Betweenness

Betweenness

Poems by Varun Ravindran

Varun Ravindran’s Betweenness is polyphony and counterpoint. Formally inventive, at times layering multiple voices, and at other points, implementing sheet music as poetic form, Ravindran explores spirituality; his experience as an immigrant existing in the peripheries of both Indian and American culture, but part of neither; and of history, as he speaks on his late father and grandafther, both of whom struggled with alcoholism until their deaths. Accumulating into chords and intervals, these poems unite in a song of self that contains multitudes of voice and of form. Piece-by-piece they are hyaline and complex, while the affect of the whole crescendoes into an authentic and important new voice in American poetry.

Excerpt from Betweenness

Schubert’s Moments Musicaux No. 2

“Light takes the tree . . .”
–Roethke

but at Mud Run and its deep beeches and its cardinals plump
as embroidery and its RV’s and its darners and its condoms
like comets in the shrubs it’s the tree which not takes take
hinting purpose, the tree which floats into the long O long
slow tree sleepwalks into the low light

near Pittsburgh grand in his birchy bones my appa dandling
his bottles singing Tamil songs older than he so here in Mud
Run I want to build a hovel. Armfuls of plums and honey and
a pile of books for sustenance. Lying on my back my head out
of doors asterism whip-poor-will the open palm of space cupping

earth the nightjar. I hum Schubert I skin a plum far in the alone
I learn the name of each star Algenib Markab Enif Scheat all far
all too far too far to change the spit the spit bright plums the pit
near Mud Run where I cherish this sparrow-footprint gashing
Mud Run’s water. Minnow or miracle? The brook the light

the light in the river the dusk. Widening. In the dusk Mud Run
running nowhere deepening.

About the Author

Varun Ravindran was born in Chennai, India, and graduated from Duquesne University. His work has appeared in various literary journals like The Kenyon Review Online, The Adroit Journal, West Branch, Notre Dame Review, FOLIO, Pleiades, Denver Quarterly, and mercury firs, among others. He lives in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.