In making the choice of addressing 'a reflective audience, ' Annaiah has perhaps achieved the challenging goal of making his readers reflective. Reflection to me means sitting back to contemplate; to look inward while not losing sight of what is outside; it also means gazing directly at your own reflection--and not just in a mirror but more so in the retina of the inward looking eye.

The poet tells us in the Introduction that Reality, unlike Fantasy is unpredictable. We do not know what Life will throw at us. He prefers to interrogate Reality. He summons focus and clarity into every word, every phrase by confronting them with an unflinching gaze. He makes it look easy, but it is not easy. Many poems pose a teaser that questions my own congealed opinions. The poems will perhaps prompt every reader to work on self-indulgent thoughts and opinions and pare them down to their essence. In some of his poems I felt that rare thrill of discovering something lost . . . as in the very moving poem on being ninety-nine . . .

. . . There are poems that evoke sadness, others joy and hope, or tickling good humor. Teen Daymare is goofy and classy at the same time.

There is a clear line of difference between the short and long poems in the collection. The short poems are the distilled essence of thoughts and they work. The longer poems showcase Annaiah's ability to hold the narrative to the end. The best of them sparkle.

My way of reading this collection would be to read not more than three or four poems in a day and let reflection take up the remaining hours. That will be money and time well spent.

Kavery Nambisan, Surgeon and Novelist (excerpt of review on Amazon.com, India)