The poems of Fire's Goal reflect a year of journeys to sacred river sources in India. Laurie Patton's poems were written after a decade of writing and reading in interpretation of India's most sacred Sanskrit compositions - the Veda.

Beautifully illustrated by Lika Tov's enchanting depictions of the rituals of Hindu life.

Author's Preface Preface FIRE'S GOAL is the name of a poem about the sage Æarabhanga, who consumed himself in fire because he could not stand to be in absence of the Lord Rama, who had ascended to heaven without him. The book, too, is about the consuming fire of longing, in God's presence and in God's absence. It is a kind of early twenty-first century bhakti, or devotional voice, in which the fire of longing consumes the one who longs in ways that are both specific to the contemporary devotee and also accessible to the non-Hindu reader.

These poems also reflect a year of journeys to sacred river sources in India-the icebergs of Gaumukh, the wells and ponds of Varanasi, the caves of Triambak and riverbanks of Nasik. They were written after a decade of writing and reading in interpretation of its most sacred Sanskrit compositions - the Veda.

The first half of the book, "Festivals," follows the main festivals of a Hindu year. Each poem is written in the voice of a bhakta, or devotee. Each attempts to portray a moment in the mind of such a person as he or she performs rituals of devotion-whether it be floating a flame down the river at Dawwali or listening to the bell at a Ganesha temple at Ganeæotsav. The first half might be called a phenomenological portrait of a Hindu year. There are many more festivals in the Hindu year than are included in this book-the calendar provides us with an embarrassment of riches which I only touch upon lightly here.

The second half of the book, "Crossings," refers to the traditional term tirtha, or holy place. In India, a tirtha is a place where a god crossed over to be on earth. "Crossings" employs the images of Sanskrit learning to think about ordinary moments in contemporary life-a lost lover, running with dogs, an encounter with a spider-web, what a widow might say about her broken bangles. I composed the last six poems in a simple form of the language of Sanskrit itself-without meter, and without reference to classical forms-to create a kind of Haiku of emotion. They are given in both Sanskrit and English.

With images from such texts and landscapes, then, this book is an attempt to create a Hindu world which opens up experiential and moral possibilities. It also addresses changes and transitions, and speaks about them in Hindu terms. These poems are an attempt to make the early twenty-first century experience of Hindu symbols and Sanskrit learning accessible from a perspective of tension and movement, approach and avoidance, the stuff of interaction with the contemporary world.

FIRE'S GOAL takes for granted that each Hindu god is a poetically accessible being, who can elicit moods and moments which a non-Hindu might comprehend, appreciate, and be transformed by. In this sense, the use of Hindu mythology in this book is inspired by H.D., as well as many of the other symbolist poets, who used mythological referents in order to enrich and enliven their imagery and the experience of the reader.

The god of every Hindu festival, no matter how small in stature and scale, is a form of incompletion that begs to be completed by the experience of a devotee. Each festival, each god, points to a larger whole, which then must in turn become absorbed into some form of practice and experience. We can often speak of god in such a way that the whole takes absolute precedence, and the part must also refer to and become subsumed by it. But in a world of multiple divinities, the part often takes precedence, in constant deference to and interaction with the whole.

This idea (Ashis Nandy's "Hinduism for a postmodern age"), creates a challenge and opportunity for literary forms in writing about and through the gods of India. There is nothing romantic about the harsh challenge of a multiple form of divinity. In the liberal economy of India where everything is promised as "realizable" through interaction with and resistance to the idea of the "contemporary," a deity stands as the epitome of such ambivalence. Deities promise the world, and yet they also withhold it. Gods embody both presence and absence in unique ways-ways which can teach us as much about contemporary lives as ancient ones. Finally, this book also assumes that not everyone can understand the various nuances and cultural references which make up the poetry. It is impossible to assume a universal set of unspoken cultural referents; indeed, to me it is better not to opt for total cultural transparency. It seems right at this historical moment to use referents from different cultures in order to challenge the medium of English as one is using it. Thus I have tried to walk a middle path between transparency and resistance, providing footnotes and longer notes at the back to help the reader if further information is required.

Laurie L. Patton
Atlanta, GA 2002

Excerpts from Fire's Goal

Festival of the Goddess:
Mother, you are not Plenty
but a thin and grueling grace
just when I think
I might hold you
swollen and rounded
by coconuts and songs

you vanish into the gilt
of the puj¡ri's pages
and play, reed-like,
between the sticks of incense
you slip into the cement
still resounding with bells

just when I think
I have arranged my breasts
to match the fullness of yours
you become a small wind
blowing glimpses of red cloth
all the way up the mountain.

On Learning Sacred Language in Childhood:
What you remember:
a verb, and how it collided
with a crow,
alighting on the tree
behind your mother's head

a noun, and how it spilled
off the spoon
falling from your brother's mouth

a sentence, and its chill
like the chill of your teacher's hand
on your shoulder

you keep the books
near your body,
they curl and cry
and will not let you
forget their embrace,
their nouns and verbs
break open your silence,
their sentences nag
like children
wanting a drink

you try to quiet them
but they refuse -
the hopes and disturbances
of your wizened sleep