000. Preface Poem by Praveen Kumar Title Golden Wonder

PREFACE TO “SIMPLY YOURS”

SIMPLY YOURS inter alia is about love and its “sweet misery”. Love is like heaven, but sure can hurt like hell. Love as Victor Hugo said, “The reduction of the universe to a single being, the expansion of single being even to God”, where, in Bill Wilson’s words, “to the world you may be one person, but to one person you may be the God”. Francis Bacon says that it is impossible to love and to be wise. Love is also variously defined as being stupid together. This volume of love poetry is about that stupidity.

Love is called as crazy. It grows beyond human senses, perceptions and consciousness. It knows no human laws. Maslow’s Needs Hierarchy has no use for it. Neither basic needs nor the highest need of self-actualization can ever stand up to the magical height of the love. The beauty of love lies in the entire sum of existence revolving around the magic of being needed by one person. Love is when hurting her will hurt you more. It is not that you can’t live without her; it is just that you don’t even want to try. “Simply Yours” is about this madness.

The treasure of love is unique and unparalleled. Felix Adler elegantly describes the nature of love when he says, “that each include the other, each is enriched by the other”. Hans Margolius gives expression to the same thought when he says that one man by himself is nothing, two people who belong together make a world.

Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies. It is in this reference that great Kahlil Gibran says that love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation. “Simply Yours” is simply a probe to the depth, and comes out with the conclusion in the words of Pearl Baileg that the sweetest joy, the wildest woe is love. Love reminds you that nothing else matter. Love is a light that shines from heart to heart and feels what the other is feeling even if they are far away. All these live and lovely layers of love are deeply probed in the seventy-nine poems of this anthology.

Love in the love poems of “Golden Wonder” is modeled after Priya Chaitra Tapasvini—the paragon of sublime conscience and conscious moral rectitude, most charming and most wonderful creation of pure beauty, devotion, love and sacrifice ever born in this world; most perfect and prettiest in all worlds. This volume of poetry is lovingly dedicated to that exquisite wonder God has ever created.

I remember Shobha with profound love and regard for being the strength and inspiration of this and all my literary works and life, and coming again in pursuit of the goal. This volume is a small tribute to her resolve transcending all barriers in the Second Advent.

My son, Pratheek Praveen Kumar is my strength in pursuit of my literary activities and seems like carrying forward the avocation. I thank him for his consistent help. I must confess that it is my father Shree R. D. Suvarna who made me whatever I am now. I would have never ventured in to literary pursuits without his encouragement.
My deep gratitude is also due to my wife, Jayashree, who naturally is the first reader and critic of all my literary compositions apart from being the first effective proofreader. I thank her for all her cooperation. Also, my mother, Smt. B. Sarojini, my sister, Pramodini Ganesh, brother, Nishith Kumar, sister, Asha Narasimha and brother, Sushir Kumar stood behind me in this effort. I record my gratitude to all of them.


ADDEND TO “GOLDEN WONDER”

“Golden Wonder” is an extension forming the second volume of the collection of love poems, “Simply Yours”, and covers seventy-nine love poems composed since the publication of the latter in 2009. Save four poems authored in 2010 that figure at the end, all other poems here were written in 2012 and 2013, first thirty-eight poems composed in 2012 and next thirty-seven in 2013, while last four poems in 2010. All poems in the volume figure in the chronological order they were written in the respective year.

September 1,2013 PK