Bird of the Indian Subcontinent Paperback – 1 Sept. 2018

The blurb on the Amazon web site lists literary sources for Subhashini Kaligotla's poems but mostly misses Kaligotla's frequent explicit references to art as a source: El Grego, Caravaggio, Bosch, natural enough for her as an art historian. The first poem in the collection is "Morning in a City: After Edward Hopper,' and Hopper and his haunting cityscapes might well be called the overreaching spirit of this exciting collection of Kaligotla's brooding search for the self. Intimacy cannot last, in "Fear of Flying:" "...the moment of mutual want/ that for her--on the outside peering in--/had been felt, acknowledged, and was now/ already past." Elsewhere physical closeness is a Platonic illusion, thrice removed from truth ("Reading Plato"). Christ, Krishna, Buddha flit in and out of these frustrated spiritual journeys. The final and longest poem in the collection, "The Lord's Prayer," is an extraordinary Job-like plea to God to do something--"What have you done for me lately?" Answer her, give her a sign, give her a silver Corvette! (cf. Janis Joplin). She taunts and mocks God, "Look at me, look at me, me, me, me!" and ends up with "call me lover, Call me, Call me LORD." The ambiguity of the syntax and message here is startling and lingers with me.