#a beloved english teacher of mine is retiring one of the people that i have a frienship crush on

[platypusplayhere]

was nobody going to tell me that le bon temps du rock n roll de Johnny Hallyday is a cover of old time rock n roll by Bob Seger, or was i supposed to learn by having yet another random country/rock music phase and letting the algorithm do it's thing

[amindofstone]

when the heart speaks

a/n: Watching Naruto I always had a huge interest in Hatake Kakashi's character and story. He is such an amazing creation. He´s simply a masterpiece! His story is such a sad story I couldn´t help bad feel bad. I felt horrible and the fact that he never showed any of that pain and sorrow broke my heart. This man needs to be loved! Anyways, since I never wrote anything with any character of Naruto, although I love this anime to damn much (like to the moon and back), I thought I should start doing that with Kakashi being my first try. If it ends up being good and if some people end up liking it, I might also write for Naruto next to One Piece. Other than that happy reading!

Genre: anime imagine? Naruto imagine?

Character(s): Hatake Kakashi x Nami (reader)

Spoilder(s):mainly Naruto Shippuden Spoilers like about: the fourth ninja war, Obito being Tobi, the fight against Tobi, Kakashi becoming the Hokage

Warnings: Maybe grammar or spelling mistakes. (I genuinely apologize. English is not my mother tongue and I´m really trying to improve. So please be so kind and have mercy)

Words: 2605

Info: Keep in mind that the words in italic are Kakashi´s train of thoughts. And just so you know the reader in here is just a supportive character while for Kakashi it´s the main character. (Does that even make sense?! Never mind. Hopefully you get what I mean. This was supposed to sound beautiful... but well... never mind)

!!! Please do not steal my idea or work. Credit me if this is shared or published in any other platform or any other way. This took me a lot of time. So please respect me as the writer and my work. Picture used is not mine. Credits to: @Nebula517 (Twitter) !!!

A month flew by and the people of Konoha were living their lives as if nothing happened. They go to work, open their stores, spend time with their beloved ones and enjoy the gift called life.

A month passed since the fourth ninja war ended. The fourth war that cost so many lives. Lives of so many people that were dear to him. Lives of parents, friends, siblings, students and teachers. People he used to have around him. People he used to greet on a daily basis. People that used to greet him on a daily basis.

A month passed and Konoha is still busy trying to rebuild it´s broken homes and streets. A month passed and more parents let their children play outside. A month passed and slowly more people are seen happy and with smile upon their lips. Well, at least they tried to.

A lot of buildings, streets and homes were destroyed. People looked for shelter in the houses of their neighbors or tents the hokage provided. Some families were in a miserable state but still managed to smile and have a good time. No matter where one looked there were ninjas helping out here and there. Going from one mission to another to help rebuilding the village to its old beauty. The civilians suffered a lot but the shinobi were the ones that went through hell and back. One of those ninjas was the famous and well known jonin Hatake Kakashi.

He saw so many of his friends in pain. He saw people die and people scream in agony. He saw people stand back up after they saw their beloved ones die just to keep up with the fight in the name of peace. Peace, a word that described a world and a living of a existence that could only exist in a fantasy novel or a dream. It seems like Madara wasn´t wrong when he said that - The longer you live, the more you realize that reality is just made of pain, suffering and emptiness. -

“Thank you so much for helping us out. We will soon be able to stay in our own home again.”, said a little boy to the quiet man. Kakashi squatted down so he could look the little guy into his eyes. Something his father did when he was a child himself. “There is no need to thank me. I´m glad I could help. Now go and help your mother carrying the groceries. I´m sure she needs your help.”, the little guy nodded and bowed as a farewell and made his way towards his mother who was on her way to go shopping. Kakashi had an eye on the child until he was next to his mother before he stood up again to get back on his way to his new destination. His destination a place he visited already three times just today. With his newly appearance it would be the fourth time but he didn´t mind at all because that was his job after all. This is what he got trained for and lived for. Right?

No matter where one looked of went in the village. There were ninjas everywhere. Going to on mission to another or fulfilling a mission at good as they could. Missions that were all about helping the civilians or helping rebuilding the villiage to its old beauty and peace.

With hands in his pockets he made his way back to the office of Lady Tsunade not caring at all if he came late. A trait he developed years ago. But he didn´t mind at all because he didn´t care what people thought of him and his bad habit. He didn´t care a bit. He didn´t and never will. He didn´t, right?

After a pleasant walk the young man knocked at the door of the hokages office right after a tired sigh left him. A soft come in could be heard before he stepped inside. “You wanted to talk?”, said the jonin and closed the door behind him. The blond woman nodded and leaned back in her chair. She was nervous and Kakashi could see that. She bit on her lower lip and sighed before she cleared her throat. “Kakashi. I know that the past circumstances left you in a state of confusion, sadness and pain. And I surely am sorry for everything that happened to you but I hope that you know that the life of a shinobi is exactly that. Saying this is actually absurd because it’s something you already know and can understand the best out of all the others. I am aware of you many losses and the pain you went through in the cause of your life for the sake of our village. You did a lot for Konoha but also the world. Me and every other person alive appreciate that and thank you for everything you have every done and will be doing in the future. You are indeed and great shinobi.”, visibly confused over the words of the woman in front of him his head slightly tilted. “Tsunade what are you implying on? I´m sure you didn´t call me over just to praise me so I´m honestly kind of confused.”, the Hokage smiled at him and nodded. “You´re right. I didn´t called you over just for the praise when I already know that you´re not the type of a person that likes being praised openly over his work and duties. To put it short I´d like you to know that I told the elders about my decision of retirement as the hokage. But next to that I also suggested you to be the next hokage.”

Silence.

