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Did You Ever Love Me? Book Review: Can Rithvik singh turn heartbreak into a homecoming?

Did You Ever Love Me? by Rithvik Singh is a tender contemporary poetry collection about love, heartbreak, longing, self worth and learning to let go. Its greatest strength is emotional accessibility: Singh writes directly to readers who feel intensely and care deeply. The collection offers comfort without pretending heartbreak is simple, though its simplicity may occasionally feel familiar to seasoned poetry readers. Did you Ever Love Me? Have you ever loved someone so completely that, after they left, you were left wondering whether they had ever understood what they had been given? Not merely whether they loved you, but whether they ever noticed how much you loved them, how much patience you offered, how many small things you remembered, or how often you chose to stay when leaving might have been easier. There is a particular loneliness in that question because it rarely arrives at a dramatic moment. More often, it finds you while you are doing something completely ordinary. Yo...

MIND OF A CONTENT WRITER

Wordsworth said, “Poetry is the spontaneous flow of powerful emotions” while Coleridge stated that poetry stemmed from bursts of divine inspiration and no spontaneous flow recollected in tranquility. For all those who study literature or aim at being writers, these quotes last them through their lives; but for those who want to adapt to a more modern form of writing, a form of writing that cannot be put away in the shelves only to be discovered centuries later for the purpose of acceptance or rejection by half read critics, a form of writing that caters to immediate needs and instant pleasures, a form of writing that needs the writer to chase deadlines, ensure originality and look forward to payments, quotes such as those uttered by Wordsworth or Coleridge are best left read among books with yellow pages and then shut away in wooden shelves.

There are phases when matching up to deadlines and getting a great pay is what steers my new found obsession, content writing in the healthiest direction. I believe that vision with an incentive like I find in this case is a perfect job. But then again there are phases when my heart yearns to let my mind speak – the ideas, the thoughts, the creativity that are only found in me – not available on a web portal for all to copy paste and edit it like it never belonged to anybody in the first place.

There are times when I have been asked if I want to pursue content writing as a career in the future. While half my mind would readily grab the opportunity to cease quick money through writing which till the end of the day keeps my mind occupied, the other half and the whole of my heart would rather write to feel a sense of gratification, liberation and true joy – whether it brings along a remuneration or no is another story to tell.

- Debapriya Chatterjee

Comments

Arc said…
In any field or business, or job, or any career option available, times will come when you have to chose one option. Whether to go for money, or to do something for what your heart yearns for. If Wordsworth would have been alive today, and thought practically, poetry doesn't sell tht good as articles or non-fiction. Would he have left poetry just for the sake of earning tht bit more of cash?
Also, if he had gone for the cash option, wouldn't we all be at loss for the treasure of poems he could have written?

Life is all about making choices, my dear friend and we all shall be answerable one day for the choices we chose.
Debapriya said…
yes but if wordsworth had to pick from shooting to overnight fame like rowling for harry potter and getting recognized while he himself lay in his grave centuries after his works had actually been written, which do you really think he would have preferred?
Arc said…
I think he wouldn't have gone for fame. And this is why his works are special. For their is just plain beauty in them and little selfish motives like fame or wealth. No pressure on him like Rowling to satisfy millions of fans and pockets of herself, the publishers and alike. He wrote for the sake of writing it. Hence he wrote from his heart not from his head like we people do. Here lies the difference.

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