Dr. Sutanuka reviews Chaitali Sengupta’s Cross-Stitched Words, a book of prose poems, exclusively for Different Truths. 

A poet and a writer by passion a language teacher and a financial analyst by profession Cross-Stitched Words is the debut collection of prose poems by Chaitali Sengupta. There are 45 prose poems in this slim volume. Sewing the cross-stitch, a form of counted-thread embroidery Sengupta has attempted to weave a piece of fabric using threads of words, “Threads of desire,/ stitch the moments of life./ Flame-colored desires/, drifting up, through /a thousand aching fissures/ in our hearts,” (“Desires”).

The cross-stitch embroidery of words celebrates Nature, mourns the loss, and empowers her readers to seek solace in self-discovery and introspection, reminds them of their moments of personal significance, and helps them to treasure every moment in life. When you left,/ she stitched her heart shut/with the cord of comforting words;/ the needle of her mind /knit an intricate pattern/ with unashamed colors, on the tapestry of life/ that resembled only you” (“Half-stitched Heart”). One remembers that all suffering originates from craving, worldly attachment, and desire.

The poet, therefore, picks up the thread and in the heirloom, one finds “Primordial words, like a painter’s brush/ paint a Picasso./ Splashing a poetry of/ green-blue syllables”(“Green-blue syllables”).

The language of these prose poems is simple yet unique it immediately connects with the threads of life. All life one chases dreams and desires while the clock chimes its own tunes “And then, it is time. To stop the clock; step out of time” (“Step out of time”). The poet finds beauty in the heart of the unfamiliar, mysterious, and magnificent. Sengupta picks up threads of life and explores its startling and visceral possibilities. Sometimes she craves freedom “in the tattered field/ and blacked out the sun, /while bondage, like a bird, /rattled in the cage” (“Lost Freedom”). Some other times she becomes the voice of resistance there, “amidst sepia-toned walls… /where cacophonous blood boots /of tyranny, smashed freedom/ and a new hatred was born, / in the flooding moonlight./ Shivering at their sheer strength/ I rose, took my first step, /broke into a run, in the hungry dark./ I’ve been running since.” (“Blood Boots”).

In the foreword to the book noted poet Santosh Bakaya writes, “While reading the forty- five verses in Cross- Stitched Words, I was reminded of a few lines of Erica Jong, “what makes you a poet is a gift for language, an ability to see into the heart of things, and the ability to deal with important unconscious material …” The reverberations of Jong’s words resonate throughout. The collection also harnesses the thrills and anxieties of the questions of mortality “Life is nothing but/ a floating/ a drifting /a slumbering through the river of time. /diving in /like a pilgrim/ collecting memories /like the gems; /resonating briefly/ like Mozart’s symphony/ through time and space… /and then finally/ falling awake/ in a piece of no man’s land” (“A Brief Life”).

Cross-Stitched Words is surely going to etch an indelible mark in the fabric of English poetry.

Book Cover sourced by the reviewer

Dr. Sutanuka Ghosh Roy

Dr. Sutanuka Ghosh Roy is an Associate Professor in the Department of English at Tarakeswar Degree College, The University of Burdwan, India. She is a reviewer, a critic, and a poet. The titles of her books are Critical Inquiry: Text, Context, and Perspectives and Commentaries: Elucidating Poetry, Rassundari Dasi’s Amar Jiban: A Comprehensive Study, Asprishya (The
Untouchables, a novel by Sharan Kumar Limbale translated into Bengali). Opera is her debutant collection of poetry.