# Chairman Mao Didn’t Brush and Other Poems

- Link: https://writersworkshopindia.com/2018/12/03/chairman-mao-didnt-brush-and-other-poems/
- Published: 2018-12-03T23:59:20+00:00
- Author: shuktara

5/5 - (1 vote)

**Author:** Michael Chacko Daniels[
 
**Illustrators:** Aaron Bass and Krittika 
Ramanujan
 **Pages:** 212 **Year of Publication:** 2018 **Price:** Rs 400 / $ 25**
ISBN:** 978-93-5045-182-3 (9789350451823)

_**About the Author**_
 Michael Chacko Daniels lives and writes in San Francisco.
He grew up in Bombay, where he attended St. Michael’s High School, Wilson College,
and University of Bombay’s Department of Economics. He has a master’s from Northwestern’s
Medill School of Journalism.  His adventures in the United States include five years
as a Volunteer In Service To America (VISTA); four as editor/publisher of the New
River Free Press of Grand Rapids, Michigan; four as assistant editor in San Francisco
at The Asia Foundation; and sixteen at Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living.
He helped start the Jobs for Homeless Consortium of Alameda County (California) 
in 1988, and to run it through mid-2004. He is a naturalized citizen of the United
States. He has been writing for over five decades. **Writers Workshop**, India, 
has published seven of his books: _**Split in Two **_(poetry, 2004), _**Anything
Out of Place Is Dirt**_ (novel, 2004), _**That Damn Romantic Fool**_ (novel, 2005),_**
Morning in Santiniketan**_ (haiku, 2010), _**The Mendonҫa Mystery and Other Stories**_(
short stories, 2014), _**The Flea-Driven Traveler & Fifty-One Senryu, Haiku, Haibun**_(
poetry, 2016) and _**Savages and Other Neighbours**_ (novel, 2017).

_**About the Illustrators**_

**Aaron Bass** is a printmaker and illustrator who grew up along the industrialized
beaches of both the east and west coasts of the United States. The childhood memories
of biological and manufactured debris that washed up on those shores had a profound
effect on his later work. Aaron’s work is primarily focused on expressing a contemporary
urban interpretation of animism and incorporates bones, found objects, and other
scavenged materials. His prints have been exhibited in Japan, South Korea, Mexico,
the U.K., India, Germany, and Pakistan, as well as across the U.S. He has taught
printmaking at Southwest University of the Visual Arts and the University of New
Mexico. He has worked as a collaborative printer and for the leading press manufacturer,
Takach Press. Currently, Aaron lives in New Mexico with his wife, son, and a variety
of small animals. His work can be viewed at: [http://www.crowsfootpress.com](http://www.crowsfootpress.com).

**Krittika Ramanujan** is an artist, born in Chicago, now living in Albuquerque,
New Mexico. She has an MFA in printmaking from the University of New Mexico. She
has three main bodies of artwork on Dante’s _Divine Comedy_, mammal skeletons, and
human rights. She has illustrated (with Aaron Bass) _**[The Mendonca Mystery and Other Stories](http://www.writersworkshopindia.com/books/fiction/greenbird/stories/the-mendon%D2%ABa-mystery-and-other-stories/)**_(
2014) by Michael Chacko Daniels.

_**Teaser**_

_Chairman Mao Didn’t Brush_

There’s much I comfortably ignore:

Chairman Mao didn’t brush, I know, but
 Why he had his pictures show white teeth(
Snow flakes on a dial-a-trick mountain?), I pass over.

Nehru loved Edwina, I know, but
 Why two warships to guard her body (Escorts to 
a skeptic’s Naraka?), I pass over.

Of Einstein’s _gedanken_ I know, but
 Why he tried God, throwing human dice (Brahma,
Vishnu, Shiva, or Yahweh?), I pass over.

Uncle Ho said, Burn me, I know, but
 Why he remains embalmed, on display (Stalin,
Mao, Ho: Marx alive, no?), I pass over.

Don’t worry, child, what one doesn’t know
 Can do no harm. Any other way, I’d have
more than I could parse, before I cross over.

 * San Francisco California

Notes

 1. Naraka: Sanskrit; underworld.
 2. _Gedanken_: German; thought; used here as a shorthand for Einstein’s thought experiments.

_**Contents**_
 65 poems