In SHORT POEMS, LONG TALES, Rashid Osmani presents the reader with a series of short poems on various questions, ranging from the purpose of sorrow to the growth of children to questions of destiny and theology. His poems are sometimes playful, sometimes cynical, sometimes philosophical, but always with his own take on life, whether addressing the purpose of prayer or speculating about gender differences. He uses a simple freeform structure most frequently, only occasionally venturing into rhyme or particular rhythmic structure – this makes his poems feel a bit more philosophical and accessible, but a bit less musical. The best of the poems are short, clever, pithy, and thought-provoking – exactly as the book’s name suggests, their small size does not limit their potential for engaging the reader’s mind and providing food for philosophical speculation, analysis, and imagination. Sometimes, though, especially in the longer poems, he ventures a bit too much into preachiness and prosy expostulation, which don’t leave as much room for consideration or imagination as his more open-ended poems.
The poems that succeed best here are the ones which add a little twist at the end, like “Call Awaiting,” or capture the sensations and emotions of a moment, as in “Toy Contentment,” or theorize open-endedly on a question that isn’t fully answered in the poem itself, like “Happiness-Parsed” with its speculations on the nature of time, and on time’s variability according to human experience. Humor helps, too, as in the wry comment that “It took me a while/but now, I can tell/when you text me/with your middle finger.” The poems that fall most flat are the ones where the poet simply presents a simple statement of fact, or of opinion presented as fact, in clear declarative sentences. The difference can be seen by comparing, for example, Kahlil Gibran’s “Your children are not your children/they are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself” and Osmani’s “While kids inherit diseases/based on genetics/their temperaments can be way off/with a little change in mentality genes.” The first is poetry – the second is simply prose disguised as poetry, without quite the same magic or music to it. This isn’t to say that the sentiments are valueless, or untrue, just that they would be better suited to a prose essay, perhaps, than to a poem. Still, there’s plenty in SHORT POEMS, LONG TALES that is poetic, and that offers substantial room for thought, consideration, and feeling, and since the poems are short, it’s easy for readers to pick and choose the ones they prefer most for further contemplation.
SHORT POEMS, LONG TALES lives up to its name, by presenting the reader with a series of short but thought-provoking poems, which evoke longer stories and deeper speculations.
~Catherine Langrehr for IndieReader