Review: Endurable Infinity by Tony Kitt

Poetry is one of the mute art where many immutable things take shelter. The psychic energy flows through the poetic thread, requiring a stoic’s patience to move on a middle path to evade the poetic traffic. Reading Endurable Infinity, authored by an Irish poet Tony Kitt, I felt the thread’s knots thrill and vibrate in emotive and evocative wavelengths.

Lord Buddha says, “don’t lose the harp’s thread. Otherwise, the tune would die in the womb, don’t let the thread tighten too much; tunes would die in the broken thread. So go and seek the middle path.

I don’t know whether verses in Endurable infinity follow this middle path or not, it could be a subjective perception, but here words attain strange music after shuttling out of the dark tunnel. They stumble from crest to trough and vice versa, tucking the flings of both worlds, conscious and subconscious, under their wing, but the wavelength remains straight and steadfast even in vibration. The book is in three parts, Close formation, Genius Loci temporisque and Slanting Through. In the second one, Genius loin temporisque, better to call landscape’s lyric, the places move in individualised metaphors; here, Tibet is a cold kiss, and the Caucasus is a blighted stonegrowth. In Naregno Elba, history is resurrected, and here Napoleon is trying to restar the sky, but the dilemma is still lingering. Could destiny be edited? Montparnasse is entangled in nondualism, where every man is a sky. In the black river, Pushkin’s duel sips in a simile where every poem is a chapel among ruins. In Ithaca, each word is a seagull that never comes back. 

In the third part, slanting through the introspective journey dips deep and scintillates on the surface, emanating both the Greek myths and contemporary virus. The book covers wide and vast topics. 

In the poem Motherland-In-Law, we see history freezing breaths. And if you want to know who will sing us into the season of no season, then Go and take a plunge in Endurable Infinity. 

Dr Pragya Suman

Order a copy from your favorite bookseller: https://upittpress.org/books/9780822966951/