Book Review by #LITEROMA :: "Lady in Red" by Dr. Shankar Kashyap

** Thanks to the author for gifting us a review copy of the book.**

** Thanks to our reviewer Suchi Shukla for reviewing the book on behalf of #Literoma. **

Book Name: Lady in Red: A Collection of Love poems
Author: Shankar Kashyap
Format: Kindle Edition

Love as an emotion is so perennial that it requires no medium- no language to be expressed. All forms of living beings with any kind of life force in them understands the emotion called love. Expressing it no doubt varies from person to person and even from life to life. But one thing is certain- nothing- no one in this universe exists without love- of one or the other kind.

As far as literature is concerned- people have written humongous amount of verse, prose in the glory of love- in all kinds of languages- in all times of human existence. There is such a variety in love-poetry all across the globe in structure, form and metre that it seems almost impossible to be acquainted with all kinds. But this impossible task has been made possible by a genius writer- Shankar N Kashyap.

Ingenious and innovative are small words for him as he has surpassed all barriers of structure and formats to create this collection of love poems “ Lady in Red”. Verse forms from across the globe have been utilized in this collection to express this divine emotion.

Ever heard of a ghazal in English? Never? Read him. The very first one titled “Lady in Red” is a ghazal and not only that, 24 out of 45 poems in the collection are ghazals- he seems to be enchanted by this form, only to enchant us more. The 5th one in the collection, “Enchanted Love” is a Rubaiyat- another pleasant surprise for the readers of English language( of Urdu as well!).

Not only that he has tried his hands at diverse forms across the globe like: Sonnet ( Book of Love), Ballad( Heart of Stone), Lay( First Love), Villanelle( Art of Stealing), Odes( Ode to Memories etc), Free Verse, Acrostics( Passionate), Rondeau( The Girl I Fell in Love With), Triolet( Paradise Lost) etc. To add to the variety is the Vietnamese form Luc Bat( That smile, That Song), and a German one Minnesang( Doe Eyed Maiden) which literally means love poetry.

Not to forget the attractive cover page and the fluent lucid style of expressing deepest of all emotion.

My rating: 4*/5*. My only wish is to have its Paperback edition instead of the Kindle one because books like these should be treasured in our personal libraries.

All the Literoma reviews are available at our page:-
https://literomagroup.blogspot.com/  

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