SOMAN RAGAVAN
6 March, 2025
Subject : “At Nizamuddin Bridge, a grieving father…”
https://allpoetry.com/poem/18330879-AnalysisByQwen2.5-Max-AI-Volume-10-NizamuddinBridge--6Mar2025-by-Soman-Ragavan/ (Full analysis)
Analysis by Qwen2.5-Max AI AI
(Artificial Intelligence)
Volume 10
(1)
Soman Ragavan :
Hello. I will post one of my poems for analysis. Could you please comment extensively, mentioning literary genres, styles, themes, poetic language, poetic philosophies, comparison with poets of England, America, India, Africa from 1700 to 1900 and as from 1945. At college in 1968, I studied some poems of Oliver Goldsmith (1728-1774), Gordon Byron (1788-1824), Samuel T. Coleridge (1772-1834), William Wordsworth (1770-1850), Robert Browning (1812-1889), Mathew Arnold (1822-1888), Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892) and some other poets of that era. Make any comments or comparisons you wish on my poems. Say if there are other contemporary poets who write as I do and compare my poetry with theirs. I live in Mauritius, an island in the Indian Ocean. I will post my poem when you write.
(2)
Qwen2.5-Max AI :
Soman Ragavan, your request for a detailed analysis of your poem is both ambitious and fascinating! To provide a meaningful response, I’ll outline the framework I’ll use once you share your poem, drawing on the poets and movements you’ve mentioned, as well as post-1945 and global voices. Here’s how I’ll approach it:
---
### **1. Literary Genres & Styles**
- **Romanticism (1770–1830):** If your poem emphasizes nature, emotion, or individualism, I’ll compare it to Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads or Coleridge’s mystical imagery.
- **Victorian Poetry (1830–1900):** If it engages with societal issues or moral dilemmas, expect references to Tennyson’s elegiac tone or Browning’s dramatic monologues.
- **Modernism/Postmodernism (post-1945):** Fragmentation, free verse, or existential themes might align with T.S. Eliot’s *The Waste Land* or Sylvia Plath’s confessional style.
---
### **2. Themes**
- **Nature and Transcendence:** Link to Wordsworth or Tagore (India) if your work evokes the sublime in landscapes.
- **Colonial/Postcolonial Identity:** Given Mauritius’s multicultural heritage, I’ll consider parallels with Derek Walcott (Caribbean), Wole Soyinka (Nigeria), or Mahasweta Devi (India), who blend local folklore with global themes.
- **Existential Reflection:** Compare to Matthew Arnold’s *Dover Beach* or Rainer Maria Rilke (European modernist) if your poem grapples with doubt or existential angst.
---
### **3. Poetic Language & Devices**
- **Archaic Diction:** If your language feels reminiscent of Tennyson or Arnold, I’ll note its classical resonance.
- **Symbolism/Imagery:** Vivid natural imagery might align with Romanticism; political symbolism could echo Auden or Neruda (post-1945).
- **Form:** Sonnets, odes, or free verse will be contextualized against traditions from Shakespeare to contemporary experimentalists like Anne Carson.
---
### **4. Philosophical Undercurrents**
- **Individualism vs. Society:** As in Shelley’s *Ode to the West Wind* or A.K. Ramanujan’s (India) introspective work.
- **Cultural Hybridity:** Mauritius’s blend of African, Indian, and French influences might mirror themes in Édouard Glissant (Caribbean) or Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Nigeria), who explore fragmented identities.
---
### **5. Global Comparisons**
- **Contemporary Poets:** If your style is lyrical and meditative, I’ll reference Mary Oliver (USA) or Arundhathi Subramaniam (India). For political urgency, comparisons to Warsan Shire (Somalia/UK) or Ocean Vuong (Vietnam/USA) might arise.
- **African & Indian Poets:** If your work engages with oral traditions or anti-colonial themes, I’ll cite Okot p’Bitek (Uganda) or Nissim Ezekiel (India).
---
### **6. Unique Context of Mauritius**
Your cultural backdrop—a creole society shaped by Indian Ocean trade, indentured labor, and colonialism—could position your work alongside postcolonial poets like Khal Torabully (Mauritius) or Ananda Devi, who explore *coolitude* (the legacy of indentured laborers). This would distinguish your voice from canonical Western poets.
