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The Wire
05-08-2025
- Entertainment
- The Wire
Commitment to Justice Was the Preeminent Note in Savitribai Phule's Poetry
Acclaimed for being the first book-length publication in verse by an Indian woman in the nineteenth century, 'Kavya Phule' is among the first books of modern poetry by an Indian in British India. Savitribai Phule. The following an excerpt from A Genre of Her Own: Life Narratives and Feminist Literary Beginnings in Modern India (Bloomsbury, 2025), by Gayathri Prabhu, which explores the emergence of a distinct gender-based national conscience by the second half of the 19th century. In this extract, the author, who is a professor at Manipal Institute of Social Sciences, Humanities and Arts, Manipal Academy of Higher Education (MAHE), Karnataka, discusses how the anti-caste icon Savitribai Phule (1831-1897) skilfully interweaves feminist and literary, as well as performative and explicitly subjective concerns in her poetry. § This sermon that entices…. I sing This leisure that envelops the mind…I sing This intelligible ethical education…I sing This attainment of a sense of knowledge…I sing The singing of the self in prolific modes presented in the epigraph above—incidentally published a year prior to the canonised 'Song of Myself' by Walt Whitman —is located in the Prelude of a collection of poems in Marathi (Kavya Phule, 1854) by twenty-three-year-old Savitribai Phule (1831–1897). Acclaimed for being the first book-length publication in verse by an Indian woman in the nineteenth century, it is among the first books of modern poetry by an Indian in British India. The mnemonic and tonal qualities of singing and self that is foregrounded—other compositions of the collection are even more explicit about the resolve to entertain, educate and agitate—is determined to stand apart as well as move ahead with a multitude. The writer in speaking of a distinct self is equally speaking of a collective marked by gender and caste. In other words, this is a solo rendition that invites and joins a chorus—for what educates/liberates the singular is wont to do the same for many. This timbre of poetic reflexivity, and the future writings it anticipates may be read as a choric, collective manifestation of social non-conformism and inscriptional virtuosity. Savitribai Phule had already been active in the public realm as an education and social activist when she entered the publishing sphere in her early twenties with the forty-one poems that comprise Kavya Phule. Along with her husband, Jotirao Phule, she had set up the first educational institution for girls in India, and become the first woman to teach and head a school—Phule was around twenty-one-years old at the time, and Savitribai was sixteen. The initiative was fiercely opposed. The Phules who belonged to the Mali caste had enrolled nine girls in their school from communities that were oppressively othered in the Hindu ritual caste hierarchy. The school itself was already a controversial idea—it involved an access to education for two groups (disenfranchised by caste or gender or both) that were strictly deprived of literacy by upper-caste traditionalists. Such a 'distinct brand of socio-cultural radicalism' aimed to unite overlapping categories of the oppressed or stree-shudra-atishudra (women-backward class-dalits) while also including other maginalised groups such as adivasis and Muslims. Jotirao Phule's reputation as a pioneering reformer would continue to grow despite oppositions and setbacks, even as Savitribai developed the writing voice required for a strategic resistance that could accomplish extended mobilization. Writing in both prose and verse was the preferred modality to consolidate these efforts, and Savitribai published four books over her lifetime, including two volumes of poetry of which the first, Kavya Phule, represents a truly modern beginning, both in content and presentation. Gayathri Prabhu A Genre of Her Own: Life Narratives and Feminist Literary Beginnings in Modern India Bloomsbury, 2025 The thematic spectrum of Savitribai's debut collection is wide, ranging from rallying calls for freedom or equality to admiration of the bounties of nature—the preeminent note however being the poet's commitment to justice. While being indebted to the scholarship on Savitribai Phule's contributions to caste equity and education, the concern of this study is to bring to light a less appreciated feature of her achievement. This is in the realm of literary stylistics—here too it must be granted that Phule's acute sense of a new social world interpenetrates, and gives body and depth to her artistry in verse. Nearly all the compositions in Kavya Phule are accompanied by a mention of a poetic sub-genre for performance or oral rendition, such as abhang, ovi, anushtubh, dindi, padhya, located primarily in the devotional idiom, often the Warkari. The flourishes of familiar and customary lyric, as well as music and dance, are then combined with the crisp line-breaks of modern poetry that speaks of individual rights and social change. For instance, in the poem 'Rise to Learn and Act' the individual (woman/self) and the community (caste) interweave with the craving (for knowledge) and the rebellion (due to knowledge) thus: An upsurge of knowledge is in my soul Crying out for knowledge to be whole This festering wound, mark of caste I'll blot out from my life at last. The crying out (for unbridled access to knowledge) and the blotting out (of the wound of casteism) are the performative action of the poem itself, as well as its desired goal. In this felicitous and hybrid germination of literary form, Savitribai manifests a central contention of this book—shared literary beginnings