chaturangik/SQUARES is a book length collaborative poem by Pat Clifford and Aryanil Mukherjee. The book is inspired by Satyajit Ray's seminal film Shatranj Ki Khiladi (The Chess Players). The work deals with the mechanics of chess and politics in both a thematic and formal way. At times the language is opaque and confrontational. In other places there is a resigned melancholy. In the first three sections the text is alternated. In the last section lines are woven together. Often what started as longer poems were chopped or condensed. In the end, each installment was placed into the boxes of a chess grid.

Aryanil Mukherjee's quietly insistent lowercase poems bring us such delights as "a breeze met long since," "the touch of language," and "speakability." His voice is fresh, always firmly both in and out of focus: "but somehow the train still / moves / dragging a chain of oblong sentences." late night correspondence sparkles.
- John Ashbery