Love, its Wrath And Others by Jane Chakravarthy

Love, its Wrath

And Others

A Collection of Poetry

and Artwork

by Jane Chakravarthy

Self-published in hardback

$10.00


A Review by Lo Galluccio



The cover of her book is the painting that perhaps held me most spell-bound: a swirling mass of flame-colored scarves, ensconsing the round earthy tones of an eye. It’s a magical eye – Kohl black with one black pupil at its center. Also on exhibit at the Lilypad opening this Saturday in Inman Square were other cosmic collages of bold, saturated colors, and floating or embedded objects, all framed rather regally.in thick gold or silver. There was a girl with black shoulder-length hair, a simple sweet face, a magnetic portrait. There was a trilogy of paintings depicting the migration or amalgamation of souls. I saw thick white crosses, but made no assumptions of their being Christian. Sufi, Pagan. These are the words that crossed my mind as I breathed in the aura of Jane’s work. I asked the artist if the crosses signified anything. “Souls,” she said to me. “I’m not religious.” I forget the word she used. Was it “constraint?”


What can I tell you about Jane? From the U.K, originally. Avid smoker. A socialite of sorts. Not afraid to get in your face and hold you with her eyes. Married to a mysterious Indian man we’re all wondering about. A Taurus – sturdy and generous, with water and fire signs in the ascendant nonetheless. It seemed somewhat comical to me that when my boyfriend wanted to buy her painting, entitled, “Birthing” – a dark blue and purple mass with tiny eyes peering out – he was blocked. Later he confided to me that Jane told him the source of the painting had been a suicide attempt. Well, I offered, maybe she felt too emotionally close to the work. Or, maybe you…needed to wait a few days to make an offer. Jane’s fun and intense. Jane’s generous. Jane’s a talented, I’d even say, visionary painter. There’s something that is Sufistic about her work. There are elemental forces of darkness and light. There are eyes, hearts, fire and earth, a yearning upward and inward to the heart. Then, also, a kind of mysterious darkness that carves out its own space. A kind of purging to get to the core, a backing away from the concrete transactional or the “real.” You won’t find a street address or a contemporary cliché in her work. Of the imagination and the third-eye. Of dreams, they mostly are. I’m not in love with it all, but some in this collection are really special.


I’ve also hankered to buy her book now for a few months and went to the opening knowing it would be on sale. There was an open mic. I missed it and yet Jane led me to the piano and I played and sang without too much fanfare. Funny, I would say the song did capture some attention but and it was a kind of Sufi song about a child whose love is God. A loose phase in the four hour event, I was followed by Ian Thal’s bravely hilarious shtick as Harlequino, the Commedia character My beau bought “Love, its Wrath And Others” for me and Jane scrawled something in a drunken magenta pen as a dedication. All I can make out is “Take care” - Jane. Tonight, I had the chance to read her poetry through. The book is handsomely produced on glossy paper and pages juxtaposing her art with her poems.


Next to a photo of orange fall leaves in a forest, Jane writes in Atonement,


“but you only learn

when you can discern

the actions

and change your way


someday, someday

you will start to pay

for you forgot what sins you chose

but remember the pigs and the firefly too


remember

because they will not forget you”


And further on, next to a molting galaxy of red, yellow and deep blues, she writes in Pattern Of Life:


“blindness of winter

our senses lose track

white blankets surround us

cleansing our souls


another journey we have made

shooting stars explode;

our sleeping friends awaken.”


In her artist’s statement on her website, Jane explains her impulse or compulsion ot create art thusly:


I rarely have a preconceived notion of what I will write or paint, my creativity comes from my life or vicariously from other people. I focus my energy to create images or scenes which guide me to purge and create a tangible expression; something I feel.


Given this deeply intuitive mode of creation, I must then overlook some of the details of grammar and punctuation askew that irk me. Why can’t an ellipse have three dots to be consistent in the course of two lines? Why confuse “too” and “two”? Isn’t it a bit strained to say, “I have been the down-pour of a hailstone on a hot spring day.”? Nevertheless, I’d rather not quibble the weaker details. Her poems strike with a strong emotional force and have an organic logic, for the most part, that holds sway. If she were purely Goth, there would be no tension between dark and light, because the glamour of the night would always win. We’d have her fangs and not her broken heart. She gives us both. In Prince, it’s written:


“the freeness of your mind

the odd way you behave

so different from my constraints

you take my mind and blow it away.


you say that i’m protected

if i follow my path of choice

with or without you, you say

we must never forget our voice”



And this last line is profound for all beings who are striving for authenticity and expression. Obviously, she lets others affect her and there is a value and a cost to this open stance. Yet, I see, also, the Jane that can turn down a buyer, and not bother with what she simply doesn’t like. That’s an artist’s ego. In Crystal she writes:


“i drink the water

afforded me

claw by claw i rise

to the translucent corner


now I see through

the glass of contempt

i know I have arrived”



Check out Jane’ s website at www.janechakravarthy.com and her Myspace page.