The Lonely Drummer and Other Poems

The Lonely Drummer and Other Poems is a poetry collection published in the winters of 2017 by Notion Press and written by Abhishek Goswami, a poet with passion and vision. Abhishek’s collection brings to life different abstract ideas with the help of poetry and animated word-decorations communicate to the readers to convey various ideas and narrate different stories in verse which are indeed amazing to read. I have received the collection to read and review and I perfectly enjoyed my share of joy that this collection, The Lonely Drummer and Other Poems, brought to me. It starts with a touch of reality and then takes the readers to a joy-ride of poetry – through rise and fall and through hopes and despair together. You will just love it!

Sometimes, the poetry of Abhishek Goswami bases itself on the imagery of hopelessness and despair and reminds us of the Victorians for whom the sky and the earth all mourned together, more often than usual:

“The lifeless sky is so hopeless,
And a solitary hawk hovering high.”

However, with Abhishek, the good thing is that his language and word choice are very near to the understanding of a common reader and the poetry can truly be enjoyed. You can just relax while you read without the necessity of re-thinking – he has used fewer hyperboles and told more poetry to the readers!

His humour also takes a different shape in some of his poems. He has written the longer ones based on some Bengali songs and they will certainly make you laugh and the nature of writing is also so wonderful that you will enjoy reading them to your friends too. However, take a look at the lines below:

“There was a young lad called Sydney,
….
But alas, he died of a stone in his kidney!”

I have omitted some lines in between deliberately that you can enjoy the poem when you read the book but just observe the beauty of humour in the two lines which are above! The rhyme is there; the reason is there; the tragedy is also there as well as poetry is there along with everything else!

The Lonely Drummer and Other Poems has total 35 poems in the book and all of them are written on various themes and subjects. Except the longer one called The Blue Book which is a story told in verse and runs through five chapters. You will certainly like that one too because it is written with certain elements of suspense and comic vision.

Abhishek Goswami’s vision of poetry, from his very first collection, comes clean to the readers. It is about telling the truth to the readers; it is also about telling the beautiful lies to the readers which let them have their moments of relief – by the means of literature only! I have liked his mechanism behind this collection and I hope readers will enjoy reading the poems in it. You can get your copies at the link below:

Abhishek’s The Lonely Drummer & Other Poems – Amazon India

review by – Saurabh of Indian Book Lovers