From My Heart to Yours- Review of a poetry book

Image source: Goodreads.com

Book: From My Heart To Yours

Author: M.A.Q. Rizvon

Genre: Poetry, poem

Publisher: Partridge (a Penguin Random House Company)

‘From My Heart to Yours’ is thin book with some heavy words that can stir you at times, move you on a few occasions or leave you impassive. The book is an anthology of poems thought and scribbled over a few decades by M.A.Q. Rizvon whose journey itself has been a poetry. A post master in the 1960s, an insurance agent in the 70s and a film journalist in the 80s, he has straddled disparate fields, garnering multiple memories on his way and picking up isolated threads that finally come together in the shape of this book.

So, it is not hard to make out that the poems in this book are mostly about people, about relationships, about faith, about God and about love and life in general.

To do justice to some of the wonderful lines, I would just present them here-

“Great thoughts have spread the carpet of grass

For us to wallow in joy and roll on and on.”   (Great Thoughts)

“I came to you on enfeebled feet

Heavy of heart downcast in eyes.

And, in a flash, you lifted me     (Reunion)

“… a moon

Comes on more often to share our sleepless nights.”   (Man barricades against himself)

“The lighting that came was looking for me”  (Gratitude to the one who made me)

While I was really charmed by the metaphorical beauty in the above lines, here is an intelligent use of alliteration that I couldn’t fail to notice-

“In a verdant, vivid vale of Kashmir” (The song of a sixteen-year old)

A few other beautiful lines-

“She gave him a parting kiss of pain

………

She left him the memory of the life he lived”  (A dew drop on a rose in bloom)

And I would leave you with these angelic thoughts

“She rose like fragrance…

A fairy, …

High above a rainbow”    (A note of love)

-Ritesh Agarwal

Review done on request by Ayesha Rahman (the grandchild of M.A.Q. Rizvon) whose handwritten letter warmed my heart.