Articles Available Online

In States of the Body Produced by Love, Nisha Ramayya explores the Hindu goddess Parvati in her ten forms, the Mahāvidyās, each goddess coursing through the book’s river in her own wisdom Invoking these goddesses, the poetry draws us into their stories, ruptures temporal stasis, and aims to transcribe and bridge the distance between the human and the divine Sanskrit is fluidly interwoven alongside the English: the poetic glossing of Sanskrit is generous, and opens a space for interaction and immersion in both languages Ramayya writes, in the introduction to the collection:   ‘As mantras, the Mahāvidyās embody language – they are words, actions, meanings, and the supreme stage of language that transcends words, actions, meanings They speak me into being; I cannot precede myself to translate their stories into my own words’   The goddess is configured as language Each Mahāvidyā embodies a type of intention, and Ramayya’s poetry seeks to carry these intentions on the page These states of language and intention slowly unfurl throughout the book, from death to vibrating life The poetic incantations bring these various states to life with pulsating vividness, brimming with descriptions exploring direction, scent, gender, politics, knowledge, and body parts As well as creating this type of incantatory, fluid poetry, the collection acts as a prayer and an intensely personal account of engagement with cultural history These ‘states of the body produced by love’ allow the poetry to traverse the Mahāvidyās and to access the vessels of knowledge within them   The collection is dense with cultural, religious and historical references, and these are layered in both English and Sanskrit In this way, the text also becomes a repository for a kind of ‘language-sediment’ By choosing to weave both languages together, Ramayya exposes English as a colonial tool She by turns explains key terms and refuses conventional translation, and in doing so creates her own kind of language For me, as a reader, this is a source of comfort As Ramayya writes, the poetry ‘offer[s] tongues’, both in the literal metaphor within the poem but also in how it creates, throughout the collection, this poetic