Interview with poet Ravi Taja Yelamanchili: A Young Poet with an Old Soul

On any given meeting of the literary group Bagel Bards in Somerville, amidst the bobbing, hoary heads--you might notice a strapping young Indian man-- taking in all the chatter around the table.
He is comfortable in the crowd of 50-60-70-80 year old men and women, and has been a consistent member of the group. Meet poet Ravi Taja Yelmanchili. Ravi, who is currently working at Vision 33 as a Technical Business Analyst, and has had his poetry published in the Muddy River Poetry Review, The Somerville Times, Muse India and is featured in Ibbetson Street 45--a well-known Somerville-based literary magazine.

Doug Holder: You are a high-tech business analyst--what brought you to poetry?

Ravi Taja Yelamanchili: When I was a freshman in high school I decided that I would have folders for my work. I had a red folder for my English papers. I was raised in India in my early years and then we moved to the States.  English was really a second language for me; so I thought my papers would be marked up in red.  I didn't have much confidence then.   But I remember meeting an established writer at a reading. We hit it off and he told me to send two poems. He put them on his website. He mentored me for a while. After a number of rejections I started publishing.

DH: In your persona poem, " Atma Tu Radhika Tasya," you inhabit an illiterate old woman, who late in life has fallen to the status of beggar. Being a young male, was it a stretch to do this?

RY: I had long been working with the idea of voice. Rodger Reeves was lecturing at my school--after the reading I asked him, " What does voice mean?" How do I find my voice? He advised me to write in a voice that was not similar to my own. So I figured an elderly, old women was completely different from me. The poem was steeped in Hindu mythology. In order to see if the voice was authentic I spoke and read to folks in their 70s and 80s--to see if I was on the mark.

DH: In one of your poems you write of a tree that breaks through a fence in Somerville. It is scarred but still triumph. It seems you are concerned about issues of containment in your work.

RY: Yes . Contained free will. Free will with parameters. Containment by choice and then breaking free from the social order. In my own life I do things that I am expected to do without really thinking about them. So I like to question, be a skeptic of sorts.

DH: In your work there seems to be a conversation between the ancient and the contemporary.

RY: When we are talking about the ancient we are still talking about the contemporary. Historical events inform today's events. So there is always a conversation.

Seedless Guavas

I.

“But from fire, wind, and sun [Brahman] drew forth the threefold
eternal Veda, called Rik, Yajus, and Saman.”
                                                (Manusmriti I.XXIII )

I saw the gods of my ancestors turned to artifacts,
chipped faces, broken arms—stolen by Hamatreyian 
flea winged Earth nymphs: Bulkeley, Lee, Hunt,
Willard, Hosmer, Meriam, and Flint still call all this their

creation. Mountains drowned by today’s teachers
of ancient art. Dying languages forgotten and

thrown away. Under the dim light of a parking garage,
a Snickers wrapper looks like a sparrow preening its feathers.II.

Coming of age novels are always about a country
that had already come of age, ideals, identities, and

a kid finding his place. In-country, in two different countries— 
the sunset was so red I thought I was being pulled over.

“In the middle of the cave of the skull between the four
doors shines Āṭmā, like the sun in the sky.”
                                                (Dhyanabindu Upanishad of  Samaveda)

We stop by the roadside. Roll down our windows.III.

Buy roasted peanuts from a girl with jade stained eyes.
Her skin is as dark as mine.

She makes a cone
out of yesterday’s paper.
“...she hath hid the darkness,
this Dawn hath wakened there with new-born lustre.
Youthful and unrestrained she cometh forward:
she hath turned thoughts to Sun and fire and worship.”
                                                (Rig Veda VII.LXXX)

On the paper, I see pictures of fruit.
When I first came back to America, I wouldn’t eat pears

until I was told they were seedless guavas.
Alas! The Romans traded gods like baseball cards.

A bad harvest meant a beating for Pan.
What about Faunus?