The man was surprised. How could someone like him become the hokge? “Who else is suggested beside me?”, wondered Kakashi although he knew who that might be. But he needed to hear it from her. “Naruto.”, hearing his name put a smile on his lips “I´m glad that he was suggested.”, but the mere thought of Naruto as the hokage sadden him for some reason. “I´m really glad that he was suggested but don´t you think that he is too young for that? I mean I´m not saying that he isn´t capable of taking the position, because he indeed is and always proved that. It´s just that he´s just 17 and should be allowed to live. He´s just a child on who´s fate was put a huge amount of burden.”, he added to emphasize his thoughts about her decision. “And this is why I want you to be hokage. You are the only one who is strong and intelligent enough to take this position and lead the villiag.”, a short chuckle could be heard from the man before he put both of his hands back into his pockets. “Intelligence? Really? Talking about intelligence I think Nara Shikamaru would be a better choice. Don´t you think?”, “And this is why I ordered him to be your chief aide and he agreed. So what do you think? If they choose you would you accept the position?”, with a hesitate nod he agreed and caused Tsunade to smile in relief. “Thank you. I´m sure you will do a great job.”

With slow steps he walked out of the office and the building when his attention was drawn to the now pinkish sky above him. The color of the sky that told him that another day of his life was slowly coming to an end made his heart ache. The thought of him being able to life when others who deserved it more couldn´t, always managed to get him fall back into the sadness that lay in his heart. Where do I go know? Right, I need to go to the grocery store. On his way to buy what he wrote down this morning he walked past a flower shop with his gaze falling on white roses. His eyes were fixed on the bouquet of flowers until the owner approached him and asked if she could help. He was quite and actually didn´t knew why he starred at them but he ended up buying them. With an empty head but a heavy heart he let his body lead him, not realizing that after a walk of 20 minutes he ended up standing in front of the grave of his friend. Obito. He didn´t knew what to do. He didn´t knew what neither to do nor to say, so he simply stood there waiting for his mind to make something up. But absolutely nothing happened until his heart spoke up. “I´ll be hokage Obito. This is what you wanted to be right? I remember hearing you say this over and over again every day. But never did Sensei Minato or Rin get sick of it. Honestly I also had cero problems hearing that. I can´t remember what I thought in those moments but one thing´s for sure. Sensei liked it and it always managed to make him smile.”

Kakashi sat down while carefully placing some of the flowers on his grave. “I used to come and see you not knowing that you were alive. I used to come and talk to you sometimes without knowing that you were alive and I could have been able to see and talk to you in person. But even if I knew that you were alive I don´t think I would have been able to face you. I messed up in so many aspects. I can´t help but see me as the reason on why it came to a war.”, while sitting in front of Obitos grave the jonins head hang low. He might be sitting just in front of a grave but somehow he does not have the courage to look up. He was ashamed. “I´m sorry for breaking the promise. I´m sorry for being a horrible friend to you Obito. I messed up miserably. Those minutes in front of you, with you were everything but pleasant since I had to fight what I called a friend all my life. But still I am happy that I could see you. I wish it would have been on different circumstances but life and fate always hated me so I´m not expecting anything else than pain.”, with every word leaving his lips slowly and bit by bit tears filled his eyes he did not allow to fall. “I´m sorry I couldn’t be the friend you or Rin deserved but I promise that I will be exactly that friend you wanted to the whole village. I will be leading the villiage with the love and attitude you had when we were one.”, with tears that threatened to fall he stood up again and cleared his throat. “Thank you for the live lesson Uchia Obito. I´ll never forget it.”

With the remaining white roses he made his way to Rins grave and placed it neatly on top of it. “Thank you for always trying to keep us together. Please make sure to take care of Obito. He deserves to be happy and loved. And… Rin… I´m sorry… I´m sorry I couldn’t protect you. I´m sorry.”, with heavy steps and an aching heart he walked down to another grave. A grave he once used to avoid but by now found peace in. “Seems like my legs lead me to you and the others like so many other days, father. I wonder when the time will come in which I won´t be approaching any of you with sorrow and sadness. Althought I wish this day to come soon I know that it will never happen.”

Kakashis vision was blurry. He wanted to cry but didn´t shed any tears. He stopped himself from doing so and tried his best to hold them back. With his last prayers he left the graveyard behind and took care of his groceries. He had no energy to cook but he also was not in the mood to go eat out and get confronted with any person. He wanted to be alone. He wanted to be left alone because he wanted to and not because he was used to the silence in his life. Again bit by bit sorrow took over his mind and heart. Again he was drowning in pain and memories. Again he was left alone with his never ending pain. A wave of darkness overcame him making him wonder how he ended up like that again. He didn´t greeted the employee at the store or waved back when someone called or greeted him. With a low hanging head he walked back home, while a comforting warm rain fell upon Konoha.

He was standing in front of his apartment he recently moved in. With one hand holding the bag with the groceries he took out his keys with the other one. A scattered mind and a broken soul accompanied him when he entered his apartment. “Kakashi? Are you alright? I was worried? Oh no you’re wet to the bone! Give me the bags and go change. You´ll get sick otherwise and we can´t have that.”

What was going on? He was confused and his mind went blank. A woman with long black hair and chocolate brown eyes came approaching him when reality hit him. “Kashi is everything fine? Did something happen?”, the woman placed the bags on the kitchen counter and looked at him out of worried eyes. She took of her black glasses and took the confused man’s hand to lead him to the bedroom. She let go of his hand again and went to close the window that let in the cold wind. She fixed the curtains and went back to face the silver haired man who still wasn´t moving an inch. She smiled upon his behavior and slowly took off his headband, his vest and his gloves. “It´s okay if you don´t wanna talk about please don´t forget that I am here when you need me. I won´t judge, just please talk to me whenever you fell like it. I love you after all.”

I love you, she said? I love you. How could I let the darkness take the lead again? How could I? “May I take of your mask?”, Kakashi nodded and still did not say a thing or moved. “Now please do the both of us the favor and take a shower. I´ll get you your clothes and make us some dinner. Alright?”

