527 Book Title: I Want a Poem Author: Jerry Pinto CP Surendran As a poet, Jerry Pinto’s words pick their way along the stations of his cross between two selves. Child Jerry and Priest Pinto. The one is a disconsolate witness to the theatre of tragedy that each family — that surreptitious amphitheatre of our formative griefs — potentially is. Father Pinto is cautionary, even officious. When he takes the upper hand, the poet is saved; the poem suffers. When the child is behind the camera, the poems work like unforgiving miracles of hurt and guilt, blue, bleak, and gleaming dully without...