From the Biography of an Unknown Woman

By Indira Babbellapati

The poems From the Biography of an Unknown Woman are written over a decade based on my personal responses to the lives of a cross section of women I came across. The poems are reflective of emotions, feelings, responses and experiences of many women which I consider can be of any woman. The words in the anthology smile, laugh, bleed, shed tears, remain passive, in short they speak of lives lived, lives living

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Jan 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781482844245

Indira Babbellapati

INDIRA BABBELLAPATI, a professor of English in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Andhra University, Visakhapatnam, India, is a published poet and translator. She is also on the panel of translators of Sahitya Akademi. Affaire de Coeur, Vignettes of the Sea, echo… and The Night of Nectar-(translation) are some of her published anthologies. She is also anthologized in Roots and Wings, Heaven, Suvarnarekha and Persona. An anthology of twenty Telugu short stories--Gender Game and other Stories, and a Telugu novel, The Dusk, are her published translations. Her translations are also found in Indian Literature and Gold Nuggets. Her original poetry in English has been translated into Hindi, Bangla, Spanish, and French. Indira has also co-authored English text books for technical undergraduates. Presently she is engaged in the compilation of two poetry anthologies, nomadic nights and just for once…and the translation of short fiction of a renowned story teller for Sahitya Akademi, and an anthology of poems of a well-known Telugu poet. She can be reached at [e-mail]

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Copyright © 2015 by Indira Babbellapati.

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A word with you…

THE AMERICAN POET Muriel Rukeyser asks in one of her poems, What will happen if a woman were to tell the true story of her life? and answers, The world will split open. Rukeyser demands two things of the archetypal/universal woman: that she tell it, and be true in her telling. And the subjunctive ‘were’ suggests that it is no easy task, and until such a woman comes along, she can only be imagined, not to say imaginary. Rukeyser also quietly highlights one more issue: life is lived and experienced by billions of women, and each one experiences it in millions of ways. It is the telling that makes the world split open, not just the living. And that is why the stories need to be told, if we truly have to understand them.

Professor Indira Babbellapati’s collection From the Biography of an Unknown Woman is such a telling. For her, woman is individual and universal. The individual is thrown, existentially into a time and place, but her experiences are eternal. Here the poet speaks in both, individual and universal aspects. The poems are occasioned by the experiences of the women around her which she shares empathetically, and brings to them courage and healing. The subject of the poem may suffer despair, but above the despair hovers hope with courage and grit. As the poet says in one of her early offerings, woman is

pain…

She is tears…

But soon finds that

"Giving is her nature,

Loving is her instinct,

She’s me,

She’s you,

She’s a woman,

She’s a celebration!"

It is this joy that underpins the poet’s view of woman’s life and makes it heroic, lifting it from mere passivity. The joy of words that pour out to express woman’s experiences is a part of this heroism, reflected in the nimbleness and grace in their linear progression, much like a woman’s own gait:

In her small world of silence,

She satiates her desires,

With(in) herself.

The playfulness and vividness of the enclosing parentheses in the last line With(in) seem to show the instrumentality—the quality of being self-dependent—that she encloses (in) herself, as well as with herself.

As a woman, the poet collects and distills experience, qua woman. The poet comes to us as chronicler of women’s experiences, as a warner, but also as a consoler and councilor. That is why the verses here will speak to men and women will find a mirror here to life’s cruelty and care, and all other binaries one can imagine. In their telling, the world will split open, in Rukeyser’s powerful words. But all is not despair. For, as W B Yeats writes in another context, Nothing is whole or sole/That has not been rent. The experience, let me repeat, is out there in the world. Its expression is here.

These are vignettes gathered from the lives of several women I’m fortunate enough to come across and interact with…

I’m happy to dedicate From the Biography of an Unknown Woman to all women of the world in reverence and love…

indira

Many, many stories are

the stories untold;

even if one wants to,

it’s difficult to tell them

there’s nothing in them

that can be put in words :

hurt and experience are

far beyond expression

she thought as clouds

began to gather…

Sky is her heart,

river is her desire,

sea, her passion,

fire, she breathes

and walks upon earth.

She’s the universal woman.

…

Joy is hers,

pain is hers,

tears are hers,

laughter is hers…

She appreciates,

she condemns,

she cares,

she shares,

she tolerates,

she defends,

she confesses and

she offends too;

she creates,

she re-creates…

She’s nobody,

she’s everybody…

Giving is her nature,

loving is her instinct,

she’s me,

she’s you…

She’s a woman,

she’s a celebration!

Her small world has

no doors, no curtains,

no bosses, no orders.

Her small world has,

no suspicions, no interrogations,

no dearth for understanding.

In her small world of silence,

she satiates her desires,

with(in) herself.

…

On a rugged and jagged,

hilly terrain,

she stands as a lone tree,

in full bloom;

to bloom is her nature.

On the dark midnight skies,

She sparkles as a lone star.

Some take her light,

Others see only the darkness,

that surrounds her.

Her light is for either.

…

She’s a lonesome ship,

rocking and swaying,

vulnerable to every movement,

of a sea at storm.

High on the hill,

the light-house,

fell to the gales.

Now,

She’s the dark wave,

she’s the dark sea.

She’s the sea,

when her blood flows

with a roar;

She’s fire,

when her passion’s

set ablaze;

She’s the sky,

when she spreads herself

on you;

She’s air,

When she breathes life

into you;

She’s the earth,

When she absorbs all these

to give you a form.

From static waters,

to puddles and ponds,

to streams and canals,

to rivers and seas,

she, this unknown woman,

steers her engrossing course.

During the course,

she’s a ripple,

she’s at the mercy of waves,

she gets pushed to varied depths,

struggles for breath.

If ever you chance,

to dive deep into the sea;

there you would find her,

one among the many species,

that naturally survive,

at unfathomable depths.

Unnamed river of mysterious origins,

at the high mountains, is she;

flowing in multiple paths;

from the terrains touched,

she gets her myriad