Book Review: Crossing the Shoreline by Gopal Lahiri

Poet and academic Aneek Chatterjee reviews Gopal Lahiri’s Crossing the Shoreline (Published by Haoajan Publishers, 2023) a unique blend of poetic forms and expressions.

• ISBN: 978–81954-79832
• Page: 119
• Edition: (2023). Hardbound.
• Published by Haoajan Publishers.
• Price: INR 300.

Gopal Lahiri’s latest poetry collection “Crossing the Shoreline” presents a unique blend of poetic forms and expressions. In the four sections of this anthology, Lahiri, an experienced poet with many awards and accolades, delves deep into experimentation with poetic forms and utterances. For any matured poet, the language of expression and utterance is crucially important. While an expression is a string of words in a sentence; an utterance normally refers to a speech. A sincere poet must know how to amalgamate the two; because in poetry many expressions are silent utterances. The language of poetry plays a significant role here; as W.H. Auden says, “A poet is, before anything else, a person who is passionately in love with language”. In “Crossing the Shoreline”, Lahiri’s poetic language is matured, attractive and deftly conveys to readers his expressions and utterances. In the first section of this anthology, ‘Voices of Concision’, language of expression in each poem, although precise, is exquisite. Consider this poem titled ‘Conversation’: