By Vipasha Bhardwaj
With its daintily drawn cover artwork on a black background with miniature butterflies juggling hither and tither to form a heart, this selection of J. Jacqueline’s work comes all tricked out like some Valentine’s Day gift. The author has come a long way from getting a degree in hospitality management to writing a book of poems, Butterfly for a Heart.
People across the globe have taken solace in writing verses when things go haywire and the terrain seems treacherous. When I first met the author, my immediate impulse was to ask her “why are the poems so full of sad beauty?” to which she promptly replied “they are straight from the heart and that’s what they were meant to be, brutal yet honest”.
A cursory look at the contents list tells us to go beyond the title of the book since it explains matter related not only to heart but also sends silent prayers to God up above. Not adhering to rhyme or meter neither having set standards in mind, Jacqueline breaks the rules and sways gracefully in between the verses.
A maiden venture into writing and publishing, the book showcases the author’s breathtaking control of language and imagery. Poems like The Ghost in my Head and “I see a Face” are replete with extra -terrestrial imageries.
Jacqueline’s verses would remind one of Philip Sidney’s Sonnets except that in her work, Stella is at the receiving end. The book is an exhilarating harvest of 36 poems feasting on themes as varied as life, friendship, the Almighty, dreams and love revealing Jacqueline as someone covering the stormy waterfront of hope, vulnearbility, death and despair.
Not very dramatised or messy details of personal lives, Butterfly for a Heart is soothing to the eyes as it is for the soul. The book is an achievement worth celebrating considering the time and effort that has gone into the molding and shaping of ideas. I was personally quite affected upon reading some of the verses because I found them perfectly relatable.
Anyone who picks up the collection will be very glad that they did; it’s a comfort read during those hard gloomy days when the soul feeds upon cynicism and hopelessness. The words in Butterfly for a Heart are crafted to heal you. You will not be disappointed; you will grow as a human being by reading this eye-opening journey.
(The author is a PhD scholar in the
Department of English, North-Eastern Hill University, Shillong)
Book: Butterfly for a Heart; Author: J. Jacqueline; Publisher: Notionpress.com; Pages: 71; Price: Rs 100
