I was watching the recent Voice of
America Kunleng discussion on contemporary Tibetan writing, with guests Tenzing
Rigdol (artist, poet) and Dhondup Tashi Rekjong (editor, writer). There was
talk about Rigdol’s recent book of poetry and talk about Bhuchung D Sonam’s
recent book of criticism, and discussion on the urgent need for criticism and
the huge gaping hole there, where our small community is concerned. Of his own
book, Rigdol said, “If a book isn’t reviewed, it becomes an orphan.” So this is…not
an adoption exactly. I am hardly a real reviewer. This is more like a care
package.
A
Review of BUTTERFLY’S WINGS, Tenzing Rigdol’s 3rd Collection of
Poetry
Originally
Published on Phayul on August 20, 2012
Tenzing
Rigdol follows in the tradition of the sixth Dalai Lama Tsangyang Gyatso,
Tibet’s most beloved poet, with this slim volume of love poetry. By devoting an
entire collection of poems to romantic love, he elevates this most secular of
emotions and assigns it a sacredness usually offered only to the Dharma in our
society.
One
the whole, I found Butterfly’s Wings to be beautiful and powerful and inventive
in some places and clumsy and clunky in others. An imperfect but exciting and
noteworthy collection nonetheless, it makes me thrilled to continue to watch
Tenzing Rigdol’s evolution as a poet.
The
first thing you notice about Butterfly’s Wings is how beautifully it is
produced. The cover art, a serene and lovely image of a young Tibetan couple
enjoying a quiet moment of intimacy on a moonlit night, is by Tenzin Norbu, an
artist from Dolpo. As a physical product of the collaboration between Rigdol,
the publisher TibetWrites and the filmmaker Tenzin Tsetan Choklay who did the
book design, this is a rebuke to the indifferent book covers churned out by
most Tibetan publishers.
The
best poems in the collection are the most restrained and the most simple.
One
of my favorites is below:
Your
body is calligraphy at work-
Smooth,
round, blunt and abrupt.
Only
my silence befits your adornment.
A
single word is now a hindering crowd. (Pg 48)
I
savored the beauty and power of the following lines:
I
spend my life in an effort
To
collect your dances,
Your
whispers,
Your
shadows and
Smiles.
For
you are your own kingdom,
Wherein
beggars like me draw out their hands for alms. (Pg 49)
How
imaginative and evocative is that last line, a line for schoolboys to echo in
their midnight letters: “For you are your own kingdom...”
The
best moments in the book occur when the poet is most spare and direct, as when
he asks:
What
can a statue do
When
his master loves him
With
hammers and nails. (Pg 58)
And
when he says:
I
weigh less than
Your
single stroke of a smile. (Pg 49)
But
unfortunately this restraint and simplicity are not as present throughout the
collection. Indeed, rather than restraint, I found an excess—an excess, mainly,
of adjectives, particularly Latinate ones. Rigdol doesn’t trust his nouns to do
any heavy lifting; where he has a noun, he must use an elaborate adjective.
For
example:
Sozzled
eyes
Glimmer
in briny tears
Before
the pungent smell
Of
betrayal disguised. (Pg 68)
Why
insist on telling us that the tears are “briny” and the smell “pungent”?
Presumably, everyone expects tears to be salty and smells to be smelly. Not all
nouns need ornamentation. Too many adjectives overload the poem, like too much
make-up on a woman. In a poem, real estate is precious. As Rigdol himself tells
us in his best poems, a single extra word is a hindering crowd, or simply, a
crowd.
Contrast
these two lines, both from the first poem in the collection:
Ample
yet soft and modest,
Palpable
yet fragile and volatile…
Between
your eyelashes
I
travel the distance between stars. (Pg 15)
How
little is said in the first sentence and how much in the second!
I
also thought some of the poems could have been refined further.
For
example:
As
I breathe in the aroma of your soul like a gardener
Without
a word,
A
cold breeze of purity awakens the rim of my forgotten
Nose.
Through
my dark nasal tunnel, streams the waves of your
Aliveness
And
my throat collects them like a wineglass receiving the
Imprisoned
wine. (Pg 79)
How
lovely and apt that image of the throat as a wineglass receiving the captured
wine is, but why the tonally off “dark nasal tunnel”? Like a wrong note, it
jars my enjoyment of the poem. And
dare I ask, how is the nose “forgotten” when it is breathing in the aroma? And
don’t the line breaks, as they are, distort the shape of the poem rather than
enhance it? A poem is a creature for the ear, of course, but my eye cannot help
nosing in.
As
with the wineglass image, at his best, Rigdol can create gorgeous lines with
bright and sharp metaphors and similes: he says, “I lay shrunk like a frozen
shrimp” (Pg 73) and likens love to “a wind-carried pollen looking for its
soil-mate.” How inventive and unexpected and fun that “soil-mate” is.
And
where the adjective does earn its place (“my decanted mind”!), there is music
to be found.
When
you lay unwrapped in bed like a strong argument
With
your knees starting at your awakened breasts,
I
collect my withered thoughts in surrender… (Pg 39)
Rigdol
is a very well-known contemporary Tibetan artist whose Soil Project, the site
specific installation for which he smuggled soil from Shigatse, Tibet and
brought to Dharamsala, the capital of Tibet-in-exile, made international
headlines. In some ways, we can see this book as a site specific artwork as
well, with the site being the female body, specifically the body of the
beloved.
If
this book is the result of Tenzing Rigdol’s surrender, I think we can conclude
that it was a fruitful surrender.