She smiled up at him and let go of him to do what she said when two strong arms held her back. “Huh?”, he pulled her against his chest only to take her face in hands and place a loving but rough kiss on her lips. A soft whine could be heard and a few tears rolled down his cheeks. Tears he held back and tried to not let them show any of his feelings. But for how long was he supposed to do that? Nami broke the kiss. She was worried since her lover never behaved like that. “No, please. Don´t go, stay.”, his eyes were closed and his hands were shaking when he placed his lips upon hers again. She let him be and said nothing. Nami closed her eyes and placed her hands on his chest and allowed him to do what he pleased, not caring that his wet clothes might wet hers too. She let him do what he wanted as long as he was happy. As long as she could help him get rid of the sorrow and pain in him. As long as she had him by her side.

[justforbooks]

Min Jin Lee on the Road to Free Food for Millionaires

I had already failed at two novel manuscripts. Publishers had rejected my first manuscript, and I rejected the second, because it was not good enough to send out. I was 32 years old and beginning my third novel.

I had been trying to get a novel published since 1995, the year I quit being a lawyer. Since high school, I’d had a chronic liver disease, and I couldn’t work the hours of a Manhattan law firm without getting ill, so I thought I’d write fiction. My husband Christopher had a steady job with health insurance, but we had gotten our apartment and mortgage with two incomes in mind. Money was tight. After a miscarriage and a difficult pregnancy, our son Sam was born, and that same year, we learned that beloved family members, who could no longer support themselves, were awash in catastrophic debt, and suddenly, we were responsible for another household.

It is never a financially prudent idea to be a fiction writer, but I had not anticipated running through my savings in a year, being unable to earn even a modest living, not being able to afford part-time childcare to write, having a debilitating liver disease, and taking on the debts of people I love.

I was ashamed. After six years, I had not yet written a published novel, and I was broke from the choices I had made. I wondered how we’d pay all these bills, send Sam to college, and save for retirement. When my friends asked me to lunch, I made excuses because I could not afford the luxury of eating out. I could not answer when they asked kindly when my book would be available to purchase. I hid my failure by staying home.

From the moment I quit lawyering, I tried to learn how to write good fiction. I had written and published personal essays in high school. I was a history major in college, but for pleasure, I’d taken three writing classes in the English department. To my surprise, in my junior and senior years, I won top writing prizes for nonfiction and fiction, respectively. It’s possible that the college prizes misled me to believe that I could publish a novel immediately after quitting the law. However, the more I studied fiction, the more I realized that writing novels required rigorous discipline and mastery, no different than the study of engineering or classical sculpture. I wanted to get formal training. Nevertheless, after having paid for law school, I could not hazard the cost of an MFA. So, I fumbled around and made up my own writing program.

Always a reader of the 19th-century greats, I read more widely. I read every fine novel and short story I could find, and I studied the ones that were truly exceptional. If I saw a beautifully wrought paragraph, say from Julia Glass’s Three Junes, I would transcribe it in a marble notebook. Then, I would sit and read her elegant sentences, seemingly pinned to my flimsy notebook like a rare butterfly on cheap muslin. Craft strengthened the feelings and thoughts of the writer. When I read and reread Junot Díaz’s stories in Drown, I was struck by his courage and genius. His perfect narrative voice matched the intricacy and greatness of his plot architecture. Great fiction required not just lovely words or fine feelings, it demanded emotion, structure, ideals, and bravery. Fine works of fiction made me feel glad, the way I feel glad when I see a painting by a master, an ocean at dusk, or the face of a child.

In New York, it is possible to study with great writers for very little money. If one can afford to live here, there is a shock of riches in culture, so much so that artists work for almost nothing. Once a week, when Christopher could watch Sam after work, I took a turkey sandwich in a baggie or a carton of hummus and went to my writing classes or met with my writers’ group. For less than $200, I was able to study for several weeks with Lan Samantha Chang, Rahna Reiko Rizzuto, and Jhumpa Lahiri at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop early on in their careers. I took a class at the Gotham Writers Workshop with Wesley Gibson. For about the same amount and for a season’s length of classes, I studied with Jonathan Levi, Joyce Johnson, Joseph Caldwell, Joan Silber, Shirley Hazzard, and Nahid Rachlin at the 92nd Street Y. The Y runs a famous preschool, and in the evenings, grown men and women sat in these preschool classrooms, smelling of tempera paints and box apple juice, anxious to know if their stories made any sense. Teachers generously encouraged me to continue, but privately, I wondered if I should quit. I was getting older, and I was afraid that I could not return to a steady profession.

The year after Sam was born, impulsively, I applied for a spot at the Sewanee Writers’ Conference and was accepted. The tuition was more money than we could spare, something like $1,000. However, I knew it was difficult to get a spot at all, and I felt I had to go. I had nursed Sam for a year, and I thought this might be a good reward for having given up my body—or so it seemed to me—for the pregnancies, the illnesses, and the breastfeeding. Christopher took time off from work and stayed with Sam, and I went to Tennessee. For nine days, I studied fiction with Alice McDermott and Rick Moody. Each day, after my class, I would go back to my dorm room and cry because I missed my baby.

At Sewanee, it felt like everyone had gone to prestigious MFA writing programs like Iowa and had book contracts. Back then, conference attendees wore name tags, and mine read just my name, indicating that I had not received any scholarship money to defray the cost of the conference tuition. One day, during lunch, I met a young woman whose name tag stated her name plus the name of her fellowship. She hadn’t paid any tuition because her publications had merited her a scholarship. There was a group of us at the table, most of whom had scholarships, and the young woman casually mocked the housewives who had paid full freight to attend the conference. I didn’t realize at first, but she was talking about me. That summer, I was 30 years old, a new mother, and I learned that a talented young woman artist held housewife writers in contempt. I couldn’t eat so I returned to my room. I avoided her for the rest of the conference, because I sensed she was right. It had been a mistake to come all this way to take a class. Then at the end of the conference, Alice McDermott nominated my workshop story for an anthology called Best New American Voices 2000, and though the editors didn’t take my piece, I thought that maybe I could keep trying.

Then something else good happened a few months later. I got an Artist Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts in the category of fiction. It was for $7,000. I used some of that money to pay for a five-day writing class in California with the famous editor and writer Tom Jenks and the novelist Carol Edgarian. To improve my understanding of the sentence, I began to read poetry. I took a class at the Y with David Yezzi to learn prosody, and it changed the way I looked at every word. Whenever the poetry critic Helen Vendler came to the Y to give one of her seminars, I did whatever I could to attend.

