Anima: & the Narrative Limits

In this stunning new collection, Nabina Das takes on the most human of our qualities, our yearning for story, and escorts us through poems that are also lyrical micro-narratives: from the very local-the flavors, colors and tastes of the market; the damp of an earthen floor; the fugitive beauty and ugliness of plastic litter-to the more abstract: earth, water, blood, losses, absences, breath, song, and silence. Anima is our first and best guide: a powerful, fearless entity who will take on any topic, including violent death, abiding love, pandemic loss. Das carries us, as she says in the double-meaning title of the second section of this work, to the narrative limits (and to the limits of narrative), consoling us in the final poem with her fugitive optimism: the image of hands catching light itself where fireflies make moving poetry of the night.>Nabina Das has a unique female voice that draws inspiration from myth and folklore as well as the harsh realities of existence, and often superimposes one on the other. There is resistance here, but also love, and the poems, that seem so spontaneous, form an organic whole.>Nabina Das's poems are very unusual, both lyrical and surreal, and very much at odds with the current trends of precision and terseness. They have a charm of their own-it's her natural voice, free flowing, political and liberating.--MANOHAR SHETTY