A Call from the Shallows

<p class=ql-align-justify>How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea Shakespeare writes Whose action is no stronger than a flower? Sunil Iyengar answers the question in this dazzling debut collection with poems of poise wit and depth of thought. One seldom reads poetry with such a balanced almost Augustan sense of the poetic line and rightness of rhyme. <strong><em>A Call from the Shallows </em></strong>is a pleasure from beginning to end.</p><p class=ql-align-justify>-<strong>Richard Tillinghast</strong></p><p class=ql-align-justify><br></p><p class=ql-align-justify>The poems in Sunil Iyengar's <strong><em>A Call from the Shallows</em></strong>-classical motifs fixed in contemporary language-display an elegance rarely encountered in an era of professionalized informal verse as when his roses in bloom astonished at their own / brevity throng the lip of the tall glass. Iyengar's formidable erudition and shrewd meditations come to life in each carefully constructed line. Even such reassuring comforts as a family home are thrown open as when a For Sale sign / sheltered against a fallen pine announces an old Colonial free / of any claims to privacy. Iyengar questions all we take for granted permitting the reader a new way of understanding a confusing yet to Iyengar still promising world so that we might transmit pity / instead of loss defeat or shame.</p><p class=ql-align-justify>-<strong>Ernest Hilbert</strong> author of <strong><em>Last One Out</em></strong></p><p><br></p><p><br></p><p><br></p>