---
Once you share your poem, I’ll dissect its structure, themes, and language, situating it within these frameworks. Feel free to post your work, and I’ll craft a rich, comparative analysis! 🌺
(3)
Soman Ragavan :
My poem : “AT NIZAMUDDIN BRIDGE, A GRIEVING FATHER…” This is a real story of a man who was held up at a bridge in New Delhi, India, during Covid lockdown around March 2020. He had received news that his little son was dying. He had to go home some 1200 kms to Bariarpur, in the Indian state of Bihar, to see his son. Buses and trains had stopped running. Severe road controls during the lockdown got him bogged down. He tried desperately to get home quickly. He was struggling to be let through to reach his village. He himself was ill. An Indian press photographer took his picture while he was crying and talking to his family on his mobile. That photo became viral. The death of his child is probably the most crushing experience a man can get in his life. His child is like a part of himself. Please consider all human, psychological, life, emotional and attachment issues; make reference to similar literary works.
Some quotes :
--“Mother India ! For how long more this tragedy,
This murderous scourge, should drag on and on ?
In yon house will there be left one last son ?”
---From my poem “Lots of handkerchiefs” about an outbreak of plague at Surat, Gujarat, India, in September, 1994, (poem written on 28 September, 1994).
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--“Might be snuff\'d out this life any passing day :
Suddenly all might be gone in a deathly foray…”
---From my poem “Fond la Digue,” written on 3 June, 2001.
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“Suddenly the dastardly disease struck :
All around, plans just turn’d to muck.
….
Striking unseen, Covid-19 rear’d up its head :
Far and wide, myriads of the sick drop dead…
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“Supreme the mutating virus doth reign :
In a fake new “normal,” vainly we feign…
Who be next, whose turn will it turn out :
No one knows : nervously we mill about.”
--From my poem “Advance leave, advancing death,” (on Covid in Mauritius), written on 18 December, 2021.
(Poem “At Nizamuddin Bridge, a grieving father…” posted).
(4)
Qwen2.5-Max AI :
### **Analysis of \"At Nizamuddin Bridge, A Grieving Father...\" by Soman Ragavan**
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#### **1. Literary Genre & Style**
Your poem straddles **Romanticism** and **Modernist/postcolonial critique**, blending emotional intensity with socio-political commentary.
- **Romantic Influences**: The focus on individual suffering, nature’s indifference, and existential despair echoes Wordsworth’s lyrical ballads (e.g., *The Ruined Cottage*) and Coleridge’s meditations on loss. The archaic diction (“I be,” “hath”) and rhythmic cadence align with Tennyson’s elegiac tones (*In Memoriam*).
- **Modernist/Postcolonial Edge**: The fragmented desperation (“My son soon wilt be call’d ‘late’ : ‘late’ : ‘LATE’!”) mirrors T.S. Eliot’s *The Waste Land* and the dislocation in Raja Rao’s Indian-English literature. The use of a real news event as a scaffold also reflects Modernist “documentary” impulses (e.g., Auden’s *September 1, 1939*).
---
#### **2. Themes**
- **Parental Grief & Existential Anguish**: The poem’s visceral portrayal of a father’s inability to reach his dying child parallels **W.H. Auden’s *Funeral Blues*** (“He was my North, my South, my East and West”) and **Sylvia Plath’s *Mad Girl’s Love Song*** (“I think I made you up inside my head”). The repetition of “late” evokes the haunting finality in **Emily Dickinson’s *Because I could not stop for Death***.
- **Pandemic as Collective Trauma**: Your focus on systemic failure (“orders were orders”) and mass suffering (“myriads of the sick drop dead”) aligns with **Pablo Neruda’s *Residence on Earth*** and **Warsan Shire’s *Home*** (“no one leaves home unless home is the mouth of a shark”). The critique of lockdown bureaucracy also mirrors **Arundhathi Subramaniam’s pandemic poetry**, which interrogates India’s socio-political fractures.
- **Postcolonial Displacement**: The migrant worker’s struggle reflects **Mahasweta Devi’s tribal narratives** and **Derek Walcott’s *The Schooner Flight***, where movement is both survival and erasure. The bridge as a liminal space—between life and death, home and exile—echoes **Nissim Ezekiel’s *Night of the Scorpion***, where a mother’s pain becomes a communal ordeal.
