The musical quality of a poem becomes unimaginable, when duende surges through it. The field composition, placement of words, metrical calculation, pondering over the tunes, far-fetched images, wide range of deliberation, and powerful sensibility have given Santosh Kumar Pokharel’s poetic creation an ephemeral height. When there is a subconscious invocation to Muses in one’s mind, and when one also becomes
ready to express one’s sensibilities, an unworldly emotional overflow becomes very natural. The bestowal and reception must be simultaneous for a great creation. In this sense, creation emanates from unconsciousness to sub-consciousness (and then to consciousness?). Most of the creations from their very initial perception grow not in conscious reality, but in dreams. By their magnificence, Santosh Kumar Pokharel’s poems too seem to come from a dreamy and divine inspiration. Mr Pokharel is an engineer by profession and a poet by creative deliberation. Therefore, naturally, his poems are a blend of the art of engineering and the art of literary presentation. He amazingly balances between the structure and the flow of his imagination in his poems. On a cursory overview, I found Mr. Pokharel’s poems in five thematic categories. 1. Love, 2. Reminiscences, 3. Musings over the grandeur of nature, 4. Myths, and the use of mythological allusions and 5. His thought for peace against all kinds of abuses and offences. Poet Santosh in the Prologue “My Solemn Vow” expresses his apology in his intimate power for the capacity to express his thoughts and feelings. He says, “No grudge I have no complaints I woe I am full with whatever you did endow May keep your praise in verses wise And creep to your abode steady and slow” In “Love Platonic “the poet seems so emotionally driven to understand the inner voice of his beloved in the way as “It was her that she loved from inside.” From “She in her cold days” to “Inamorata”, he cannot stop himself from talking about his love and beloveds. Suddenly he is driven to the praise of nature in “Dordi Stream”. Further, he collects emotions from his reminiscences, and becomes nostalgic when he remembers his father, and finds himself with his daughter in a delightful mood. In his loneliness, he makes some swift moves from his life to the lives of other creatures, and compares his life somewhere with the flow of a river. He concentrates on the calm, continuous and majestic flow of a river, and applies the thought of “time, flux, and duration” with the flow of his own life. Sometimes, he moves to a very different dimension to talk about the civil violence and state violence, and wants the end of all inhumane activities for the establishment of freedom, peace and humanity. “To Boko Haram on the School Girls,” and “Stop Gaza War” are some of his appeals for peace and justice, and his contempt for crime, cruelty and injustice. In the “Hail the Aryan Race” he is concerned about myth and history of the Aryans. The history of the Aryan race is profusely rich; however it is in the peril in the recent days. All poems are short lined, brief and musical. No apparent breaks, Hemistich and Polyptoton are marked. All objects used in the poems are in one way or the other symbolic, and have a large possibility for wide academic interpretations. Some comparisons like “She a Wizard” render very unusual images, and have the metaphysical qualities. In his love poems he sounds more like John Donne and Andrew Marvell than like Shelley and Keats. In his nature poems he is like Thomas Hardy instead of like Blake, Coleridge and Wordsworth. He does not simply appreciate nature, but also thinks over its fate and sufferings. In his reminiscences, he wants to revive his past for his bliss and happiness, but quickly realizes that the days of innocence are gone, and there is no compensation of them by the moments of and so-called maturity and experience. From his poetic spectrums, I feel that he is a perfect genius, and he has to have more creative outbursts in the days to come. I wish him a very productive career ahead.

Rajan Prasad Pokharel (PhD),

Professor of English at TU, Patan Multiple Campus.