“Here is a collection of sixty-two beautifully crafted poems on some of
the deepest of human emotions. They celebrate love, constancy, beauty,
marriage, birth and death; in the poems are hailed intellectual labour,
leadership and duty. Occasionally, the poet depicts the states of his
mind against the backdrop of nature, interfusing description, memory
and meditation in a manner essentially romantic. The best in
Ambanasom’s poetry is matter and manner combined. The striking force of
the poems lies in the intriguing relationship between romanticism and
romance. Ambanasom’s romanticism is concerned with the concept of
nature as a universal being or a cosmic entity, nostalgia, the attempt
to link his childhood with the present and the future, and the response
to nature at different levels of his development. The poet also
demonstrates a penchant for rural subject matter, places and people. In
the poet of romance there is a more direct expression of basic human
emotions, in particular of love that is enchanting, possessing,
seductive, and alluring. We find in the poems, love that is reciprocal
and imbued with constancy and understanding.”
