topics: |  literature | critic | india | poetry

Literary criticism of Indian English Literature, with a title that was
fashionable a decade ago [I mean, what is modern that isn't postmodern? and
would ramanujan or mehrotra think of themselves as "postmodern"? maybe
Rushdie].  Longest section is on poetry, though it also considers fiction
(novels), short story, drama, autobiography.  The poetry chapter has broad
coverage, though some of it seems to be rather tame.  also, many of the
poets considered don't excite me - e.g. RK Singh.

Das is a reader at ravenshaw college [with Jayanta M?]

Indian English Poetry

	The 'locale' of this poetry is the whole of India, for it is read and
	enjoyed by the English educated Indians all over the country. 54

Considers a long list of poets, devoting about a page or so to each.

Nissim Ezekiel

Ezekiel considers love and the consummation of it as the spring of life.  And
therefore, he emphasizes fulfilment in love leading to marriage.
	Life can be kept alive
	By contact with the unknown and the strange,
	A feeling for the mystery,
	Of man and woman joined, exhaustion
	At the act, desire for it again. {"To a certain Lady")

Ezekiel seems to say, "hail wedded love," for it brings fulfilment to life.
   [AM: But where is NE talking abt wedding here.  He is talking about it
    though in the next one quoted:]

	Between the act of wedded love
	A quieter passion flows,
	Which keeps the nuptial pattern firm
	As passion comes and goes.
	And in the soil of wedded love
	Rears a white rose.  ("Marriage poem")
		 [...cringe at that last line - AM]

		Also later, we have
	Destroying or creating, moving on or standing still,
	Always we must be lovers,
	Man and wife at work upon the hard
	Mass of material which is the world.  ("To a certain lady")- p.8-9

Kamala Das

Kamala Das evokes Krishna:
       Your body is my prison, Krishna,
       I cannot see beyond it.
       Your darkness blinds me.
       Your love words shut out the wide world's din.

In her poetry, apart from love, Kamala Das describes a harsh world where 'men
have limbs like carnivorous plants'

       ... I have had a raw deal
       Illness and loneliness, love that faded like mist,
	       - A requiem for my father
       ... He brought me on each
       Short visit some banana chips
       And harsh words of reproach.  I feared
       My father.  Only in coma
       Did he seem close to me, and I
       Whispered into his years that I
       Loved him although I was bad, a bad
       Daughter, a writer of tales that
       Hurt...
	       - My father's death

A.K. Ramanujan

Looking for the Centre:
	Suddenly, connections severed
	as in lobotomy, unburdened
	of history, I lose
	my bearings, a circum Zilla spun
	at the end of her rope, dizzy
	terrified.
	and happy....

and
	"You are a Hindoo, aren't you
	You must have second sight." - "Second Sight"

Indian myths in his poetry -
No fifth man: The five brahmins and the dead tiger brought to life - (in
Black Hen")

Mythologies 1 and 2
	Everyone in this street
	Will become cold, lie under stones
	or be scattered as ash
	in rivers and oceans.  Coll.Poems 210

and
    Time moves in and out of me
    a stream of sound, a breeze,
    an electric current that seeks
    the ground... CP 220

Jayanta Mahapatra

 from Relationship : "forbidding myth" and history of Orissa:
	Only that the stones were my own
	waiting ang as mother or goddess or witch,
	as my birth feeds on them
	as though the empty bags of sorcerous thought. 19

	Orion crawls like a spider in the sky
	while the swords of forgotten kings
	rust slowly in the museum of our guilt.

Other poets reviewed: Shiva K Kumar on Arjuna; Daruwalla (the third poet after
Mahapatra and Ezekiel to win the Sahitya Akad award); R. Parthasarathi's
"Rough passage" 1976 - his last vol of poetry;
G.S. Sharat Chandra;
A.K. Mehrotra (grown remarkably in the 80s: Statute miles 82, Middle earth
	84, The transfiguring places 98)
	from Middle Earth:
		There's a mountain in my mind,
		I must be true to it
		There's a mountain in
		My mind and I
		Must read it
		Line by
		Line.  ("The world's a painting house.")

Gieve Patel: How do you withstand body 76
Eunice de Souza (quotes from Advice to Women; women in Dutch painting
Vikram Seth: Humble administrator's garden 85, all you who sleep...
Bibhu Padhi: 4 collections between 88 and 99

Shanta Acharya (1952-) : lives abroad and has two collection of poems -
	Not this; not that, and Numbering our day's illusions
		In the unmapped terrain within us we busy
		in terraced catacombs painful memories.
		If only we could let the m grow out like trees.
Meena Alezander
Sunita Jain (1940-)
Sujata Bhatt (1956-)
Rukmini Bhaya Nair (1952-):

	Some to remember, others
	To forget
	   But when the vagrant
	winds of autumn sweep
	Into a woman's mind
	she writes
	    To surrender she wants
	    To be met.  ('Seasons')

[Elsewhere, she has written
		A woman is a thing apart
		She is bracketed off, a
		Comma, semi-colon, at most
		A lower-case letter, lost. ]

Makarand Paranjpe: The serene flame and Playing the dark god - love poems
	He's had an arrest, she said,.  What? Has he been arrested?
	Someone blurted.
	No, no, it's cardiac arrest.  It's all over.  (The homecoming)
C.P. Surendran (1959-)
	I think now
	Each blow to the body is a word
	Deleted from the dictionary.  That's why
	We don't have more words than we deserve.
E.V. Ramakrishnan (1949-) - 2 collections Being elsewhere in myself 80,
	A python in a snake park 94.
Niranjan Mohanty (1953-)
R.K. Singh : Above the earth's green 97, cover to cover 02.
	It hurts to see my country die
	slowly and steadily after
	50 years of self-rule
	    - The face in all seasons

ends with this quote from Jayanta Mahapatara:
	more bad poetry is being published now than ever before in Indian
	history.  And whereas our fiction has made a decisive impact on
	literary writing around the world, nothing very significant has been
	seen in the output of Indian poetry written in English.  JIWE 2000:3