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Reflections: Poetry of Alienation, Endearment and Inspiration (K.K.Johnson)

K.K.Johnson Published on 27 March, 2014
Reflections: Poetry of Alienation, Endearment and Inspiration  (K.K.Johnson)

Professor Annie Koshi’s “Reflections” allows her readers to follow her through a life filled with loss, discrimination, confinement, self-realization, acceptance, liberation, and ultimately victory. Her words are both provocative and inspiring. They shed light on many social issues facing our community without any sort of whitewashing or candy coating.

The bitterness of what she has had to endure throughout her life and career is very real and makes her triumphs that much sweeter. There are few individuals who have been able to accomplish what Professor Koshi has, especially with the various obstacles that she has had to overcome in order to reach where she is today. Yet she isn’t hubristic.

Instead, she writes with humility, gratitude, conviction, and a candidness that lays bare her hopes, sorrows, strengths, frailties, philosophies, and even her very soul. Anyone reading her work will quickly realize that it is all encompassing both in its subject matter and relevance to the human experience. It is a heroic legacy worth leaving behind, one that should be shared, as she states in her final piece, “When I Am Gone”, she is “leaving it behind / for all posterity to read / and copy” (When I Am Gone).             

While reading through Professor Koshi’s verses, one poem stood out to me in particular. In the final stanza of “Dark Fetus” she invites her readers to consider an important question that likely doesn’t have a definitive answer. She asks,

Do gods and stars conspire

against the aspirant fruit of love

to be gendered and endangered,

and wilted by color codes? (Dark Fetus)

This question allowed me a moment of careful introspection, during which I considered my own potential answer. I came to the conclusion that maybe the conspiring gods and stars are the social and cultural norms, expectations, and values that inform and even govern our definition of beauty in the Indian community. As I read her pieces I sensed a quiet anxiety, despair, and insecurity throughout, resulting from the damaging binary that defines beauty in our community. I say ‘our community,’ both as an American and as an Indian, as I constantly see this obsession with fairness and other elements of appearance, poison the minds of children and adults alike in both cultures. So, what is it about us who are the color of earth that the general population finds so undesirable? What makes our community so exclusionary? One would have to pore through volumes upon volumes of scholarly exploration to provide any semblance of an answer. But, perhaps getting to the root of the problem isn’t what’s needed. Perhaps a sense of awareness is what we should be focused on. Professor Koshy poignantly pleads with us to realize that our rigid guidelines for attractiveness are of no consequence as there isn’t a person in existence without external and internal imperfection and not one of us lacks redeeming, beautiful qualities that compensate.

Her discussion of beauty, naturally transitions to a discussion of womanhood. I have come to understand something about the attitudes of men and women alike in the Indian community regarding womanhood, its definition, and supposed limitations. Growing up in a patriarchal environment, I realized early on that the women in our lives are forced to endure the restrictions of an oppressive set of codes, reminiscent of the separate spheres ideology. It still seems that although women in our community are encouraged to be educated, to be recognized, and to be individuals, they are ultimately defined by their positions as wife and mother. And although, both are very valuable and powerful, both often fall victim to subjection, and powerlessness. Professor Koshi illustrates this never ending injustice in a way that makes it impossible to ignore. She writes:

            She’s been indentured, enslaved,

            whipped by masters,

             clothed in shabby outfits,

             and fed with husk and tasks. (When She Rings the Doorbell)

These lines echo the requirement of servitude that still exists despite many advances in the right direction. Is womanhood meant to be a state of minimal comfort and constant toil? Professor Koshi effectively presents this question that we all know the answer to.

            Despite her many subtle and blatant calls for much needed reform, there is a nostalgic quality to some of Professor Koshi’s pieces. She seems to suggest that there is a sense of beauty in permanence, and that elements of the past remain beautiful throughout the passage of time. I couldn’t agree more. It’s why a child holds onto a worn blanket regardless of its tattered appearance or filth. We fixate of sources of comfort and fear the absence of these objects, memories, and traditions. She describes an object, something that ordinarily wouldn’t seem to have much value. But as she calls it, her “live-in companion” goes wherever she goes and stays wherever she stays. (My Electric Frying Pan) Although one might think that she’s merely writing about an object of significance. I’d like to think that she’s saying that with the change that needs to happen in our community and in the world as a whole, some things do the most good when they are left intact.

            In conclusion, her work spoke to me on an intellectual, emotional, and spiritual level and I know that I will find myself returning to its pages, in search of inspiration, strength, and comfort. 

Reflections: Poetry of Alienation, Endearment and Inspiration  (K.K.Johnson)Reflections: Poetry of Alienation, Endearment and Inspiration  (K.K.Johnson)
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Annie Koshi 2014-03-29 12:28:50

Johnson, you are a terrific writer. I am really impressed with your command of English.  I know you are very busy with your family and job responsibilities.  However, i strongly urge that you should get into professional writing on the side. 

I am really grateful to you for your marvelous appreciation of my poems.  You really studied them and have assimilated the key tone that runs through.  Your words "she writes with humility, gratitude, conviction, and a candidness that lays bare her hopes, sorrows, strengths, frailties, philosophies, and even her very soul" speak volumes about my poems.  What better award can I aspire for than your concluding words, "I will find myself returning to its pages, in search of inspiration, strength, and comfort." I can visualize how these words of yours are going to resonate in the hearts of hundreds of future readers.

മലയാളത്തില്‍ ടൈപ്പ് ചെയ്യാന്‍ ഇവിടെ ക്ലിക്ക് ചെയ്യുക