are not only about ruptures and new sutures, but that they are also self-consciously stylized for an optimum creative and semantic amplification. The poet stands alone, but also speaks of society, thereby anticipating the writing chorus that is sympathetic of her vision, one that will eventually challenge a publication milieu hierarchical in terms of access and authorial reputation. The literary contravention that is playful, defiant and buoyant, opens with a clever word-play in the title of the collection: Kavya Phule could directly translate to 'Poetry's Blossoms' or 'Poetry Blossoms' (blossoms to be read in its verb form), while Phule is also the author's surname by marriage which would then read as 'Poetry Phule' (poet identified by her craft, caste and wifehood in two words). The literary utterance was truly a blossoming by virtue of being one of its kind, that could be studied for its historical impact, its merging of vernacular poetic traditions with poetry of world literatures, or be read as spoken-word, a performative speech with internal rhyme schemes. 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Boston Globe
03-08-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
Walt Whitman exalted the meaning and beauty of honest labor
The question resonates today as then. Who among us has not, in a society that values wealth and achievement above all else, felt themself to be less? I remember asking that question of my students years ago as we sat around a long table at a Massachusetts public college, reading aloud Whitman's poems. The course was New World Voices, and the bard from Long Island was the foundation. Get The Gavel A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr. Enter Email Sign Up A contemporary of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Advertisement When I taught Whitman, we'd begin with 'When I Heard the Learned Astronomer.' In this poem, the narrator listens to a lecture on astronomy, but tiring of this, walks out to an open field to gaze directly at the stars. Next, we would read 'Song of Myself,' Whitman's 52-stanza celebration of being alive, the heart of 'Leaves of Grass . ' But it was when we came to 'Song for Occupations' that I sensed my students most identified with the poet's words. Advertisement In this six-part poem, Whitman catalogs working people in cities and farms — plowers, milkers, millers, ironworkers, glassblowers, sailmakers, cooks, bakers, carpenters, masons, surgeons, and seamstresses. The poem is vibrant in detail, cataloging both laborers and their tools. The pump, the piledriver, the great derrick . . the coalkiln and brickkiln, Ironworks or whiteleadworks . . the sugarhouse . . steam-saws, and the great mills and factories; The cottonbale . . the stevedore's hook . . the saw and buck of the sawyer . . the screen of the coalscreener . . the mould of the moulder . . the workingknife of the butcher; The cylinder press . . the handpress . . the frisket and tympan . . the compositor's stick and rule 'Why should we care?' I remember asking my students — themselves the sons and daughters of carpenters and electricians, nurses and social workers, teachers and technicians. After a pause, one young woman answered: 'Because it all matters. Our lives and the work we do matter.' She had, of course, identified the central theme of Whitman's art: the immeasurable value of each human being, regardless of class, gender, race, religion, or occupation. Aware of society's prejudices, Whitman returns to this theme again and again. Is it you then that thought yourself less? Is it you that thought the President greater than you? Or the rich better off than you? Or the educated wiser than you? If so, he has an answer: Advertisement I bring what you much need, yet always have, / Bring not money or amours or dress or eating . . . . but I bring as good. It eludes discussion and print, / It is not to be put in a book . . . it is not in this book. In the cadences of a preacher he continues: You may read in many languages and read nothing about it; / You may read the President's message and read nothing about it there: / Nothing in the reports from the state department or treasury department . . . . or in the daily papers or the weekly papers, / Or in the census returns or assessor's returns or prices current or any accounts of stock. Today, as then, I can still hear Whitman whisper: The sum of all known value and respect I add up in you whoever you are; / The President is up there in the White House for you . . . . it is not you who are here for him. What Whitman offers in this poem is the gift of ourselves and those around us, an acceptance enriched by his democratic vista. In line after line he reminds us that we are, ourselves, the goal of science, art, laws, politics, commerce — and, yes, education. It's a good lesson for all, because it affirms what is of most value in a society prone to power mongering and elitism. And it's a tender reminder that happiness is not tied to wealth, but to other human beings. Whitman closes 'A Song for Occupations' with an elegant affirmation. Praising the singer over the psalm, the preacher over the sermon, the carpenter over the pulpit he carved, he exclaims: Advertisement When a university course convinces like a slumbering woman and child convince, When the minted gold in the vault smiles like the nightwatchman's daughter . . . I intend to reach them my hand and make as much of them as I do of men and women. Walt Whitman's voice is good medicine for us today. Wherever we are, in a classroom or on the subway, he calls us to our shared humanity. Open your eyes, he is saying, to those around you, whether engineer or washer woman. And keep a lookout for the smile of the night watchman's daughter.
