Lyrical Landscapes of Dots and Streaks

Poet Ellora Mishra makes her debut as a book author with her collection of poetry titled ‘Dots and Streaks’. It is a part of Blogchatter ebook carnival and is available for free download.

Ellora hails from Odisha – the land of fine arts. She did her degree in Chemical Engineering from BITS Pilani, Rajasthan and MBA from XIMB, Bhubaneswar. After spending twelve years as a corporate banker she decided to take a creative break and thus we have this volume of poetry among many other things. She also blogs regularly at ‘Live Life to the Fullest‘.

The cover aptly portrays the contents of the book by its intricate design that includes the drawing of a human being in fine lines to signify that it is about the intricacies of human life.

Streak means a long, thin line or mark of a different substance or colour from its surroundings. Geometrically speaking a dot does not have any physical existence. It is just a point of reference. Poetry by its very nature tries to capture the elusive elements of life. In fact the intricate and elusive elements of of life which are felt but can never be precisely expressed are best expressed in poetry. Ellora’s poems provide us the insights without themselves being too elusive to our understanding.

The very first poem where time is compared to a palindrome takes our attention to the cyclic nature of life. I was intrigued by the author’s insights in ‘Life as we Know it’. Let me quote from it:

As the lamp post stood there
In its solitude
Forlorn, it couldn't help envying
How blessed must they be
The tree and the bird
For living a life, ....
........
Buoyant and Exuberant
Oh, how I wish…. If only I were any of you
Life, must be such a blessing.

Life’s irony is that if A wishes it were B, B desperately regrets it is not A. The common man is envious of the celebrity. But many times a celebrity regrets the things he misses for not being a common man.

Another poem I immensely enjoyed was ‘A Walk in the Woods’ where in the author has attempted to provide a different perspective to Robert Frost’s famous poem, ‘ Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening’.

True to its claim in the blurb that these are short poetic tales of life’s musings, the poems are full of such ruminations. The author has also tried to experiment with various forms of poetry. At many places rhymes are used and there are also a number of prose poems.

Another plus point of the book is the inclusion of graphic elements for almost all poems. Such graphics definitely make the contents more interesting.