How Sumana Roy shows “the poet must hide & the reader must look for the hidden” in Out Of Syllabus
1 min readReviewed by Rakhi Dalal
Title: Out of Syllabus
Author: Sumana Roy
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books, 2019
Sumana Roy is a poet, novelist and essayist. She has authored three books including How I Became a Tree (memoir/non-fiction), Missing (fiction) and Out of Syllabus (poetry). Recently, she has edited a story collection called Animalia Indica. Her work has appeared in various prestigious literary magazines, newspapers and journals. She teaches at Ashoka University as Associate Professor, Creative Writing.
Out of Syllabus has 35 poems. These are categorized under different sections in different fields of study like mathematics, physics, biology, chemistry and so on. At first glance, a reader might wonder about the ordering of sections but as Sumana says:
“..the essence of the poetic— the poet must hide, the reader must look for the hidden. And that a poem is often not about what one began meaning or imagining it to be.”
———– Life in Stanzas, Open Magazine.
The reader must find a meaning for herself.
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