Elixer Press

104 pages, $17

Review by Meg Eden

Kirun Kapur has a love-hate relationship with history. Her debut poetry collection, Visiting Indira Gandhi’s Palmist, is an embodiment of history—not just her own, but the archetypes that build history itself. Kapur is situated within both eastern and western culture, and carries such a rich family history that it’s almost as if she’s compelled to be involved in conversation with history, whether she likes it or not. In her poem “Under the Bed” she says, “I didn’t need monsters, I had history. Didn’t want history, I wanted crime—“ But despite “not wanting history,” Kapur uses it fully as a successful medium for her poems.

While many of us write about our family histories and narratives, Kapur reminds us what makes a successful retelling of history. Kapur begins the collection with a quote by Willa Cather from O Pioneers, “There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before…” This quote perfectly sets the landscape and ideology behind these poems, which do not rely solely on their own uniqueness but affiliate themselves with a history of human stories. What’s so great about what Kapur does is that she doesn’t isolate her family poems, but marries them alongside biblical and Hindu narratives, using these archetypes to place her family narratives in a larger context and history. Continue reading →