Book Review: Animals- Prose poems on sentiency, decency and indecency by Anita Nahal

Sutanuka Ghosh Roy reviews Anita Nahal’s latest poetry collection Animals– Prose poems on sentiency, decency, and indecency.

• ISBN: 978-1-63980—738 3 (Paperback)
• Price: Rs $20.
• Published by Kelsay Books

       For centuries, Animals have been an integral part of English literature, used for symbolism, to explore themes like innocence, power, and the vulnerable human condition and also to tell stories from a non-human angle. Animals function as narrative tools, and metaphors appearing as characters in classic works like Animal Farm, Black Beauty, and The Jungle Book, or as symbolic figures like the Cheshire Cat in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.  In John Keats in “Ode to the Nightingale” and Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”  animals serve as devices to augment the poetic effect rather than being valued for their inherent significance Following the contemporary trends of modern poets like Louise Glück and Mary Oliver, academic and creative writer Anita Nahal based in USA, in her latest collection of prose poetry, Animals, Prose poems on sentiency, decency and indecency, contests the traditional human-centred views, reconnoitring deeper connections with the natural world and inquiring into the human-animal divide.  Literary Animal Studies is an evolving interdisciplinary field of study in India and abroad that chooses to concede and address the above concerns.