Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry, Volume 3, Number 2. November 2020. ISSN: 2581-7094
“Flowers don’t tell, they show.” – Stephanie Skeem
Communication between
poets and nature is very intimate and nature in many ways inspires creation, especially when it comes
to arts and writing. Flowers, one of nature’s greatest gifts, be it a single
stalk of a rose or a garden filled with all kinds of blossoms inspires all
ranges of emotions in mankind. Their beauty, their colour, their fragrance,
their folds, and their very brief life makes them objects of wonder. No doubt their beauty and fragrance have stirred
up the keenest of imaginations and roused memories right from the beginnings of
human imagination somewhere in the solitary caves or together around a fire.
All poetry begins as a
seed of thought like a seed sowed in the earth that grows a plant then bears
flowers.
Once in a golden hour
I
cast to earth a seed.
Up
there came a flower,
The people said, a weed…
(The Flower:
Tennyson)
Every poem written is a
wreath, woven with words that are like flowers. It carries meaning and freshness
and its own fragrance.
A wreathèd garland of
deservèd praise,
Of praise deservèd, unto Thee I give,
I give to Thee, who knowest all my ways,
My crooked winding ways, wherein I live,—
Wherein I die, not live ; for life is straight,
Straight as a line, and ever tends to Thee,
To Thee, who art more far above deceit,
Than deceit seems above simplicity…
(A Wreath: George Herbert)
Each culture and
society may have different metaphors for the same flower, or the same flower
could assign different emotions for different persons. In response to the call
for submission for the winter issue of Teesta
Review themed on flowers, we are rewarded with a collection of warm and
wonderful poems by many poets, each with their own stories of flowers. There is
history to be told, sadness to be shared, longings to be exposed and hope to be
retained in the issue’s many voices. There is an overwhelming amount of poems
submitted and we could not carry all the poems in this issue. We thank all the
poets who have submitted their work to Teesta
Review for considering our journal a potential home for your work. While we
were delighted to have the opportunity to read your poems we had to pass over
some poems this time. We are grateful for your readership of our Teesta Review and we admire you for
trusting us with your innermost thoughts that makes poetry. We will carry some
of these poems in future issues as and when applicable.
For centuries the
tradition of drawing parallels between the beauty and delicacy and frailty of
women and flowers have been persistent in many cultures but it is interesting
to see that some poets in this collection have outgrown such cliché. Each poem
surprises us with its new interpretation of the theme.
A poet searches the meaning of her/his experience and arranges them in the form of poetry and a reader gives meaning to the poem. A poem is a lonely wanderer without a reader. This issue of Teesta Review builds yet another bridge between the poet and the reader, there is always an emotion to be understood and hope to be shared in each poem. Via the voice of poets coming from different walks of life and different continents carrying different experiences and cultures the poems that overflow from the poet’s hearts in the volume makes this issue beautiful by their ambiguity, paradox, contradictions, doubts, and impossibilities.
(Guest Editor)
Teesta Review: A Journal of Poetry