There was so much to learn and practice, but I began to see the prose in verse and the verse in prose. Patterns surfaced in poems, stories, and plays. There was music in sentences and paragraphs. I could hear the silences in a sentence. All this schooling was like getting x-ray vision and animal-like hearing. I had no way to prove objectively the things I was learning, and I can’t tell you why I thought my self-curated education correct, but I followed the steps I could afford to take and somehow trusted that I would learn how to write something fine.

When I ran out of money for classes, I went to readings and bought hardcover books I could not afford. At the bookstore or library, I’d sit all the way in the back. If there was a Q&A, I would have half a dozen questions forming a lump in my throat, but I wouldn’t voice a word. I went to the readings of Herman Wouk, Marilynne Robinson, Junot Díaz, Joyce Carol Oates, Gary Shteyngart, Julian Barnes, Richard Ford, Jay McInerney, Chang-rae Lee, Veronica Chambers, Ian McEwan, Joan Didion, Susanna Moore, Shirley Hazzard, James Salter, Kazuo Ishiguro, Toni Morrison, Rick Moody, Susan Minot, and many more. I wanted to know: How did you do that? How did you send me into this whole other world of your creation? How did you make me feel these new and old feelings? How did you keep trusting that it was all worthwhile? And yet, I could barely form an audible sentence around them, but I suppose I didn’t have to, because I had their work, and their work spoke to me and stayed with me in a private way without me having to prove anything to them or them to me.

As a habit, I read on the subway. One day, I was finishing V.S. Naipaul’s A House for Mr. Biswas on the 2 train, and I burst into tears, amazed at the magnificence of Naipaul’s literary achievement. I knew of his politically controversial attitudes (e.g., he thought women writers were unimportant), and yet I understood that in this work, this man had done something extraordinary with fiction. Through characterization and sympathy, Naipaul had made me care deeply for a humble and curious character, who so clumsily yet so vitally struggled for his wishes. Later, I learned that Arwacas, the fictional setting of the novel, was based on Chaguanas, an immigrant town where East Indian-Trinidadians live and where Naipaul had grown up. Naipaul gave me permission to write about Elmhurst, my town in Queens.

After the classes, the readings, the discarded drafts, I started to research my novel like I was a journalist. When I wanted to learn more about my character Ted Kim, the investment banker, I interviewed several men who went to Harvard Business School. One of them told me that I should pretend to apply, because one had to see a school like that to believe it. So I did. I logged into the website, and I filled out a visitor’s form, and I was able to come in for a day.

I sat in on a class. There were maybe 25 students, and each person had a name card in front of him or her. It was impossible to hide in that room; however, what was clear to me was that no one was hiding. It wasn’t like any class I had ever attended in high school, college, or even law school. I don’t know if everyone in that room had done his homework or if she understood the lecture and the complicated spreadsheet on the whiteboard, but I learned something about these attractive young people. I surmise that what distinguishes a Harvard Business School student is his confidence in his abilities. I have never been in a building so filled with young people who look like they can do anything and want to solve very difficult problems. After a few hours, I started thinking that maybe I should apply for business school because the energy was so buoyant. If anyone was depressed or anxious or doubtful, I think he or she must have stayed home that day. No, I did not apply to HBS, but that day changed me, because I started to value research, not for the details or the velvet scraps of dialogue, but for the feelings that new information made me have. I felt confident just by being with other highly energetic people. I wondered what it would be like to have two years of that atmosphere when even I, an applicant pretender and a writer with no book, felt that positive after mere hours. So I took that feeling and gave it to Ted, a man who believes that he is right even when he is troubled or afraid. Ted’s convictions propel him to great economic success. However, even his convictions are weakened in the presence of sexual desire and a secret yearning for a kindred person. Ted is not good, but research allowed me to recognize his vulnerability, which allowed me to love Ted in his totality.

Then something wonderful happened. The Missouri Review published a story I’d rewritten 17 or 18 times. I had a Bankers Box filled with just drafts of that one story. Maybe that’s what it took.

Not much after that, my wrists began to hurt. I had trouble lifting a coffee cup. My son was in preschool then, and to drop him off and pick him up, I had to walk a few blocks, but it was painful. My ankles were swollen and holding hands with my son to cross the street was hard. I couldn’t turn round doorknobs or walk up stairs with ease. After several misdiagnoses, I was sent to a rheumatologist who guessed correctly that my liver disease was making me ill. I had developed liver cirrhosis, and I had never had a drop of wine.

There were a lot of doctors, and they wrote about my case to each other. A gastroenterologist wanted me to try a course of treatment with Interferon, because I was so young, and liver transplants were not so easy to be had. For three months, I gave myself a shot of this medicine in my thigh each day. My hair fell out in clumps in the shower. When I bent down to sweep the floor, blood vessels would break in my face to make bruises. I could not leave the house sometimes because I had diarrhea or because I could not stop vomiting. Each day, I had a few hours of energy, and I would store them up for Sam, my three-year-old. I wanted him to think that I was well.

When the treatment ended, my liver function tests improved markedly. My doctor was cautious, so he took more tests. I continued to work on Free Food for Millionaires, compelled to finish a first draft. A year after the treatment, the doctor told me that I was cured of my chronic liver disease. One in a million, he marveled. I went home that afternoon, and I lay down on my bed with my good news. This life was unexpected. I told myself that I could not be so afraid of judgment that I would hold back. And so I did not.

When I sold the manuscript in the summer of 2006, I counted 11 years as my apprenticeship. I was 37 years old.

