Egrets, While War - by Tishani Doshi (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Egrets, While War reflects on aging, mortality, and survival in a world where violence and the beauty of nature coexist.

The poems in Tishani Doshi's Egrets, While War exists in a world of dualities--holding "desire in one hand, suffering in another." Criticisms of war merge with discussions of existential angst and the longing for "what's wild and pulsing." Sharpness, subtle, and grimly honest, these poems lament the loss of humanity, all while relishing the beauty, strength, and innocence of the natural world. Parakeets eat from a fruit tree outside a window. Wildflowers appear in the garden overnight. Mountains look like hands at dusk. Thick with lush and immersive imagery, Doshi's investigations of larger world conflicts are accentuated by her self-reflections and personal experiences. Although at times dark and despairing, Egrets, While War posits hope, resilience, and the earth as answers to our physical, spiritual, and emotional survival.

Review Quotes

Praise for Tishani Doshi

"In Girls are Coming Out of the Woods, Tishani Doshi combines artistic elegance with a visceral power to create a breathtaking panorama of danger, memory, beauty and the strange geographies of happiness. This is essential, immediate, urgent work and Doshi is that rare thing, an unashamed visionary who knows that, 'while you and I go on with life / remembering and forgetting, / the poets remain: singing, singing'."--John Burnside

"Doshi's poems embody a world of longing - her laments and dreams sear the reader's senses, setting their world alight. She makes you want to dance to the strings of her taut and tender soundboard, and echo aloud her fathomless world. Here is a poet with lyrical acuity in abundance."--Menna Elfyn

"Tishani Doshi in her Countries of the Body has written some rich poems with powerful images. They have the slow curved rhythms of a dancer in their movement. The poet has a passionate sense of the sacred. Poems for her are not statements; they are meditations... There is magic in her poems."--U.R. Ananthamurthy

"Every sentence in this achingly beautiful book carries multiple meanings that resonate across the pages. Tishani Doshi uses language like a blade, cutting through our defenses to illuminate what it means to love, and forgive, and truly exist in the life we have."--Maaza Mengiste, author of The Shadow King

"Tishani Doshi... offer[s] an eloquent dissection of the body―its attributes, metaphors, deficiencies and contradictions―all delivered in chromatic, richly textured lines, in which the assured manipulation of rhythm and internal rhyme produces poems of remarkable balance and grace."--Guardian

"Doshi's poems have both heart and intelligence. They are rich in mysterious images, and narratives both explicit and implied. You could read them a hundred times and still find something you hadn't noticed before."--Louis de Bernières

About the Author

Tishani Doshi is an award-winning writer and dancer of Welsh-Gujarati descent. Born in Madras, India, in 1975, she received a masters in writing from the Johns Hopkins University, and worked in London in advertising before returning to India in 2001, where a chance encounter with the choreographer Chandralekha led her to an unexpected career in dance. She has published seven books of fiction and poetry, the most recent of which are Girls Are Coming Out of the Woods, shortlisted for the Ted Hughes Poetry Award and a Firecracker Award; and a novel, Small Days and Nights, shortlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize, the Tata Best Fiction Award, and The New York Times Bestsellers Editor's Choice. She has interviewed over a hundred writers about the craft of writing, and has published essays in The Hindu, Granta, The National, The New York Times, The Guardian, Lithub and Corriere della Sera. She is a Visiting Professor of Creative Writing at New York University Abu Dhabi, and otherwise, lives on a beach in Tamil Nadu, India.