Book Excerpt: Vital Signs by Amlanjyoti Goswami
2 min read
An exclusive excerpt from Amlanjyoti Goswami’s poetry collection Vital Signs (Paperwall Publishing, January 2022)
About the Book
What happens when you pay attention to which foot leads – when you walk? Or when we really attend to the pleasures of eating, or of a changing sky? What if we realised that paradise is found all around us – Shangri La behind bus stops? Amlanjyoti Goswami’s poetry is full of these Vital Signs, these details of wonder. Stringing words on a high wire, his is a rare ability to pause time, so we can look, really look, and live. Even the act of repairing a shoe can be meditative and philosophical in his hands. And within the glimpses of grand ideas there is a humility, a reminder that life is there to be felt, touched, lived, in the quietest of moments. The laureate of ‘the idea of forever, inside an instant’, Amlan’s poetry carries within it, that most unfashionable of qualities – a sense of grace – but also the quiet wisdom that a life is a series of sensations that become memories. He shows us how the mythic can be ordinary, and how the ordinary becomes mythic. Rishi Dastidar
About the Poet
Amlanjyoti Goswami’s recent collection, Vital Signs (Poetrywala, 2022), follows his earlier book, River Wedding (Poetrywala, 2019). He grew up in Guwahati, Assam, and lives in Delhi.
About Author