Washington Post
12-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
‘The Life of Chuck' is a wondrous affirmation by way of Stephen King
The cosmic calendar and Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' work in unlikely tandem in 'The Life of Chuck,' filmmaker Mike Flanagan's latest venture into Stephen King's multitude-packed mind. As the scientific conceit makes clear, our lives are but imperceptible blips on the vast timeline of the universe. Yet Whitman's poem raises the idea that every psyche contains another sprawling world unto itself, populated with the people, memories and scars we collect while navigating our finite existence. What are we if not the remarkable sum of our experiences and our imaginations? Adapted by Flanagan from Stephen King's 2020 novella, this meditation on the bittersweet beauty of the human condition is sweeping in sentiment and surgical in intent. Flanagan wants his audience to reflect on the passing moments of connection that carry outsize significance and the simple joys that make life worth living. Not saccharine but soulful, 'The Life of Chuck' arrives at life-affirming profundity through a blend of surrealist wonder and humanist truth. It's no wonder this marvel of a movie claimed the Toronto International Film Festival's coveted audience prize last fall. Tom Hiddleston stars as the titular Charles Krantz, a dying accountant with a dormant love of dance, though we don't properly meet him until the middle of three 'acts' that unfold in reverse chronological order. But we do get enigmatic glimpses of him in 'Thanks, Chuck,' an opening stanza that alternately unnerves and compels while posing a puzzle that's pieced together in due time. Even if Nick Offerman's narrator at one point asks, 'Would answers make a good thing better?' — seemingly setting the stage for ambiguity — this heart-on-its-sleeve venture doesn't leave much unsaid. In the initial act, environmental Armageddon has arrived. The internet, spotty for months, seems to have evaporated for good. Fires are blazing in the Midwest. Floods are sinking Florida. Earthquakes are ravaging California. And did a volcano just erupt in Germany? All the while, Hiddleston's smirking bean counter is being celebrated on billboards and broadcasts with the same platitude: 'Charles Krantz: 39 Great Years! Thanks, Chuck!' Yet no one recognizes the man or has any clue what the hoopla is about. As an affable undertaker (Carl Lumbly) says, he's the 'Oz of the apocalypse.' Chiwetel Ejiofor anchors the opening segment as a solemn schoolteacher reconnecting with his ex-wife (Karen Gillan), a nurse at a hospital so overwhelmed that the staff have started calling themselves the 'Suicide Squad.' Exuding palpable pathos, Ejiofor and Gillan are worthy vessels for this voyage into the void as the Newton Brothers' soothing score hums and Flanagan serves up fleetingly fantastical imagery. Set nine months earlier, the second act, 'Buskers Forever,' introduces Hiddleston's Chuck as a genial fellow with a loving wife, a teenage son and an undetected brain tumor. As Chuck strolls past a drummer busking on a street corner (Taylor Gordon), a dormant desire to dance takes over. Gleefully roping in a passerby fresh off a breakup (Annalise Basso), our startlingly loose-limbed protagonist struts up a storm in a euphoric jolt of live-life-to-the-fullest joy. How this exhilarating detour circles back to the opening chapter's existential despair is a satisfying journey explored in a final act that's best left unspoiled. Centered on a younger Chuck — played by Benjamin Pajak at age 10 and Jacob Tremblay as a teen — 'I Contain Multitudes' serves up love, grief and a dash of the supernatural, plus scene-stealing turns by Mia Sara and a gloriously grizzled Mark Hamill as Chuck's grandparents. Along the way, callbacks and connective tissue provide a path to the film's beating heart. While the horror auteur Flanagan is known for tapping into King's disturbing side — in film adaptations of 'Gerald's Game' and 'Doctor Sleep,' plus an upcoming 'Carrie' series — 'The Life of Chuck' marks an obvious departure. Now that he's delivered an elegy in the vein of 'Stand By Me' or 'The Shawshank Redemption,' Flanagan has made one thing clear: He's attuned to King at every frequency. R. At area theaters. Contains language, brief suspense and images of environmental disasters. 111 minutes.
