THE KIMNAMA
Vrzhu Press, 2007

Based on her experiences in New Delhi, India, The Kimnama
is a "masala" of adventure, history, and street culture.


Read an excerpt

The Kimnama is available for $12 from VRZHU Press.



"Roberts filters her observations through Western experience. What would be out of the ordinary at home is ordinary here: the pungent smell of cow urine offered at a Gandhi memorial; buffalo dung shaped into patties, dried and decorated with "a swirl here, a herringbone there. / Art out of dung." Roberts's work calls to mind Whitman's 'Song of Myself' in its expansive celebration of life in all its physicality. That Roberts infuses her work with humor makes it all the more engaging."
—Kimberly L. Becker, Ghoti

"Good poems love to travel. Conceive a new passage to India, immersion in its tints, sounds, and scents. Sight the Buddha’s very own neighborhood or move in rivers of traffic where time stops. Now for the price of lunch, The Kimnama (Vrzhu Press) by Kim Roberts transports us swiftly to India where...gentle lines give us a sense of dream places that wake us to marvels. Lapidary verses vary with brisk evocation of streets, shops, and voices. Roberts devotes her lean book to vast India not only from her vantage point as traveler but from the eyes, ears, and tongues of Indians; their timeless spirit shines despite imperial edicts or raids by sacred cows."
—Ethan Fischer, Montserrat Review

"In the lines of this book-length poem, Kim Roberts distills for us the essence of India. Braiding past and present with sensual detail, she summons up the contrasts—houses on a narrow dirt lane sharing the wall of Muhammadpur's tomb, men in dhotis squatting 'like giant grasshoppers' near 'a chandelier vendor/his wares hanging from a tree//so the cut glass shimmered/where the sun/filtered through the dusty leaves,' her observations of the outer world complemented by inner realizations arrived at organically."
—Cheryl Snell , Rattle

"...this work makes the reader viscerally smell, hear, touch and see the streets, mosques, gods, vehicles, shopping malls and slums of New Delhi."
—Kathi Wolfe, Scene4 Magazine

Excerpts from The Kimnama by Kim Roberts

A fruit market on spindly wooden stands
----------is built by the side of the road.
-----Next to the melons,

a barber lifts his knife,
----------his client's face
-----full of white lather.

A clump of laughing women
----------in a rainbow of saris
-----crosses the street.

Japanese Maruti vans honk
----------past ancient Ambassador cabs
-----built like tanks.

A man clad in a bright pink turban
----------and an orange scarf
-----around his neck smiles without teeth.

The market vendor deposits
----------red onion skins in the gutter
-----and three cows gather,

push their noses deep in rich reddish-purple,
----------stopping traffic,
-----as if they knew they were gods.

 

Vipul's astrologer recommends
----------he wear a blue sapphire
-----and make a pilgrimage

to the site of Krishna's birth
----------to bathe in the water there.
-----Maybe then his luck will improve.

 

The smell of the streets
----------grows sharper at night.
-----Spices, wood smoke,

dust, cattle, and sweat. Chandan,
----------a sandalwood paste,
-----used in Hindu temple rites.

The burned smell of chapatti,
----------round wheat bread made
-----over an open flame.

The faint smell of drying flowers
----------strung together
-----in orange garlands.

Incense, more spice. And more dust.
----------Dust wrapping
-----everything in a thin coat

that gets inside your nostrils,
----------that enters your food,
-----that cannot be washed away.