Sasenarine Persaud
Email: kshatek@verizon.net I am the author of ten books (two novels; a book of short stories, Canada Geese and Apple Chatney; and seven books of poetry), my latest book is, In a Boston Night (fall 2008). I am a poet first. My work engages that search for self and Self that is the essence of the Upanishads. I write fiction, non-fiction, and poetry transcending forms. I write Yogic Realism...Among other things, as a poet, I am preoccupied with the rhythm and meaning of life. Perhaps, all writers are poets. I am a poet first. I am a poet last. |
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In a Boston Night
From the very first piece in this collection, the title poem “In a Boston Night,” Sasenarine Persaud signals a return to the passionate and sensuous that informed much of his earlier work. Persaud, the poet as cra...
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A SURF OF SPARROWS' SONGS: a poemanjali
"Miami and Toronto are the most insistent geographical coordinates of this passionate sequence of love poems, though Sasenarine Persaud infuses them with his own Caribbean and Hindu traditions. What is exotic...
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THE WINTERING KUNDALINI
Persaud enriches Caribbean poetry by bringing to it new dimensions of imagery and philosophical tradition from his Indian ancestry. The imagery of cobra and Kundalini from Tantric Yoga mesh with a political and pe...
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CANADA GEESE AND APPLE CHATNEY
In this award-winning collection of stories, Persaud presents us once more with his unique vision of lives, both North American and Caribbean. Here are voices probing at differences which are and aren't: all threa...
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BOOK SIGNING NEW TAMPA BARNES & NOBLE
Sasenarine Persaud at the New Tampa Barnes & Noble bookstore signing copies of his latest book of poetry, In a Boston Night - January 10, 2009. Photo by Kshanika Persaud
Posted on 1/18/2009
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Book Launch - Toronto
Toronto launch of In a Boston Night. Photo by Lisa Myers.
Posted on 1/18/2009
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IN JANUARY
In JanuaryEven in January when the cypressHas gone bald, there is clutterFrom the past: Spanish moss, you say,Confederate gray like the beardsOf Hindu sages stroked by the fingersOf wind. A meditation or a yagna,Chants from a thousand yogis—You are who you are; who are youYou are who you are; who are youA man whose mother was whiteIs African-American. Even if you playOn words like that other “lawyer”In the White House (I did not have sexWith that woman) an African fatherMakes you African—if you areBorn in good ole USA! Who knewYou were another lefty?Reporters take a raccoon’s ass breakOn race except you mention nooseOr words beginning with “G” or “F”Or “N” – Namaste Namaste NamasteChant the yogis in unisonYou are who you are; who are youYou are who you are; who are you©Sasenarine Persaud
Posted on 1/1/2009
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In a Boston Night: Toronto Launch
Reading poems from In a Boston Night at the Gladstone Hotel in Toronto. Photo by Tekil Persaud.
Posted on 12/15/2008
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Swami Aksharananda & Saraswati Vidya Ni
EXCERPTS:Swami Aksharananda and Saraswati Vidya NiketanYou do not make a trip back to the country of your birth, the first in more than twenty years, lightly. You cannot see everything you would like to see, meet everyone you would like to meet, or visit all the old haunts--the places that hold a slice of your consciousness. At least, not in a stay of less than two weeks...Twenty years ago, you had not published a book; you are returning as the author of ten books. In twenty years you have formulated the term and concept, Yogic Realism for your literary aesthetics—a continuation, in large part, of an ancient Sanskrit/Indian/Hindu artistic tradition. You have had an Indian scholar write a successful doctoral dissertation on Yogic Realism and your work. You know that in giving a handle, Yogic Realism, to this aesthetic, and offering it to any who would have it, that you are blessed, fortunate. If any one person is more responsible than any other for the darshan of Yogic Realism, it is Swami Aksharananda. If you cannot see everyone, if you cannot see every place you would like to in such a short visit and after such a long time, you must prioritize. Visiting Swami Aksharananda is near the top of your list. Before I left Florida, I had sent an email to Swami Aksharananda inquiring if he would be in Guyana during my visit. His response was prompt; he would be in India and New York for the first part of my stay in the country. He should be back just before I returned to Florida, yet I could still visit the Saraswati Vidya Niketan complex whether he was there or not. When I first knew Swami, he was Odaipaul Singh, a teacher at the Central High School in Georgetown. He had studied and lived in India for many years. He was fluent in Hindi and Sanskrit, but his native language, like mine, was English; his command of it nothing short of expert. When he left the staff of the Central High School to complete his doctorate, he knew what he wanted to do after that: to come back and serve his community and country through an educational institution, not unlike that of the great Indian poet, novelist, dramatist, thinker and visionary, Rabindranauth Tagore. Tagore’s school would blossom into the Vishva Bharti University. The vision of Odaipaul Singh, before he left Guyana more than twenty years ago to complete his PhD, had today materialized as the Saraswati Vidya Niketan. In those intervening decades we met, occasionally, in Toronto, in New York after he had earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin, before his initiation as a Hindu monk in India, and before his return to Guyana to begin part of his life’s work. I say “part of his life’s work” with some reservations as few can imagine how many lives he has influenced, how many people he has given a sense of direction, and galvanized into action and into the service of their communities and countries in India, Canada, the UK, the USA, Guyana, and the West Indies... The sun was already up, sharp, stinging, not unlike in Florida—perhaps, with a little bit more of a hairline razor edge, or was it just imagination, or knowing that this part of South America is almost on the equator—when my transportation came as arranged the previous night. My lodging at the hotel was located within walking distance of the bridge across the Demerara River, less than a mile to the south. More than twenty years ago when I crossed the Demerara Harbour Bridge, approximately a mile and a quarter long, across the Demerara River, it was relatively new. It was touted as “the longest floating bridge in the world,” a feature of Socialist hyperbole and the Socialist propaganda that the Burnham regime exulted in, a stretching of the truth common in socialist countries before the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Berlin Wall, and the disintegration of Soviet Union. That line was soon altered to a description of the bridge as one of the longest floating bridges in the world. Someone had located a longer floating bridge in another part of the world… You are transported into another time on the river and off the river. As soon as you touch the west bank you are in another time, another world. Honey green stalks in fields; a cow up to its udders in water, grazing; houses you remember; kokers; the West Demerara Secondary School where once there was a high school cricket match between old rival schools...There are turns in the highway you remember, houses, schools, a community center ground, more rice-fields lined by tall, star-branched coconut trees, and then the elementary school. From pictures, you recognize the older, raised wooded mandir and the newer open-sided mandir, a concrete structure with a high main-floor and a tall pointed “shikara”, a Sanskritic design we saw in older Hindi movies… <a title="Click to download attachment" href="http://us.mc462.mail.yahoo.com/mc/showMessage?fid=Inbox&sort=date&order=down&startMid=0&.rand=1584179625&da=0&midIndex=0&f=1&nextMid=1_81923_AJrHtEQAAKKzSQU0BQLNcyo49sg&m=1_82568_AJfHtEQAADMGSQVMUQTbQnn1jsw,1_81923_AJrHtEQAAKKzSQU0BQLNcyo49sg,1_80060_AJjHtEQAAIqvSQSTDAKZvjUL054,1_79353_AJvHtEQAAFRSSQR5twd8
Posted on 10/27/2008
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