V V B Rama Rao, born in 1938, retired as an ELT1 professional. A prolific writer
in English and Telugu, with more than fifty published works in several genres, he
also produced some slim volumes of poems: Seeing God and Other Poems
(hereafter referred to as Seeing God) as a desktop edition first and later along with
many more poems as For Our Grandchildren (2011). This volume consists of sixtyfour
poems on a variety of themes. Two things impress his work: the crystallization of a
concept of his own—“In the very conception, a poem creates for itself its own context,
space, and structure”—and the twin qualities of variety and brevity that his work displays.
Srinivasa Rangaswami reviewed Seeing God as a desktop edition (now enlarged and
issued with the new title, For Our Grandchildren) at first, some years ago, for a journal
of international repute, declaring with aplomb: “With the poet [Rama Rao] the immediate
leads to something beyond the moment. And whatever the message, he must deliver it, get it off his chest, as it comes, without stopping to carefully ‘decorate’ it. This spontaneity,
with its surprises makes for his instant appeal.” The veteran identified the poet’s sense of
urgency, subtly though.
The very first poem, “Beauty and the Feast,”2 praises the Supreme Power whose
decision/order is carried out by other deities. All events—from “the fall of a sparrow” to
the budding of a plant and twining of a creeper—of this world are His beautiful decisive
dispensations. The beauty of the world has beautifully been delineated by Sri Adi Sankara
in his creation Saundaryalahiri, which the seer affirms to be “the envisioned Supreme,
the celestial and divine.” What is Beauty if it does not bless one with bhakti! “The Seer’s
Eye” opens with an image of “a white vulture’s feathered nest” made comfortable with
soft “fleece.” The seer ventured to know whether that presented a “fore or hind”—
future or past—sight. The subtle reference is to the tyrants and despots, dead and alive.
The poem ends with an optimistic note: “‘Sure they do.’ Confident, the seer says.” |
