Trying to Say Goodbye

Trying to Say Goodbye is the long anticipated third collection of poems by Adil Jussawalla, who continues to be a seminal figure in post-independence Indian poetry. Jussawalla's is a sharp yet intimate voice, fearless but melancholic, marked by a darting, wily syntax, bristling rhymes, and an original prosody. Here, he moves across time to address an array of histories, both personal and public. He lifts from and pays homage to poets, artists, drunks, vagabonds, and eccentrics, and writes through the deep materiality of everyday objects—a wristwatch, a radio, clay, wood, marble, a cloud, a fly—in reaching toward a further scale.