Daily inspiration. Discover more photos at http://justforbooks.tumblr.com

[rksingh1950]

R.K.Singh In Conversation with Abnish Singh Chauhan

A poem rests

on brain signals imaged

in words and silence

one decodes with dog sense

smelling twists and turns in rhythm

that turn it prophetic. (A Poem)

The journey of poetic composition, as the poet says himself, begins with the poet and ends with the reader for which requires verbal competency, intelligence and constructive environment in order to code and decode the ‘signals’ of creative beauty in a forceful and effective manner. Since the poet is the first reader and critic of his poetic piece, he should have the capacity to articulate and interpret his own words in prose in order to judge the suitability, profundity and authenticity of his ‘signals’ in the form of emotions, ideas and images for inter-personal and intra-personal communications. T S Eliot also emphasized this in The Music of Poetry; however, in the coercive manner: “No poet can write a poem of amplitude unless he is a master of the prosaic.” Therefore, Eliot’s statement may or may not be true in the making of a poetic piece; but it is certain that command over prose is an additional advantage to the poet, particularly in conversation with himself as well as with the lovers of literature on a public platform; and it is indispensable when the poet also performs as critic for efficient and captivating criticism.  Here is such an Indian poet of communicative sensibilities and critic of glittering language— Ram Krishna Singh (1950). Prof Singh, who is the contemporary of Niranjan Mohanty, Hoshang Merchant, R. C. Shukla, Gopi Krishnan Kattoor, D. C. Chambial, I. K. Sharma, Gopal Honnalgere, I. H. Rizvi, D. H. Kabadi, P. C. K. Prem, etc., knows how to raise and answer the questions about the world and its problems and how to incorporate information along with emotion in poetry and criticism in order to disseminate love and light to all the human and non-human entities of the Mother Earth through purity, charity, sacrifice and suffering: “I gave you my love/ what more do you seek/ to lighten the night/ my beloved/ let the fire burn /and consume the moth.”

Recently retired as Professor (HAG) from Indian School of Mines (now IIT), Dhanbad, Jharkhand, India, R. K. Singh has authored more than 160 research articles, 175 book reviews and 40 books, including his latest poetry collection You Can’t Scent Me and Other Selected Poems (2016) from Authorspress along with his e-book Writing Editing Publishing A Memoir (2016). He has been conferred with many awards and honours across the world. He resides at J/4 (W), Rd. No.1/Block B, Vastu Vihar Colony, N H 2, Govindpur- 828109 (Dhanbad), Jharkhand and can also be contacted at profrksingh@gmail.com

N.B: The profile of R K Singh is separately published in author’s corner. It may be clicked and viewed HERE.

ASC: Sir, you were born, brought up and educated in Varanasi— the seat of light and learning from the ancient times. How did it play its role in the formation of a silver tongue poet and rational critic in you?

RKS: A silver tongue poet? Hm… Thanks for the compliment Abnish. Varanasi is a complex city, a city of contradictions, even if it has ceased to be what it used to be in my formative years in the 1950s and 60s.

The city did influence my mental habits unconsciously, since I was born and raised in the lanes and by-lanes of its interior, with values such as freedom to think and pursue ones interests, tolerance for differences, broadness and openness of the mind, uninhibited sexpression, etc. The conscious creative influences must be the result of meeting many people, visiting various places, and experiencing life differently at different points of time.  Also, reading and observing led to serious critical thinking, writing, debating, and corresponding. I had opportunities to work part-time and be independent to do whatever I liked. Besides writing poetry in Hindi, I had opportunities to reflect on contemporary issues and express myself in a couple of Hindi dailies and weeklies long before my graduation, just as I would actively participate in youth activities, debate and speech competitions, attend musical concerts, art exhibitions, poets’ meet etc and publish reports/reviews.

The city engaged me better than the irrelevant routines of the high school, intermediate and degree colleges. The teachers disappointed me most, from childhood to boyhood to adulthood.

I must also admit that I was not uninfluenced by the chaos and crisis of the 1960s.  As a youth I had no hope, no faith, no trust in the system, nor did I know the direction of life.  It was living in constant tension about the future.  In fact it was a lonely struggle vis-à-vis the glaring waste of time in college and university.  Given my anti-establishment attitude, I was not confident that I could ever get a job or have a career.  Failure and frustration loomed large.  Poetry was the only solace.

ASC: Sir, you started your career as a journalist. The job of a journalist always requires honesty, hard work, quality writing and the courage to tell the truth. But, just after a year or two you changed your job and adopted the teaching profession, which also demands proper understanding of the subject matter, wide interest, helpful attitude, love for learning, skills of classroom management and a desire to make a difference in the lives of the taughts. How much are these experiences constructive in communicating your vision and mission in your literary works and academic writings?

RKS: As I said, as a student I had very poor opinion of my teachers.  I had no interest in teaching as a career, but Professor S M Pandeya, who supervised my M A thesis, insisted that I should not be drawn to the glitters of journalism, and rather take up teaching as a profession.  He even helped me get the first job as a lecturer in a college in Pulgaon by writing to O P Bhatnagar, who later became a life-long friend.  I was 21 years old, wanted to do Ph D in American literature from Nagpur or Bombay university, but the management won’t let me go to meet the faculty there.  I resigned the job in less than six months and came back home.

After a year (or more) of unemployment—a period I spent with Dr B Chakroverty, learning the finer nuances of literary criticism (he was writing a book on Tagore, the dramatist)—I joined the District Gazetteers Dept in Lucknow as Compilation Officer.  The U.P. Government’s job entailed revising and updating the old gazetteers.

I ignored the offer of working in IIT, Kanpur as a junior lecturer. It came just around the time I had made up my mind to work in Lucknow.

In the mean time, I was also selected as a journalist trainee in The Press Trust of India, New Delhi, and was keen to join the position. However, my IAS bosses in the Gazetteers Dept (as also my parents) dissuaded me, but seeing my enthusiasm, they released me, with the kind option to return to the post if not satisfied at PTI within three months.

I was happy to join my dream profession, despite monetary loss and hardships of living in Delhi.  But soon I discovered I was a misfit there.  I couldn’t suffer the envious colleagues and their dubious designs and practices, and so, I finally decided to quit, as soon as I got an offer from the newly set-up Royal Bhutan Polytechnic, Deothang (E. Bhutan).

