Review by Anand Robin about Rashid’s most recent poetry book.
Rashid writes so easily the words seem to tip-toe from the silence. The rhythms are free, only rarely and then precisely straying beyond the structures of the verse.
These are the poems of a meditator, where the words slip through the emptiness and the subjects mirror the style: the silent stillness of nature at work, the still root of the growing plant, the pre-dawn silence waiting for the birdsong, memories rising like green shoots from the earth, the “wear-worn words” queuing up to “bless the rising day.”
Other subjects ask the big questions while finding the counterpoint and contradictions and then the significance of every little thing. Osho’s silence, sometimes explicit is always evident, even when the words become noisy with contrariness and opposites, with contradictions in the oneness of truth that Osho would recognize. Like the Red Queen enjoying the impossible before breakfast, there are poems describing in words the ‘now’ before it has gone.
Each poem is complemented by a deceptively simple and effortless drawing from Rashid’s suite called The Face Behind the Face.
A lovely book; philosophical, meditative, humorous and rich in the images of the nature that Rashid loves.
Anand Robin, Osho News
Available from the publisher www.treetongue.co.uk
Rashid took sannyas in Pune 1. There he worked growing vegetables for the master-gardener. On the Ranch he spent a lot of time in the pot-room and the fire tower. In Pune 2, till the master left the body, he was a bodyguard, an editor and all jobs in-between. Now he lives in Devon, keeps bees, paints and makes prints, designs buildings and landscapes for sacred use. He has published three volumes of poetry. rashidmaxwell.com
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