praises the movements of a lady hawk who declares herself to be the “master of my moments”. But we can see that there are some contradictions in Bisoi’s poems. On the one hand, he depicts a very contemplative mood and on the other, he rejoices the art of living in the present. But this contradiction is very natural and valid. We live in such a complex psycho-social scape that we all undergo a situation what the poet calls “psycho-shizo-effective crisis” in his poem “My Insanity”. The crisis of living in the present time is well-reflected in his poem “Love, The Predator”. What an oxymoron! What a contradiction! But only such contradictions can help us explain the kind of life we live now where the gods are in the battle field, and our lovers are all set to stab us with their knives. Who will be savior then? Who are we to be assured with? These are the questions clearly indicating the most unreslovable crises that we have now. So, we tend to doubt ourselves. Probably, what we live is just a shadowy existence. And poet Bisoi is consciously witnessing these crises through his poems. Keshab Sigdel Poet and Critic,Central Department of English Tribhuvan University, Kathmandu Ram Prasad Bisoi's poems, Life, The Splendor , elicit a different thought process. Aptly portraying the dilemma ofa modern day human in crisis in the turbulence of sociopolitical turmoil it underlines the quintessential conflict inherent in every human," A Search for Self". The poems flow in free verse, with pauses that leave one pondering about life while assimilating the thoughts of the poet. From generalized emotions to specific individual experiences, the poems presentthoughts in beautiful expressions. Ranjit K. Sahu USA Mr. Ram Prasad Bisoi is the wonderful bilingual poet of Odisha. His creativity has his own place in the literary world. This is the first time I've had the privilege to write a blurb about my most favorite poet's anticipated book of this year. I have loved poetry like him since childhood, have many poems in it, have written some, won a few contests, published a couple. I know that he won’t have to tackle the sometimes indecipherable, complex, modern poems that put many off poetry. I know both the power of a good blurb and the equally potent effect of a good name on the back of a book. Normally, this is probably sound advice, but I had a gut feeling that anyone who agreed to write a blurb for me would remember. Yes, he has a vivid imagination. "I am the king-the sky with a bigger heart to accommodate the sickle moon” He writes with the faith that poetry is what matters, the making of a poem, & he’s attentive enough to see that when other people miss out. My surplus value attested to the surplus value promised by the project. Dr. Brajesh Kumar Gupta "Mewadev" Secretary-General of the World Union of Poets, Head Dept of English, Eklavya PG College, Banda, UP