I was back to teaching, which now appeared more convenient, but very demanding. The direction of my career was clear: I would professionally practice ELT/ESP, but personally pursue literature, especially Indian English poetry, and promote new/less known poets and authors by reviewing their books, writing articles about their work, and editing books and journals.  It was challenging but rewarding. Learning by doing, you know.  It is this that made me known all over, from a small place like Dhanbad. Indeed, all this needs a lot of labour and commitment, as you rightly observed.

ASC: Sir, how do you summon your emotions and experiences for composing a poem or other work of art? Do you respond to urgency, stipulation or passion for creative writings, which seems as real, animated and impressive as the rest of the world?

RKS: To tell you the truth, most of the poems I wrote have simply happened. The poetic mood, short-lived as it is, would help create from anything, anywhere, anytime. I can’t write a poem deliberately on a theme on demand.  Nor have I been interested in didactic or moralistic writing.   My emotions and experiences are, therefore, genuine and sympathetic readers can relate to them.

Personally speaking, a poem’s composition helps me get a release from myself as much as from others or whatever agitates me. I feel free by unburdening myself in verses; I experience an inner relief, a freedom from the built-up pressure, tension, unease, or whatever, you know. If it turns out to be a good poem, it offers a pleasing sensation, rest to my disturbed nerves, and peace to my inner being.

ASC: Sir, you have been regularly writing poetry with social, cultural, spiritual, ethical, mythical, erotic and aesthetic perceptions for the international audiences with the universal lessons of truth, love, compassion, pity, peace and harmony. How do you secure and evolve selfhood along with worldhood in your poetry amidst the fast changing societies and their value-systems?

RKS: Thanks for summarizing well the essential nature of my poems. I, too, think it is broad enough to appeal to audiences everywhere. Human nature is same, whatever culture, society or country, and I have tried to express what people experience universally.  I don’t seek the sublime or great or ideal, you see. I am rooted in my basic nature, which  has been evolving.  When effective, one can physically feel it, I mean, the poet’s emotion or psychosexual sensation, and partake of his self.

There is poetry in the subtlety of awareness, as you will also agree.  I feel myself in words that acquire their own existence in the process of making, in a form I may have no control over, given the pressure or urgency to express the momentness of a moment as lived, perceived, or experienced in the continuity of memory.  My selfhood extends to worldhood in my expression in a timeless frame of a moment inhering the pressure of the struggle for survival, search for meaning or purpose in an otherwise very negative, frustrating, disappointing, painful existence, or social reality, if you so like.

ASC: Sir, when you talk about (even question) sense, silence, solitude, love and sex amidst the sound and serenity of pebbles, stones, rivers and the flora and fauna of the mother earth, you imbibe and inculcate man and Nature in your poetry, which is clearly recognized and understood by your readers. In spite of that, why do you rhetorically proclaim- ‘I Do Not Question’ (1994) and ‘You Can’t Scent me’ (2016)?

RKS: The answer lies in your question itself: it’s rhetorical. Philosophically, a straight forward observation of the Purush-Prakriti or Yin-Yang consciousness vis-à-vis the monotony of existence.  I seek meaning of the mystery of life, its reality and pains through the eyes of Nature, metaphors of self-contradictions, intrinsic dissonance, or search for harmony and identity.

Having said this, let me also add a word of caution. I’m very poor at titling my poems.  In fact I don’t believe in giving a title to my poem, nor do I give a title while composing it. Titles tell too much. In my volume of Collected Poems, you’ll find no title, unless extremely necessary for identification or other structural reasons (as in Haiku/Tanka sequences).  

Without titles, the poems give readers more freedom to make their own meaning and relate to their own experiences, different from the poet’s.

ASC: In one of your interviews, you have exhorted— ‘As a poet, if I use human passion, including the sexual, I try to transmute and transmit memories of experience, possibly more with a sense of irony than erotic sexuality.’ Hence, do you think that your sexual passion expressed in your poetry is meant only for creating a sense of irony— a popular technique of poetic communication or it also stands for something else?

RKS: Sex is eternal, unchanging over time and culture.  It is the basic principle of life and creation.  It’s expression, therefore, calls for celebration.  It is central to social harmony, emotional pleasure, and inner peace. It is not devoid of sensibility.  The metaphors of sex reveal our social consciousness, our inner mind, our hidden reality.   Our sexual passion is the mirror reflecting the spiritual passion; the body reveals the soul.  One needs to appreciate it and relate to the pragmatics of my communication.  While Jindagi Kumari’s ‘The Poetics of R.K. Singh’  is a helpful essay in this respect, Raghuvanshmani Tripathi’s ‘The Asexuality of Sex: A Study of Sex Expresion in R.K. Singh’s Poetry’ should enlighten a sympathetic reader further.

ASC: You wrote the paradox in your poem ‘Degeneration’— ‘I can’t change man or nature, nor the karmas/ now or tomorrow they all delude/ in the maze of expediency and curse/ stars, fate, destiny, or life before and after/ degenerating the mind, body, thought, and divine.’ Do they survive because they bring degeneration, and ultimately death?  If so, no hope, no dream, no joy and no future?

RKS: As a poet I would prefer to refrain from interpreting my own poem for readers.  I would rather leave it to them to make sense of it anyway they like. I don’t question unless it is deliberately personally offending…But, let me see it again. Firstly, the hang of the poem ‘Degeneration’ was added when I posted it online, or submitted it to some e-journal, I don’t remember now.  Secondly, it was my own ‘degeneration’ – physical, mental, financial and spiritual—that afflicted my mood in June 2014 when I wrote it.  Things were looking blue—the envious hostility of my junior colleagues who freely distorted facts and told outright lies, the  deteriorating health condition, the bad time predicted by  astrologers, and tall claims of prophet friends, tarot-card readers and fortune tellers on the net, seeking money to turn the wheel of time in my favour.  Their expectation from me had in-built irony in that I couldn’t compromise my realization that best things in life come free.  But people are as they are—out to grab wealth, favour, profit, promotion, whatever—by cheating, telling lies, weaving dreams, or stabbing in the back.  They suffer.  I can’t change my nature, and my adversaries can’t change their nature.  Ultimately we are all subjected to our own karmas, our destiny, or the forces of Nature. No use cursing or abusing, if we delude ourselves.  The plain truth is:  if we are dishonest to ourselves, we suffer all round degeneration in the maze of our own making.  The poem, however, preaches nothing, except showing a condition. The readers can draw their own conclusions.

