Egrets, While War - by Tishani Doshi (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Egrets, While War reflects on aging, mortality, and survival in a world where violence and the beauty of nature coexist.

Unflinching, yet tender, the poems in Tishani Doshi's Egrets, While War exist in a world of dualities, holding "desire in one hand, suffering in another." Meditations on loss and larger world conflicts move alongside personal experiences, vulnerable self-reflections, and a deep longing for "what's wild / and pulsing." Thick with lush and immersive imagery, the pages of this collection are punctuated by birds as omens, as prophecies, as epiphanies, and sometimes, as moments of "brief blazing splendor." Parakeets feed from orange blossoms outside a window. Wildflowers appear in the garden overnight. Sunbirds dive "in and out / of dens of gold." Sharp and subtle, these poems lament the loss of humanity, while relishing the beauty, strength, and persistence of the natural world. Egrets, While War posits hope, resilience, and the earth as answers to our physical, spiritual, and emotional survival.

Review Quotes

Praise for Egrets, While War

"Tish-ani's work res-on-ates with intergen-er-a-tional con-nec-tions within the Global South, reflect-ing on his-tor-ical trau-mas, colo-ni-al-ism, and the dehu-man-isa-tion of mar-gin-al-ised bod-ies. The tit-u-lar poem, Egrets While War, tran-scends mere obser-va-tions of nature, por-tray-ing its role in sur-vival amid bru-tal-ity.Over-all, the col-lec-tion fuses Indian poetic tra-di-tions with a uni-ver-sal per-spect-ive, trans-form-ing per-sonal and polit-ical themes into an evoc-at-ive call for aston-ish-ment and con-nec-tion in a frac-tured world."--Storizen

"Tishani Doshi juxtaposes violence with timeless endurance, patient resolution with destruction, almost like a manifestation of Shiva, the creator/destroyer god of Hinduism. She writes about the ongoing 'dirge of loss recovery / loss loss loss, ' but assures us that 'Our task is to march on.'"--Charles Rammelkamp, Compulsive Reader

"Tishani Doshi's newest poetry collection, Egrets, While War, is dotted with themes of environmental loss, ancestral memory and the human cost of conflict. Through her poetry Tishani asks, 'What does it mean to be alive, to love, to go through griefs while wars continue to rage?'"--EZ Magazine

Praise for Tishani Doshi

"In Girls are Coming Out of the Woods, Tishani Doshi combines artistic elegance with a visceral power to create a breathtaking panorama of danger, memory, beauty and the strange geographies of happiness. This is essential, immediate, urgent work and Doshi is that rare thing, an unashamed visionary who knows that, 'while you and I go on with life / remembering and forgetting, / the poets remain: singing, singing'."--John Burnside

"Doshi's poems embody a world of longing - her laments and dreams sear the reader's senses, setting their world alight. She makes you want to dance to the strings of her taut and tender soundboard, and echo aloud her fathomless world. Here is a poet with lyrical acuity in abundance."--Menna Elfyn

"Tishani Doshi in her Countries of the Body has written some rich poems with powerful images. They have the slow curved rhythms of a dancer in their movement. The poet has a passionate sense of the sacred. Poems for her are not statements; they are meditations... There is magic in her poems."--U.R. Ananthamurthy

"Every sentence in this achingly beautiful book carries multiple meanings that resonate across the pages. Tishani Doshi uses language like a blade, cutting through our defenses to illuminate what it means to love, and forgive, and truly exist in the life we have."--Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

"Tishani Doshi... offer[s] an eloquent dissection of the body―its attributes, metaphors, deficiencies and contradictions―all delivered in chromatic, richly textured lines, in which the assured manipulation of rhythm and internal rhyme produces poems of remarkable balance and grace."--Guardian

"Doshi's poems have both heart and intelligence. They are rich in mysterious images, and narratives both explicit and implied. You could read them a hundred times and still find something you hadn't noticed before."--Louis de Bernières

About the Author

Tishani Doshi publishes poetry, essays, and fiction. Her most recent books are A God at the Door; Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Poetry Award and a Firecracker Award; and the novel Small Days and Nights, shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, the Tata Literature Live! Book of the Year Award (Fiction), and The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice. For fifteen years, she worked as a dancer with the Chandralekha group in Chennai. She has interviewed over a hundred writers about the craft of writing and has published essays in The Hindu, Granta, The National, The New York Times, The Guardian, Literary Hub, and Corriere della Sera. She is a visiting associate professor at New York University Abu Dhabi, and otherwise lives on a beach in Tamil Nadu. Egrets, While War is her fifth full-length collection of poems.