Gulf Today
08-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Gulf Today
Tom Hiddleston leads the cosmic puzzle that is ‘Life of Chuck'
'Life of Chuck' is a peculiar movie with grandiose ambitions. It teases out a cosmic mystery about life and some guy named Charles Krantz ( Tom Hiddleston ) in a story told in reverse chronological order that gets smaller and smaller with each act. This is a story that begins with the apocalypse and ends with a middle school dance. Well, kind of. I'm not out to spoil (much) here. It's based on a novella by Stephen King (part of his 'If It Bleeds' collection of stories) and adapted by filmmaker Mike Flanagan, who was also behind 'Gerald's Game' and 'Doctor Sleep.' This, however, is not a horror movie, though there are spooky elements laden with ominous ambiguity. There are also big, joyful dance numbers, a fair share of cynical jokes, whimsical narration from Nick Offerman, earnest conversations about the end of the world and plenty of references to Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself' — in particularly 'I am large, I contain multitudes.' That is most movingly conveyed in a sweet scene with a teacher (Kate Siegel) and a middle school aged Chuck ( Benjamin Pajak ) on the last day of school. 'Life of Chuck' wants to make you think, feel, laugh and cry about the most mundane of characters: Krantz, a white, American, middle-aged accountant, whose life is modest and whose childhood was full of tragedy and loss. And while I certainly enjoyed elements of this odyssey in reverse, I was ultimately left feeling very little — especially about Chuck and the questionable end-of-film explanation that ties it all together. Hiddleston, it should be said, is not in 'Life of Chuck' as much as one might expect for being the titular character. His presence looms large certainly — it's why we're here. But, in reality, Hiddleston as a performer is more of an ensemble player among a sea of recognizable faces. In the third act, which opens the film, he's everywhere - on billboards and television ads, cheerily smiling in a nondescript grey suit, coffee cup in one hand, pencil in another. 'Charles Krantz. 39 great years! Thanks Chuck!' the signs read. It's the background until it's all that's left as the world appears to be ending. The internet has gone out. Parts of California have drifted into the Pacific. Environmental disasters rage. Suicides are skyrocketing. Hail Mary life decisions are being made. And poor Marty (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is just trying to do his job as a school teacher. His parent-teacher conferences have become parent therapy sessions. Everyone — a maintenance guy (Matthew Lillard), a funeral director (Carl Lumbly) — seems to want to philosophize about what's going on, and who the heck Chuck is. He has big conversations about the history of the universe with his ex-wife (Karen Gillan). And together they wait for the end. In act two, a grown Chuck (Hiddleston) dances in the street in a joyful six-minute sequence. Compelled to move when he hears the beat of a street drummer (Taylor Gordon), he even pulls in a stranger to join him (Annalise Basso). In act one, he's a kid ( Pajak ) who has lost both his parents and unborn sister in a car accident and is living with his grandparents (Mark Hamill and Mia Sara, who it's nice to have back on screen). It's during this segment, which comprises nearly half the movie, that he learns to dance. First, it's through his grandmother freestyling to Wang Chung and curating a movie musical marathon (including 'Singin' in the Rain,' 'Cabaret, 'Cover Girl' and 'All That Jazz'). Then it's at school, where little Chuck learns the perks of being a straight man who can dance. There's also a possibly haunted cupola on the top floor of their house that's causing grandpa lots of anxiety. This is a film with a big heart that has already made a significant impact on some moviegoers. Last fall it won the audience award at the Toronto International Film Festival, an honor which has produced many best picture nominees and winners. And it's one where a second viewing might be rewarding, so you can more appreciate the thoughtful throughlines and the piece as a whole since you know what it's building toward. But I also suspect this particular flavour of sentimentality might not be for everyone. Associated Press