ASC: Sir, what is your favorite technique (s) of protest against the anomalies/ grave issues of the world, party created by highly advanced machines and electronic devices and partly by man himself?

RKS: As I told you just now, portray the picture, or create the image of what obtains, and leave the rest to the readers’ imagination, or decision, if you like. No advice, no judgment.  New technologies have thrown up new issues, new norms, new values. The important thing now is to communicate, to interact, to talk about whatever issues or values bother you as an individual. You can’t live by your prejudices or traditional ideas alone, if you hope to be relevant.  The new age demands new language, new expression, new metaphors. You will discover the new technique to protest too. But, let’s come out of the shackles of our own making, first.

ASC: Sir, how do you characterize your Haiku and Tanka? Are they influential and beneficial to the masses to a large extent or only popular among and practiced by some selected people, especially the poets and a few others?

RKS: Let’s be clear about certain basics. Haiku is a difficult genre. It is miniature poetry, a sketch of a moment’s experience, to be filled out by the reader.  It does not use sentences, nor the devices of Western poetry, nor shares its use of the sentimental and simile—preferring always contact with the real—the things of Nature and the spirit of Nature herself, the perception experience. It is down to earth; expression of what is—what you see and hear and touch; the thing itself, not a poetic or literary or philosophical view of it. In haiku we don’t elaborate or explain, only sketch our experience of the moment.  ‘Haiku moment’ is the great secret.

It took me years of preparation and practice to be able to give expression to sudden or subtle moments of awareness into the nature of passing time.  As H.F. Noyes commented, reading some of my haiku, simplicity and lightness should be the aim of all haiku, and detachment is desirable in our way of looking at things-- detachment, selflessness, and a sense of our oneness with all life.  It is achieving the union of our minds with nature, or being in league with the five elements.  It is essentially spiritual.  There is God’s abundance to feel in the three lines.  The briefer you become, the nearer you are to silence.

I have tried to express sensuousness in haiku. After all, it’s not just seeing and hearing that offer us reality, but touch as well.

Another Japanese poetry form, Tanka is a typical lyric poem of feeling and ideas, often involving figurative language, not used in haiku. You can say it is like a ‘long haiku’ in five lines.  It addresses varied aspects of contemporary living. It shares the basic qualities of all successful poems.

But if you’re a poet, writing haiku and tanka too much can suppress some of your true poetic instincts, even if their practice should improve the quality of expression of Indian English poets.  It will ensure a sense of rhythm and prevent waste of words.   Many of my poems have haiku and tanka structure as stanzas.

ASC: W H Auden said, ‘Poetry makes nothing happen. One is deluded if one believes that one can actually preserve the world in words, but one is just playing games if one doesn’t try.’ Do you agree with him? If yes, why; if no, why not?

RKS: I don’t know the context in which Auden said this, but I, too, doubt poetry can make anything happen. It can’t mould a society by itself.  It has no utilitarian function. As I said elsewhere, it can at best create some awareness, hone some finer feelings, present some specialist perceptions, reflect one’s mind and soul, remain part of cultural activities and a form of literary communication.  But it can’t make anything happen.

Personally, I don’t practice poetry with any idealistic notion.  Nor do I share the view that poetry can teach one about ethics, morality, history, politics, or revolution. It is no means for social salvation either.  It might assimilate, inhere or portray a degenerating situation, but it can’t change it. My poetry commits no such obligation. Nor can poetry or criticism become a basis for societal reform.

ASC: Sir, you have been associated with the editorial activities, evaluation work of research projects and book reviews throughout your academic/literary career. Most of the times, it is observed that the authors/ researchers manipulate (also copy, cut and paste) ideas and concepts and produce them in their works. How do you, as a critic, examine and respond to such works?

RKS: What you say is true. It is indeed very disappointing that there is so much ‘recycling’ of material going on in the name of research.  Scholars tend to practice short-cuts, but it is the job of the guides/supervisors and seniors to help them improve their language and literary abilities, particularly research writing skills, and make them read, interpret and evaluate the original texts.  If the seniors are badly trained, their scholars will depend on, what you call, manipulation of all sorts.

To minimize this, scholars are now expected to publish research papers in standard national/foreign/Thomson-Reuter listed journals before submitting their theses just as the teachers are considered eligible for promotion only when they have publications in standard journals.  We need to be sympathetic but tough in this respect.  Let’s  hope things improve in the years ahead.

ASC: Sir, your poetry has been translated into Italian, Japanese, Chinese, German, French and a few other languages of the world. Translation (also other creative works) is not an easy task. It requires proper understanding of the language, its socio-cultural references, trends and tendencies along with the mind and motives of the author. How much is it effective and satisfactory when the readers are less engaged and little interested in the translated works?  

RKS: My poems have been translated not only into Italian, Japanese, Chinese, German and French, but also into Greek, Spanish, Portuguese, Irish, Turkish, Romanian, Crimean Tatar, Bulgarian, Slovene, Croatian, Korean, Arabic, Farsi, Serbian, Esperanto, Hindi, Punjabi, Tamil, Kannada, and Bangla.  I hardly know any of the translators personally, but the availability of my poems online has helped me reach out to a larger audience. The translators must have negotiated the difficulties you mention—I can’t comment, for I do not know all these languages (except Hindi).

The problem with most of us is that we don’t read. We don’t care to appreciate others, except ourselves. We don’t bother to study and critique the fellow-travelers but expect from  them to read and write about us.   Additionally, because we write in English, some of us in the academia expect the native speakers of English to pat us; we value their comments/opinions, and down-rate the observations by the fellow Indians, young or old.  Also, most of us don’t encourage serious academic research in writings of the new or less known Indian English authors, self-published or published by the small press.  In such a situation, how do you expect translations to be undertaken or studied?

