Sweetness of Salt
by MK Ajay (Ajay Manissery Konchery)
Published by Plainview Press
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Reviewed by Beth Cummings
MK Ajay grew up in a coastal town in southwestern India. He currently lives in Kuala Lumpur. These locations as well as his Indian-English language make this collection of poems special and unique.
Ajay make frequent use of the colors of sunrises and sunset on beachscapes, and of clouds over water and rain in the forty-six works included in this book.
Sometimes these images seem to stand in for feelings while in other places the same type of images appear to be pure poetic description of a place and time. In his poem “Flame-Of-the-Forest, Beypore” he describes with these images:
"Tree-prints stand
on a glazed plate of blue""They are murals set against many skies
created after rainbows""…a slice of
sunshine broken away from the sky,"In other poems he makes excellent use of metaphor: “They are my dreams walking on brittle stilts, skeletons that marched all the way from childhood..” (from “Ixora”). In “Near the Creek” he says “ A cloud is hobbling on the moon’s trail, searching, searching for a speck, an illusion of whiteness.”
I both enjoyed and appreciated this use of illustrative language. I think that this selection of poems would also appeal to other poetry readers.
Armchair Interviews says: Collection of excellent poems.