Seeking Solace: a book of wisdom and delight for the modern world

SEEKING SOLACE, a collection of poetry in free verse, encompasses and glorifies one of the most quintessential of human needs, self help. The poet, Nikhil Parekh, takes the view that in the current world scenario—disastrously fraught with terrorism, war, prejudice, unemployment of various kinds—if you want to help others, you must first help yourself. This is because positivity can diffuse efficaciously from a soul which is harmonious in itself with the spirit of victorious existence. Various of the poems embodied in this collection earnestly aim at applying the balm of uninhibited hope, optimistic enlightenment, righteous empowerment, and self-friendship upon humanity.

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“Parekh is to poetry what superheroes are to Marvel and DC Comics.”

George Watt, ‘Preface’ to Seeking Solace.

Here is no quiet, introspective poetic musing, but a chanting in-your-face celebrant of Self. He even out-Whitmans Walt Whitman: “You might say that the letter ‘I’ singularly by itself was… sinfully plundering selfishness…” But unless and until, “you unflinchingly worship the ‘I’… How can you ever dream of lovingly and wholesomely embracing others?”

In this collection you cannot avoid the inescapable vocal and dramatic energy—it trumpets itself with a complete absence of shame or guilt, and will use bathos, pathos, unapologetic sentimentality or even strident melodrama to reach its end. To call his verse bold is an understatement, as it works sincerely and furiously towards a point of acceptance in the final poem: to emerge, “victorious from behind my vicious outburst of gloom”, and to reveal, “my true identity… without the slightest fear.”

Parekh’s poetic energy, his raw honesty and his highly unique and strident, individual style make it hard not to get caught up in his refusal to bow to the various forms of cynicism which plague our current age—no matter how bad they are. He has to swim a lot in a rising flood of pain, doubt and contempt (and does so furiously) but he point-blank refuses to be drowned, or to escape, as Voltaire’s Candide suggests one should, to a gardening project that could easily be dismissed as mild, solipsistic escapism.

—George Watt

These 44 poems revolve around the polemical piece “Stop feeling sorry,” which turns on a version of Frankl’s existential solution to the problem of meaning, that is via second order “freedom of attitude.” In Seeking Solace, Nikhil Parekh makes a virtue of embracing—of accepting; of affirming—all “celestial living kind.” His exultant speaker embraces Romantic flourish, unironically trumpeting lines like “LIFE is BEAUTIFUL” and “this chapter called LIFE.” The collection is an embodied celebration of the syllable. The speaker, at once innocent and wise, crowds every line with logorrhoea, with words words words, as though commanded from on high. Nikhil Parekh's speaker also exhorts his listeners to espouse words, that is, to take solace in the sensual experience of listening.

—Jason S Polley

Associate Professor, Department of English Language and Literature, Hong Kong Baptist University