Mani Rao\u2019s latest book of poetry, So That You Know, may be strewn with personal pronouns and a conversational tone, title onwards, but with the preface clarifying \u2018these days I\u2019m craving privacy even from myself\u2019, the frankness could well be a rearview mirror to make the poet appear closer than she is. A crafting exquisite enough to turn us confidant.<\/p>\n
Mani\u2019s workmanship allows only the apt in that factory of words where poets go honing. Poems that come from everywhere, with the titles revealing a non-stop engagement with the real world, with the practical. Tomatoes reply: I am not afraid of death, I am afraid; So Yes But No… Verse that tersely slips into spiritual nooks and crannies, where one marriage is an overcoat and another marriage a haunted house. Mani is nothing and no one but a poet, turning even the mundane into a lyric.<\/p>\n
The poet recurs in multiple roles. Now, a daughter who says of her mother: No wonder I am so fearless \/ All the panic safe with her. Now an exorcist: Ghosts have no ends \/ no measurements \/ They scale walls \/ Collapse \/ into a lamp. It is perhaps in the asides that the real Mani lives: Maybe the highway robbers will have a special smile for me.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s the indrawn breath: each word ensouled, self-aware, mulling the power of pause. What Mani proves with So That You Know is her nimble footwork in the dance of language. Take \u2018Kashi Triptych\u2019. Did marrow fizz \/ Fire laugh \/ In three hours and a half \/ this human log \/ collectible \/ in a dustpan.<\/p>\n
What words do to her and what she does with words is a secret she now seems ready to share. If words are your thing, this is your book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mani Rao\u2019s latest book of poetry, So That You Know, may be strewn with personal pronouns and a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":368600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[3444,77,129013,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-368599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-books","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-so-that-you-know-by-mani-rao","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115081162886485571","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=368599"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/368599\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/368600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=368599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=368599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=368599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}