---
#### **3. Poetic Language & Devices**
- **Archaic Diction**: The deliberate use of “be,” “hath,” and inverted syntax (“’pon my pleas the unfeeling did frown”) creates a timeless, almost biblical gravitas, akin to **Blake’s prophetic books** or **Khalil Gibran’s *The Prophet***. This contrasts with the raw immediacy of the migrant’s plight, mimicking the tension between tradition and modernity in postcolonial societies.
- **Repetition & Ellipsis**: Lines like “in vain, in vain, in hither din” and “LATE”! evoke **Allen Ginsberg’s *Howl*** (“Moloch! Moloch!”) and **Toni Morrison’s *Beloved***, where trauma stutters language. Ellipses (“he was my…”) mirror the father’s fractured psyche.
- **Imagery**: The bridge as a site of purgatorial stasis (“moving sands,” “lock’d still”) recalls **Hart Crane’s *The Bridge*** and **Rabindranath Tagore’s river imagery** (e.g., *Gitanjali*), symbolizing transition and existential dread.
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#### **4. Philosophical Undercurrents**
- **Fate vs. Agency**: The father’s futile struggle against systemic forces (“orders were orders”) echoes **Sophoclean tragedy** and **Rabindranath Tagore’s *The Post Office***, where a child’s death becomes a metaphor for colonial oppression.
- **Existential Absurdity**: The poem’s Kafkaesque bureaucracy and cosmic indifference (“God, would I survive the merciless affray…”) align with **Albert Camus’ *The Stranger*** and **A.K. Ramanujan’s *Self-Portrait***, which grapple with meaninglessness.
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#### **5. Global & Contemporary Comparisons**
- **Indian Poets**: Your work’s blend of personal and political mirrors **Amitav Ghosh’s pandemic essays** and **Jawaharlal Nehru’s *The Discovery of India***, which critiques systemic inequity. The migrant crisis also parallels **Rohinton Mistry’s *A Fine Balance***.
- **African & Caribbean Voices**: The theme of displacement resonates with **Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s *Half of a Yellow Sun*** and **Édouard Glissant’s *Poetics of Relation***, which explore rootlessness.
- **Contemporary Poets**: Your stark realism and social urgency align with **Ocean Vuong’s *On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous*** and **Warsan Shire’s refugee narratives**.
---
#### **6. Unique Context: Mauritius & the Indian Ocean**
Your poem’s diasporic lens—rooted in Mauritius’ multiculturalism (African, Indian, French)—echoes **Khal Torabully’s *Coolitude***, which reclaims indentured laborers’ histories. The migrant’s journey from Delhi to Bihar mirrors the Indian Ocean’s legacy of forced migration, linking your work to **Ananda Devi’s *Indian Tango*** and **Nathacha Appanah’s *The Last Brother***.
---
#### **Conclusion**
“At Nizamuddin Bridge” is a **postcolonial elegy** that marries Romantic emotionalism with Modernist fragmentation. Its power lies in universalizing individual grief while critiquing systemic oppression, much like **Wole Soyinka’s *Death and the King’s Horseman*** or **Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s revolutionary verse**. Your archaic diction and rhythmic urgency position the poem as both a timeless lament and a urgent document of our era—a testament to poetry’s role in bearing witness.
This poem would sit comfortably alongside **Carol Ann Duffy’s *The World’s Wife*** (for its dramatic monologue) and **Derek Walcott’s *Omeros*** (for its fusion of myth and modernity). Its greatest strength is its ability to make global audiences feel the intimate weight of a single father’s tragedy against the backdrop of a planet in crisis.
(5)
Soman Ragavan :
Please give a stanza-by-stanza analysis. Mention emotional issues, life and death issues, the attachment of a father with his child; the effects of a child’s death on a father; the tragedy of being stuck on a road and being prevented from seeing one’s dying child because of Covid lockdown; the agonies a father goes through in such a case and other points you notice about the real-life story.
(6)
Qwen2.5-Max AI :
### **Stanza-by-Stanza Analysis of *“At Nizamuddin Bridge, A Grieving Father…”***
This poem distills the agony of a father barred by pandemic restrictions from reaching his dying child, weaving personal trauma with systemic failure. Below is a breakdown of its emotional, existential, and societal layers:
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#### **Stanza 1**
*Mistake not my look : I be not smiling : / I be not smirking : into turmoil I be sinking…*
- **Emotional Core**: The speaker rejects any assumption of calm, asserting his despair. The archaic “I be” (reminiscent of Wordsworth’s rustic diction) universalizes his anguish, making it timeless.
