The Many Silences of Being - A Critical Reflection on Kiriti Sengupta’s Selected Poems

In the evolving landscape of Indian English poetry, Kiriti Sengupta holds a curious and significant place. He is neither overtly experimental nor classically formal, neither entirely urban nor completely spiritual. His poems dwell in the liminal space between thought and silence, ritual and rupture. Selected Poems, published by Houston-based Transcendent Zero Press in August 2025, compiles work written over more than a decade and offers readers a panoramic view of a mind gradually negotiating its own transformation. The volume is not a collection of “greatest hits.” It is a journey that moves from an early fascination with metaphysical questions to a later immersion in the textures of everyday life.

The Shape of a Journey

The anthology draws from Sengupta’s earlier volumes: My Glass of Wine, The Reverse Tree, Healing Waters Floating Lamps, The Earthen Flute, Solitary Stillness, Reflections on Salvation, Rituals, Water Has Many Colors, and Oneness, while also including recent but previously published poems. Its structure is both chronological and thematic, allowing readers to follow his gradual transition from abstraction to more grounded lyricism.

In his early poems, Sengupta’s voice is that of a seeker. He addresses gods, elements, and invisible presences with a mix of reverence and suspicion. These poems resemble meditative fragments, asking questions rather than answering them.

By the middle of the book, the tone shifts. The poet begins to look outward, toward people, memory, and politics. He addresses social unease, ecological anxiety, and human vulnerability. The later poems are often stark and quiet, stripped of ornament but full of resonance. Collectively, they form a continuum, a movement from invocation to conversation.

Two examples illustrate this shift: “For years, I have been searching for the flavors of birth and death” (“Source”). And, “As identical a ‘I’through the slice of my sigh, like the sky, where the stars shine and the Sun ‘I’” (“I”).

Thematic Richness: The World Seen and Remembered

One of Sengupta’s greatest strengths is his ability to connect the personal with the universal. Many poems are set against familiar Bengali scenes such as rivers, courtyards, monsoon skies, and family rituals. Yet they avoid regionalism. These details serve as symbolic anchors for broader questions about belonging and identity. A poem about masala muri becomes a meditation on memory, migration, and the way taste preserves what time erases.

His recurring themes include birth, death, ritual, body, water, and fire. They draw on Indic philosophy without becoming didactic. The spiritual impulse in these poems is exploratory rather than doctrinal. Sengupta’s use of Hindu and Tantric imagery reclaims cultural specificity for English-language poetry while freeing that imagery from mythic burden. The result is a spirituality that feels authentic rather than preachy.

His poem “Spectrum” illustrates this minimal clarity:

Water has many colors,

smudging pebbles

along its path.

Alongside this philosophical movement is a social one. In poems that address violence, censorship, or the mechanization of modern life, Sengupta reveals a restrained but clear anger. He never shouts. He observes. A political poem may end, not with a slogan, but with a question that trembles between accusation and lament.

Aesthetics of Restraint

Perhaps the most striking feature of Sengupta’s writing is his economy of language. He favours short lines, sudden pauses, and quick shifts of perspective. The page often feels half-empty, as if silence itself contributes to meaning. Reading him is like listening to a raga played slowly; the intervals matter as much as the notes.

This minimalism aligns him with poets such as A. K. Ramanujan or Basho, though his tone is distinctly his own. The sparseness allows multiple readings. A poem might feel luminous on one day and cryptic on another. Consider this haiku from Selected Poems:

the postbox recedes to rust the lost art

The haiku may appear to be a simple observation, yet in context it carries philosophical weight, implying self-transcendence, exhaustion, and renewal.

This compression demands precision, and Sengupta generally achieves it. There are, however, moments when the austerity becomes opaque and the poem risks dissolving into abstraction. Even then, the cadence and sound remain, offering a music of thought.

Language and Music

Although Sengupta writes in English, his diction often feels shaped by an internal Bengali rhythm. His sentences are brief, musical, and filled with cultural resonances that English alone cannot fully convey. Rather than flattening these resonances, he allows them to vibrate on the page, sometimes through transliteration and sometimes through metaphor. This bilingual awareness gives his poetry a distinctive texture. His poems speak in English but think in Bengali.