We as academics need to change our attitude if we want to be accepted within our own country, first.  We can reach out to a larger audience via translation only if we accept the fact that people’s tastes in poetry differ widely, and most Indian poetry in English is generally considered naïve or oversweet.  Not many literary magazines will publish translation, unless it is professionally done and it reads as good as the original (or better than the original).  We need to handle several issues academically first... Frankly, I have more problems with the self-styled experts and dons than with the poets and writers who spend their own hard-earned money to publish their books and bear the cost of sharing these with them.

ASC: Sir, often it is observed that the publication and publicity (including critical appreciation) of literature are based on contact, relation, power and position. How far is it true and how can genuine authors rise and grow in such circumstances?

RKS: Internet has proved a great blessing. The age of all those few great names in Indian English writing that have been repeatedly studied and explored for academic degrees is over.  Now is the time to discover new names; study new authors, new voices. We have to prove that Indian English writing is viable, potent and worth studying; that there is something different about it; that it exists and is growing.  Your Creation and Criticism is doing that, isn’t it?

The institution I worked in Dhanbad is not a mainstream university, yet I could make worldwide publications from early 1980s almost regularly, without any personal contact, relation, or support. I had no short cuts except hard work, clear vision, and passion. You can see from my List of Publications how many new poets (who are now relatively better known) I talked about, not only from our country but also from outside.

When no computer or laptop was available, I would type out my manuscripts on my old typewriter and approach editors and publishers without any backing.  Slowly I made my impact, despite apathy from the likes of Ezekiel, Mahapatra, Shiv K Kumar, and all those Bombay poets.  I could ruthlessly challenge anyone because I never needed them for any personal favour, whatever my position. They didn’t know ESP and I didn’t care to know them (or their writings) till I started the MPhil/PhD programmes at ISM.

In fact, I won’t have time, motivation, or leave from the institution, to attend conferences, or visit other universities and develop personal relationship, except through letters.  Yet, I achieved what I wanted to, and reached the highest in the academic rung, without any personal contact.  Believe me, a good work will speak for itself, if one is honest and working hard.  Unfortunately, in most cases today, the quality is lacking, just as friends don’t want to see beyond themselves.

ASC: Sir, what is the role of social media, especially Facebook, Twitter and Whatsapp, in promoting and presenting literature online when a few followers and fellow-travelers (online friends) just ‘like’ (though most of the times ignore the post), remark- ‘congratulation/ best wishes/ wow/ thanks/ excellent/ amazing and so on’ or rarely make some serious comment (s) on the post?

RKS: I view social media as a positive development for poets and writers to be noted, even if the  members’ ‘viewing’ does not necessarily mean a post’s ‘reading’, or their ‘likes’ hardly imply something serious, except a confirmation that they saw it.  If no comments are offered, it does not mean the post has ceased to exist.  One’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Google+, Youtube, Tumblr etc helps in reaching out internationally. You can develop contacts here. The search engines record what you do on these sites. It’s a matter of time, opportunity, and a little bit of luck when your work is searched or discovered by interested readers, scholars, editors, or publishers.

ASC: Sir, now-a-days, prizes, awards, honors are more lucrative and valuable than before as per the mind-set of the public. If an author is conferred with them, he is accepted and appreciated not only in the literary arena but also out of it. How do you perceive the politics of prize and placement of the author in the present scenario?

RKS: It is no doubt motivating to be honored with some prize or recognition. Better keep from it, if it comes with politics.  It is also wasteful if it comes after paying money, for whatever reasons.

However, if the mainstream media – TV, newspapers, learned societies, government bodies, or publishing houses—and academia ignore me or you, it doesn’t mean we don’t exist.  It’s a matter of time till we are discovered by interested readers, researchers, scholars, editors, or publishers at home or abroad.  We need to keep patience and continue to do what we are doing.  This is what is the biggest reward in itself in the IT-dominated present time.

ASC: Sir, do you have any desire left to be fulfilled in the coming years or fully satisfied with your karmas of an author?

RKS: Though I have minimized my academic activities and stopped teaching after retirement last December, I continue to be active as a poet and wish to be recognized as such by the mainstream media and academia.   As it is, I am afraid I continue to write from the margin, and I hope, in the days ahead more scholars and critics would study and explore my poetry to strengthen creation and criticism.

ASC: Sir, would you please share your opinions about Creation and Criticism— the literary e-journal of English Language and Literature?

RKS: The e-journal is a happy development in the annals of literary publications, both creative and critical, from India.  Both you and Sudhir Arora have been doing very well as editors just as your claim to be friendly to researchers and scholars is justified.  The site is indeed very friendly. Kudos. You have already broken away from the past and hopefully both of you will reach much higher.

Let the journal promote studies on native Indian English poets and authors who have been active for decades from the periphery and suffering colonialist treatment in a post-colonialist environment, even after the maturity of Indian English. Let them not find themselves deprived despite merits; let them not rot in anonymity or degenerate in the politics of belonging.  Let us discover (or re-discover) the neglected and promising good poets and writers and contribute to the development of art and criticism from the perspectives of the 21st century scholarship. God bless.

ASC: Thank you very much for your interesting and enlightening conversation.

RKS: It’s my pleasure.

The Interviewer:

Dr Abnish Singh Chauhan (1979) is a bilingual poet, critic, translator and editor (Hindi and English). His significant books include Swami Vivekananda: Select Speeches, Speeches of Swami Vivekananda and Subhash Chandra Bose: A Comparative Study, King Lear: A Critical Study, Functional Skills in Language and Literature, Functional English, The Fictional World of Arun Joshi: Paradigm Shift in Values and Tukda Kagaz Ka (Hindi Lyrics). His deep interest in translation prompted him to translate thirty poems of B S Gautam Anurag under the title Burns Within from Hindi into English and some poems of Paddy Martin from English into Hindi. He can be contacted at abnishsinghchauhan@gmail.com.

Published in http://creationandcriticism.com/113.html