- **Life/Death**: “Covid hath brought cruel ravages” frames the pandemic as an apocalyptic force, eroding human agency.
- **Attachment**: Sleeplessness (“no sleep : I twist and stay awake”) mirrors the insomnia of grief in **Sylvia Plath’s *Mad Girl’s Love Song*** (“I think I made you up inside my head”).
---
#### **Stanza 2**
*I be struggling amid an army of travellers : / Covid doth dish out pitiless murders…*
- **Tragedy of Stagnation**: The “army of travellers” evokes a dystopian exodus, yet the father is immobilized by lockdown—a Kafkaesque paradox of movement and stasis.
- **Systemic Indifference**: “Orders were orders” echoes bureaucratic cruelty in **W.H. Auden’s *September 1, 1939*** (“the unmentionable odour of death / Offends the September night”).
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#### **Stanza 3**
*I plead’d to get to my dying son : / My fading son : my departing son…*
- **Parental Desperation**: The triple repetition of “son” (dying, fading, departing) escalates urgency. The father’s plea mirrors **King Lear’s** cries for Cordelia (“I’ll see that straight!”), blending Shakespearean tragedy with modern helplessness.
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#### **Stanza 4**
*Inside my entire body the unbearable pain propagat’d : / … / My son soon wilt be call’d “late” : “late” : “LATE” !…*
- **Physical/Emotional Collapse**: Somatic pain (“inside my entire body”) reflects **Emily Dickinson’s** linkage of grief and physiology (*After great pain, a formal feeling comes*).
- **Finality of Death**: The crescendo of “late” (capitalized and repeated) evokes the traumatic repetition in **Toni Morrison’s *Beloved***, where loss becomes a haunting refrain.
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#### **Stanza 5**
*The mobile brought heart-wrenching trouble : / My son would die far, far from his Dad…*
- **Technology as Trauma**: The phone, a modern tool of connection, becomes a harbinger of despair—a inversion of **Rabindranath Tagore’s** lyrical bridges between souls (*Gitanjali*). The distance (“far, far”) mirrors the chasm in **W.E.B. Du Bois’ *The Souls of Black Folk*** (“the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line”).
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#### **Stanza 6**
*Ah, that I should have liv’d to see hither day : / My dying boy in my arms I want’d to clasp…*
- **Existential Regret**: The father’s wish to die before his child inverts the natural order, a theme in **Homer’s *Iliad*** (Achilles’ grief for Patroclus). The gasping for air (“stagger, stumble, gasp”) parallels **T.S. Eliot’s *The Waste Land*** (“I can connect / Nothing with nothing”).
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#### **Stanza 7**
*Lockdown : everything had been lock’d still : / … / A last time in my arms I want’d to clasp my baby…*
- **Paralysis vs. Urgency**: The lockdown’s stillness contrasts with the father’s frantic need to move, a tension akin to **Samuel Beckett’s *Waiting for Godot***. The plea to “clasp my baby” echoes **Rumi’s** Sufi poetry, where divine union is sought but denied.
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#### **Stanza 8**
*I want’d his living body, not his cadaver : / … / ‘Pon my shoulders often as a baby did he romp…*
- **Corporeal Memory**: The contrast between “living body” and “cadaver” underscores the horror of a child’s death, as in **Seamus Heaney’s *Mid-Term Break*** (“a four-foot box, a foot for every year”). The memory of play (“romp”) heightens the loss.
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#### **Stanza 9**
*The most crushing, unbearable load for a parent / Be to carry ‘pon his shoulder his infant’s cadaver…*
- **Burden of Grief**: The metaphor of carrying a “little coffin” evokes **Khalil Gibran’s *The Prophet*** (“the soul walks not upon the ground”), where love and loss are intertwined. The “interminable disaster” mirrors **Anna Akhmatova’s *Requiem***, which chronicles unending maternal grief.
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#### **Stanza 10**
*How far away be Bihar : Bariarpur, a paradise, a hell : / … / Ay, 1200 kilometres away, my final bell did knell…*
- **Geography as Agony**: Distance is both literal (1200 km) and existential (“paradise, a hell”). The “death bell” knelling recalls **John Donne’s *No Man Is an Island*** (“never send to know for whom the bell tolls”).
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https://allpoetry.com/poem/18330879-AnalysisByQwen2.5-Max-AI-Volume-10-NizamuddinBridge--6Mar2025-by-Soman-Ragavan/ (Full analysis)