Time Magazine
06-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
The Life of Chuck Works Too Hard For Its Warm Fuzzies
Stories about the meaning of life tend to work at cross-purposes with the job of actually living it, particularly when they pedal hard to activate the tear ducts. Mike Flanagan's science-fiction life affirmer The Life of Chuck —adapted from a Stephen King novella—is an ambitious little film that has already earned some laurels: it was an audience favorite at last year's Toronto International Film Festival, winning the People's Choice Award. Thanks to a few key moments, and the strength of its actors, it's easy to see why audiences would warm to the film. But if you're immune to its charms, you won't be alone. From its cute-fake soundstage-town setting to the authoritative yet chummy voice-over narration (courtesy of Nick Offerman), The Life of Chuck works doggedly to give you the warm fuzzies—and a little bit of that fuzz goes a long way. The story is ingeniously—or pretentiously, depending on your mood—constructed to unspool backward, beginning with the third act and ending with the first. In the opening section, Chiwetel Ejiofor plays schoolteacher Marty, whose class is interrupted just as his students are digging into Walt Whitman's 'Song of Myself,' particularly its key phrase 'I contain multitudes.' A student gasps: she's just seen the news on her phone that part of California has fallen into the ocean. Then the internet shuts down altogether, possibly for good—the end times are near, maybe, and the world is getting ready. Marty sees a weird billboard, featuring a smiling man in a business suit and the words charles krantz, 39 great years!, and thanks chuck! (The missing comma in that last phrase is presumably just one of the mysteries of life.) Marty doesn't know who Chuck is, nor does anyone he asks. But this billboard, followed by other mysterious Chuck references, may hold the key to the end of the world. In the second act, we find out exactly who Chuck is: a pleasant accountant, played by Tom Hiddleston. And in the third—which is to say the first and final act—we learn Chuck's backstory, how he was orphaned at a young age and sent to live with his grandparents, Mark Hamill's gruff but kind bookkeeper Albie and his sensible but joyful homemaker wife Sarah, played by Mia Sara. Sarah loves to dance, and she teaches young Chuck—at this point played by an appealing child actor named Benjamin Pajak—her best moves. He's a natural, though something is holding him back. And he too will study that Walt Whitman poem: it will shape not only his destiny, but also that of the world. Because The Life of Chuck is based on a Stephen King story, all that heavy-duty supernatural pondering just comes with the territory. The problem is that Flanagan—known for eerie but subtle horror films like Hush and Oculus and Netflix series like Midnight Mass and The Haunting of Hill House —puts too many overly earnest quotation marks around what should be the most moving scenes. The score becomes grand and syrupy whenever there's a big emotional revelation; characters deliver solemn soliloquies on the orderly beauty of math. The Life of Chuck explores the joys and sorrows of a life well lived in the most precious way—though Hiddleston and Ejiofor succeed somewhat in counterbalancing the mawkishness. Ejiofor explains Carl Sagan's Cosmic Calendar with a Shakespearean authority that makes every word matter. And Hiddleston, in the second section, has an extended dance number that momentarily sends the movie soaring. As a street drummer (Taylor Gordon, also known as the Pocket Queen) beats out a fascinatin' rhythm, Hiddleston's Chuck taps, whirls, and moonwalks through a spontaneous routine that, for as long as it lasts, almost manages to connect you with the meaning of life. He's the spirit of Gene Kelly reincarnated in a regulation accountant's gray suit; when he's in motion, The Life of Chuck really is transcendent.
