Question

Write an appreciation of the poem ‘Small Towns and the River’. Refer to the earlier poems for the points to be covered for appreciation.

1. About the poem/poet and the title
2. Theme
3. Poetic style
4. The language/poetic devices used in the poem
5. Special features
6. Message, values, morals in the poem
7. Your opinion about the poem

Answer 1

Appreciation of the poem
‘Small Towns and the River’

The poem ‘Small Towns and the River’ is written by Mamang Dai, a writer from North-east India. It is a nature poem, but with a difference that while celebrating nature around her hometown, the poet also laments the destruction of that nature to make way for the lifeless small towns along the river. The poem consists seven stanzas of unequal length and is written in free verse, which means that it does not have a rhyme scheme. In fact, the poet begins by narrating the flip side of small towns situated amidst trees, which remind her of death with their flying dust and howling wind. She treats life and death as transient, but the nature and rituals as permanent. The river has a predominant presence in her poem. It is depicted as the one alongside which lie numerous small towns, the one with a soul, the one which ‘knows’, the one which brings grief to inhabitants of the towns in summer, and the one which knows about the ‘immortality’ of its water. She speaks of life during childhood, full of happiness, transitioning into the later life of anxiety, as symbolized by the growth of the small towns by the river. The lines are short and the verses are lucid. The poet has used poetic devices like Alliteration, Antithesis, Inversion, Metaphor, Onomatopoeia, Personification, Repetition, Simile, and Transferred Epithet to beautify the poem. The extensive use of Personification can be seen in the animate/human qualities attributed to the river “the river has a soul”, “it holds its breath” and “the river knows”. The traditional belief that the souls of the dead dwell in nature, and rise with the sun, the cold bamboo that springs back with the sunlight, and the significance of the same in the life, form imagery in the poem. The depiction of the towns during the summer and winter seasons adds to the visual imagery of the poem. The elaborate descriptions of the river as a living entity also make for the special feature of imagery used by the poet. The main message of the poem is the conveying of the poet’s mixed, almost antithetical, feelings about nature and the small towns which lie by the river. While the poet employs nature to imply positivity, she looks upon the small towns as a symbol of death, since they have grown at the cost of nature. Overall, the poem is an interesting read and I like it for its curious mix of the positive and the negative aspects.