Legato Without a Lisp: Sethi’s poetic continuum

The eighth poetic offering, Legato Without A Lisp, celebrates the sixtieth season of Sanjeev Sethi. He is a poet published far and wide and is based in Mumbai. For poets bound by tradition, innovation in craft is a constantly evolving process. Reading the latest volume is no doubt a refreshing experience. Sethi’s deft knowledge of the poetic craft, combined with intricate wordplay, draws the readers into his creative space as he punctuates his poetry with wisdom.

A wizard who specialises in the blend of and balance between expressionistic stylisation and wordplay, Sethi constantly makes a strong case for exploring the open-endedness of poetry, as he opens with the poem titled “Ceremony”: “Notes from nowhere/ follow with frequency/ that puzzles me,/ as with every poem, I key”. The title of the volume under review is interesting and intriguing. Etymologically, ‘legato’ is an Italian word that means ‘connected’ or ‘tied together’, a performance technique used in music to join the notes smoothly without any interruption. On the other hand, a ‘lisp’ is a speech impairment in which a person misarticulates sibilants. Sethi taps into the romantic potential of the overflow of unhindered poetic sensibilities, elucidating its meaning for the readers. The collection traverses through different terrains of life–childhood (Ties), boyhood (“Rendering”), maturity (“False Steps), and old age (“Portrait”) kneading all the associated experiences and emotions with each phase of life. Legato Without A Lisp chronicles time.

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“We surrender to the scud. / In submission, invisible/ florets within us, bud./ At Vale, the register signs:/ It is all we could muster”. Sethi uses language as a precision tool, and the poems in the collection mesmerise his readers with rhythmic strength, powerful metaphors, and cadence. The poet’s dexterity in language is strongly matched by his studied approach. Each of the words is picked with extreme caution, “Agility in annunciation is a skill. / It doesn’t guarantee erudition. / Lore is unpunctual. / It expresses itself in a leisurely manner: / Like a section of a narrative poem” (“False Steps”). Simple and direct with minimal self-indulgent flourishes, Sethi uses nuanced words to depict the eternal longing for the craft of poetry, and there is no falsity.

Sethi’s linguistic world in this collection as a means to further the end of poetry is quite in keeping with the spirit of his poetic journey to this space and place and he is ready to try new domains and continue even though age is lending its weight. “Every footpad has a back story. / Like him, we’re innocent of our chapters in the planetary omnibus? Someone else is in the queue: The core of continuity.” “Self-authored Choice” speaks of the two worlds that lead to a sort of schizophrenic existence for the poet, is still attuned to the natural process of creation that has been disrupted by modern inventions, human beings: “As empires in another era / captured sovereignties, / word-warriors in the age/ of internet add nations / as yolk in the egg/ of achievement/ with every acceptance/ from a literary journal / of a belletristic/ unexplored country.” “Ex-Voto” is a study in unflappable composure and austerely contained writing; Sethi injects into his poem a believability that is thoroughly riveting. “We wear guilt-like skin. / It fits artlessly. / We negate even to ourselves: / Cinders of connection. / That fine-tunes nothing”. In the poem “Tamasha,” the words hit all the right beats of the racy groove, and the background and setting of the poem give a much-needed fillip to it. The observant poet writes, “In a hermitage of my making, chaos chooses/ my nook, as I can’t monitor the movements / in my neighbourhood and beyond. / Like this hullabaloo. / No one chooses to be a / sourpuss. / Let your indulgences be yours. / Some are even happy for you.”

“The pitter-patter / of words, / those tiny droplets/ of engagement / saved”; the poet and the words reverberate long after one closes the book. Legato Without A Lisp is here to leave its imprints on the sands of the poetic world.

Spotlight

Legato Without A Lisp

By Sanjeev Sethi

Classix (an imprint of Hawakal), 2024

Price: 600 INR, 122 pages