In a review of Chicago-based poet and translator Daniel Borzutzky바카라s 2021 poetry collection Written After a Massacre in the Year 2018 (Coffee House Press), the poetry editor at the New Yorker, Hannah Aizenman invoked the German playwright Bertolt Brecht for something that he seems most famous for nowadays, in the age of social media바카라his epigram, which goes as follows:
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will be singing.
About the dark times.
Aizenman writes that people share it 바카라as a token of hope, a testament to the human spirit바카라s eternal resilience. But it also articulates the stultifying effects of [the] crisis on the imagination. 바카라 [Brecht] was less interested in song as a source of relief than in its power to awaken an audience바카라and provoke a reckoning.바카라
Two takeaways from what Aizenman reflects. First, in trying times, imagination fails everyone, including바카라and surely바카라artists, too. Second, regardless of the oppression that comes in their way, artists must create artforms바카라to register their dissent, to warn people of an eventuality that바카라s lost on them, to give a ray of hope. That바카라s precisely what Hamraaz바카라s poetry collection, Yes, There Will Be Singing (Context, an imprint of Westland)바카라a perfect blow to the state-sponsored oppression바카라does.
The word Hamraaz바카라s origin is Persian. It means a friend, companion, a secret holder. Why would someone choose this pseudonym, I wondered, for, of course, given what Hamraaz explores in the collection is not a secret anymore. But as I sifted through this collection, it was obvious to note the signs of grief peppered throughout, making me conclude that who else do you need to confide in you or whom do you turn to unburden yourself and speak the unspeakable reality but a friend.
Divided into nine sections, the structure enables the poems in this collection to deftly encapsulate the paranoia of our recent past and present times. Be it the anti-CAA-NRC protests in Shaheen Bagh, Jantar Mantar, and India Gate or be it the successive waves of the coronavirus pandemic, each recollection sends a chill down one바카라s spine.
Sample the maiden poem바카라In the Beginning. Its end powerfully conveys how the everyday, harmless greeting Jai Shree Ram has now metastasised into a clarion call for violence, an act of vocalising one바카라s stand, a commitment towards a political party in particular and what they believe in. Then, 20 December: Rising does what any form of art does. Dedicated to Chandrashekhar Azad, the co-founder and president of the Bhim Army, its culmination reminds those intoxicated by power 바카라that neither police nor army바카라/ nor the devil himself // can turn back the sea / when it rises.바카라 This makes this poem a confluence of hope, consolation, and warning. On the other hand, Beyond the Horizon reads like news바카라a duty any poem or any art form should perform when disseminators of news, in collusion with the state and corporates, decide to not serve the public they should.
Furthermore, there are some clever spin-offs in this collection that help demonstrate Hamraaz바카라s craft of balancing what must be said and what should readers be made to think about. Sample these: 바카라We read of atrocities daily; no one is watching the watchmen바카라 바카라바카라 Then, this, 바카라Let바카라s audit the PM: how much does he care?바카라
While there is an umpteen number of such poems, We Must Insist on Saying Unspeakable Things is an exacting response towards this phenomenon one observes when dissent is silenced and language gets hijacked, and, in turn, begins empowering the oppressor. In such a scenario, instead of employing a 바카라measured language바카라, the author wants us to speak as-is for anything besides that would be, as they conclude, equivalent to telling lies. This reminded me of something I had observed in the Paris Review by Richard Wilbur: 바카라One of the jobs of poetry is to make the unbearable bearable, not by falsehood but by clear, precise confrontation.바카라
Thus, from invoking the grief-stricken and helpless state of the people under the government바카라s neglect in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic to remembering the crackdown on activists, artists, and intellectuals who stood up for the ethos of this country to the farmers바카라 protest and everyday activism, Hamraaz chronicles an array of penultimate movements in the country바카라s history with empathy, rage, responsibility, and, above all, with love and care.
Through these poems, the poet not only dares to express but also encapsulates in their creation a language for fighting what seems an impossible바카라and most definitely바카라unequal fight. Therefore, Yes, There Will Be Singing is also an elegy, a reminder lest we forget.
Still, those unconvinced can try this: In Life of Galileo, Brecht writes, 바카라Unhappy the land where heroes are needed.바카라 Not only is Brecht바카라s choice of words clever and economical, but the timing of his work바카라s creation is also crucial. It was 1943. And Brecht was signalling a possibility that wasn바카라t far away from materialising. Which did. Eventually. And how did it happen? To neutralise universal brotherhood, Nazi Germany invented an idea to distinguish between Übermen (superior beings) and Üntermensch (inferior beings).
The charismatic leader had called for people to self-identify as heroes and partner with him in his attempt to sanitise the country and create an army of only Übermen, the pure, Aryan race. With this story, a falsehood, he managed to mobilise people, and, most importantly, kill Jews as the world watched, stunned in silence. In that deafening silence, which reverberates even today, Brecht바카라s words were screaming from the rooftops, provoking a reckoning, as Aizenman notes. Hamraaz isn바카라t doing anything different. The question, however, is whether you바카라re paying attention, acting or choosing to look away.
(Saurabh Sharma is a Delhi-based queer writer and freelance journalist)
