The anthology is mystical and a must-have for nature lovers and poetry lovers alike.
Rakesh Bhola
Some people are so much sunshine to the square inch.
~ Walt Whitman
In quest of her sunshine, Lily Swarn keeps on discovering and celebrating her own deepest selfhood, revering nature, singing praises to humanity and radiating warmth, cheer and happiness in each of her literary gems. And the flowers cannot but bloom when the sunshine kisses them.
Born with an imaginative mind in a city which is a splendid exhibit of nature’s endless beauty, she deftly decodes the divine dialect of flowers through their colours and varieties and redefines poetry with her crispy new tones and infusion of fresher Indian newness to it, and therein lies the beauty of her poems. Her symbolism of flowers is inspired by the Indian literature, legends, religions and myriad types of Indian flowers.
The poems in her anthology, The Divine Dialect of Flowers, diffuse the scent of Indian soil and the fragrance of Indian varieties of flowers. The reference to the oriental rose jam gulkand chewed in juicy betel leaves by a damsel in swishing silks; eyes looking out of a jharoka in the heart of India and give me a rose coloured chiffon to wear in the poem A Rose is a Rose is a Rose is a joy to read. Similarly, the desi gulab.. squeezed into rose water; the fragrance of holy places; the incense from a mazaar or the garland around a bride are, at once, sensuous and divine. A whiff from a sweet dessert of phirni in Desi Gulab is a sweet reflection of the Indian culture and the wine goblet danced in the Saqi’s trembling hands in The Blazing Maple are a few glimpses of vibrant Indian sensibility.
Another striking feature of her poems is the exquisite description of flowers like Dahlia as the exotic shading of your crimson blood. Or the description of Gulmohar as how else would I have made your acquaintance.
You are the Buddhist’s icon is how she addresses lotus – head held high, pure and undefiled in the Sun. In her ode to sunflower, she writes: A field of golden yellow ebullience awakening the drowsy stubble baked earth. Marigold is the golden glow of gilded glee, each tiny petal folded with precision.
You cannot also miss noticing the first alphabet alliteration in each line used in some of her poems as in Codes – going as cataclysmic crunching, creeping, caterwauling’. It imbues poems with a rolling, rhythmic cadence and lends unique charm to them.
The captivating delineation of Mother Nature’s charm through flowers in her poetry in unique ways in many other wonderful poems of this anthology makes this collection very interesting as well as mystical and a must-have for nature lovers and poetry lovers alike.
The reader is also bound to get inspired from personal element in some of the poems of Lily Swarn that shed light on her literary leanings and impressions gathered since her early school days, when she was ‘an inquisitive girl frolicking in my parent’s home’ and her ingrained memories alongside her superb poetic odyssey and her spiritual and devout self, seeking to ‘make the heart the pen, the intellect the writer, write that which has no end or limit’ and invoking Waheguru Ji’s blessings and referring to the Holy Guru Granth Sahib in the Foreword of this anthology as she religiously does in all her works, which, adorns her literary outpours with that unique shine, charisma and the reach they carry.
So after having meandered through A Trellis of Ecstasy, Lillies of the Valley, The Gypsy Trail, enjoying Rippling Moonbeams, savouring History on My Plate, reveling in A Passionate Affair with Trees, relishing Yeh Na Thi Hamari Qismat, get a whiff of floral fragrance which you mustn’t miss along the way in your beautiful and blessed journey of life. Cheers to pretty blooms!