Sound is crucial to his craft. Alliteration, internal rhyme, and repetition appear subtly, acting as an underlying pulse. When read aloud, the poems take on the hum of invocation. The language seeks clarity of vibration rather than grandeur. This acoustic awareness is one reason Sengupta’s poems feel meditative. They settle in the body before reaching the mind.

In his poem “Demonstration,” he writes: “Monarch keeps a vigil, foreseeing a mass mutiny. Iniquity is ignored as the records stand revised for scrutiny.”

The Poet as Witness

A recurring motif in Selected Poems is witnessing. Sengupta’s poet is not a prophet or a philosopher but an attentive observer. He records, questions, and holds contradictions without imposing order. Violence and tenderness, ritual and decay, faith and doubt coexist in his poems.

This quiet detachment lends emotional depth. One poem depicts a funeral procession in Kolkata; another shows the same street illuminated by festival lights. The juxtaposition is deliberate. Life and death are parallel processions, both worthy of attention. Sengupta’s tone remains calm, almost clinical, yet beneath it lies deep empathy. To notice becomes an act of care.

His poem “On Exit” illustrates this tenderness: “In the crematorium, the priest asks me to smear ghee on my father’s skin. He ensures the fire finds Baba luscious.”

Cultural Grounding and Modern Resonance

Sengupta stands apart from many of his contemporaries in his comfort with rootedness. He writes unapologetically from a Bengali and Indian perspective without exoticising it. Rituals, religious symbols, and social customs appear as lived realities rather than decorative folklore. He does not translate or explain them for a Western audience. Instead, he invites readers to listen on the poems’ own terms.

The themes, however, are thoroughly modern. Migration, alienation, ecological destruction, and digital anonymity run through the collection. His spirituality is active and engaged. The divine appears not in temples but in moments of focused attention: a puddle reflecting the sky, a mother’s voice across a distance, a broken idol on the street.

In the prose poem “Salvation,” he writes:“No gods, but the breath that creates a home for our life and death.”

Critical Balance: Strengths and Limitations

The cumulative effect of Selected Poems is impressive. The voice is steady and measured, tracing the intersections of body, spirit, and society. Sengupta’s ability to sustain quiet intensity across such a span is remarkable. However, the consistency can sometimes blur distinctions between individual poems. Some readers may desire greater tonal variation or formal experimentation.

Another potential limitation is accessibility. Some poems require cultural literacy or patient engagement. Readers unfamiliar with Indic philosophical references may find parts of the book elusive. Yet this may be intentional. Sengupta does not simplify. He evokes. The poems are not doors intended to open easily; they are thresholds that demand an adjustment of pace and perception.

In the prose poem “Fire,” he writes:“The Vedas did not count on malnutrition; they did not even consider the environment, let alone poverty.”

Ethical Imagination

Underlying Sengupta’s work is an ethical dimension. The poems do not moralise, yet they insist on attentiveness as a moral act. To see clearly, to listen deeply, and to honour silence become ethical gestures. Even when writing about suffering or injustice, he avoids sentimentality. He practices what may be called ethical witnessing, acknowledging pain without appropriating it.

This ethic shapes his craft. The discipline of minimalism becomes a form of honesty, a refusal to embellish experience. In a noisy era, his restraint feels radical.

Significance of Selected Poems

As a collection, Selected Poems makes an important contribution to contemporary Indian English poetry. It demonstrates the possibility of a voice that is both local and universal, modern and timeless. Sengupta’s achievement lies not in formal innovation but in perception. He shows that poetry can still be a space for reflection rather than reaction.

The collection also affirms a long-term artistic integrity. Over fifteen years, Sengupta has stayed true to his core concerns: the search for meaning, the dialogue between body and spirit, and the ethics of observation. It is both a culmination and a continuation, marking a significant moment in an ongoing journey.

Final Thoughts

To read Selected Poems is to enter a slow conversation with the poet, with silence, and with oneself. The collection resists quick consumption and demands stillness. Some poems feel like fragments, others like prayers, yet together they create a music of mindfulness. Sengupta reminds us that poetry’s purpose is not decoration but revelation. The smallest gesture of language can reveal the vastness of being. His collection stands as a luminous testament to that possibility.