MEG-7 Block-7 Poetry UNIT 1 BACKGROUND TO INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY
MEG-7 Block-7 Poetry
UNIT 1 BACKGROUND TO INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY
THE ORIGIN OF INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY
The first Indian English poet, by common consent, is Henry Derozio, who published his collection gf Poems in Calcutta in 1827. But, perhaps, even this was neither as sudden nor dramatic as it may seem today. Indians had begun to learn English in earnest at least twenty-five years prior to that and some had ever; begun to write it. Indian English poetry did not emerge suddenly, without any prior preparation; a community of Indians who knew and used English was necessary before it could be born.
"Before Indians could write poetry in English, two related preconditions had to be met. First, the English language had to be sufficiently Indianized to be able to express the reality of the Indian situation; secondly, Indians had to be sufficiently Anglicized to use the English language to express themselves"
In the beginning, the British tried to encourage traditional scholarship in India. But, by the turn of the century, the tide of public opinion had changed in England. The Conservatives lost power to the Liberals; utilitarian ideas were in the air. Ironically, Conservatives like Edmund Burke had a higher opinion of Indian civilization than Liberals like Macaulay. There was also a rise in Evangelical movements, which aimed at spreading Christianity.
Liberals and evangelists Both attacked Indian civilization and Hinduism, from secular and religious considerations respectively. Schools set up by the missionaries were already teaching English by the beginning of the 19th century.
In 18 13 the British Parliament passed an Act by which a sum of Rs. 1 lac was to be set aside "for the revival and promotion of literature and the encouragement of the learned natives of India. Macaulay shows his poor opinion of Eastern civilization by declaring that "a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia." Macaulay, quite truthfully, admitted that he had himself had no knowledge of Sanskrit or Arabic, but that he had formed this opinion, on the basis of the translations he had read and the learned experts he had consulted. At any rate, Macaulay's assertion reflects not only imperial arrogance and self-assurance on an astonishing scale, but also his faith in the transformative role of English in India. Macaulay was also an extremely practical man, who noted how scholars of Arabic and Sanskrit had to be paid to study these languages, while the demand for English was actually increasing day by day.
Macaulay, despite his imperial agenda, in fact had a good deal of support from Indians themselves. Rammohun Roy. A careful reading of Roy's submission shows that what he wanted was modem, technical education, not necessarily English literary education. Roy, in fact, favoured primary and secondary education in the vernaculars, but also wanted Indians to learn English and progress in modem learning. What Macaulay delivered instead was a more textual and literary type of education, with very little emphasis on practical arts and technical subjects.
In 1857 the three universities of Calcutta, Bombay and Madras, one in each of the three presidencies of the Empire, were established. With that, English education became deeply entrenched in India. As Macaulay had desired, a new class was created who were perfectly at home both in the English language and English culture. Naturally, it was from this class that Indian English writers came.
THE IMPACT OF BRITISH COLONIZATION
Alexander vs chandragupta maurya
Arabs and Islam
Vasco de gama and south india
Indo- portuguese encounter
Indo-European clash for two reasons: a comparison of Portuguese and British imperialisms not only reveals two faces of Europe, but the Indian response to them reveals two faces of India.
In areas such as Goa where Portuguese rule was consolidated, the native culture was altered more radically than where British colonization thrived. The Portuguese conquest of Indian territories was accomplished with much more bloodshed and naked violence than the British. What the Portuguese sought to do was to impose their own religion and culture on the Indians, so as to create a new kind of society in the East. In the ultimate analysis, their impact was limited when compared with the astonishing success of the British Empire that followed it.
Britain won because it was powered . by a different kind of engine and a different kind of energy. Ascendant Europe had learned to capture the hidden powers of nature itself; the Industrial Revolution of the 1780s and the years of preparation which preceded it, gave Britain a technological, military, and therefore cultural, advantage over India which was, perhaps, unprecedented. British imperialism backed as it was by a more modem and secular outlook, started by concentrating on trade. It had a policy of non-interference with the religious and cultural traditions of the people it conquered.
Conquest itself was not the aim to begin with but was almost thrust upon the East India Company in its fight to protect its trade interests. The volatile political situation after the fall of the Mogul empire gave John Company (as the East India Company was popularly known) a unique opportunity to meddle in the affairs of the warring Indian princes. The Company used its leverage as a seemingly neutral outsider to its advantage.
There may have been a variety of other factors, which contributed to India's impoverishment, but colonialism was the chief of these. A simple proof of the horrors of colonialism is the fact that throughout the history of British rule, famines struck the country with predictable regularity, almost once in ten years. The most devastating of these, of course, is the great Bengal famine of 1943 in which more than 3 million people died. Ironically, this famine was not caused by drought or crop failure, but was entirely man-made. It was caused by the British war policies. British imperialism almost destroyed India's belief in itself, its self confidence. It was as if the backbone of this ancient civilization was broken; it began to see itself as a hopeless failure, a miserable wretch.
Abolition of Sati & during British rule that a number of other social evils suddenly became noticeable, entering the realm of public debate for the first time. These included child marriage, female infanticide, and the position of widows in Hindu society. If you take the case of child marriage, you will notice that this was in itself a response to another social and political problem, probably the attitude to women during Islamic rule.
THE IDENTITY OF INDIAN ENGLISH POETRY
Indian English poetry was first called Anglo-Indian poetry. In fact, the earliest collection of Indian English poems is to be found in a remarkable anthology called Selections from the British Poets from the Time of Chaucer to the Present Day with Biographical and Critical Notes edited by David Lester Richardson and published by the Committee of Public Instruction, Calcutta, iq 1840.
All of Indian English poetry can be divided into three broad phases:
protonationalist; nationalist; and post-nationalist.
The first phase, starting with Derozio and going up to the end of the 19th century corresponds to the period in Indian history in ' which nationalism was being consolidated.
Then, in the nationalist phase, from 1900 to 1950, we have poets like Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, and Sarojini Naidu, who are engaging in the battle against colonialism.
Finally, the post-nationalist phase, which begins in the 1950s, with poets like Nissim Ezekiel, goes on not only to question nationalism, but retreats from large, public themes, to individual and private agonies. Postnationalism itself can be divided into two phases,
1950-1980 and
1980 onwards. In the latter phase, inaugurated by Vikram Seth, we find a new, diasporic consciousness dominating Indian English poetry.
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UNIT 2 HENRY DEROZIO AND TORU DUTT
HENRY DEROZIO
Derozio (1 809-1 83 I), our first Indian English poet, is, paradoxically, remembered today as a "Forgotten Anglo-Indian Poet". Hardly twenty himself, he was remarkably influential, bringing several new, largely European ideas, to his upper caste Hindu pupils. Considered too dangerous by his opponents, many of whom were the Managers of the College, he was forced to resign his post. Derozio was an Anglo-Indian, born of an Indo-Portuguese father and English mother. He received an English education at David Drummond's Academy until the age of fourteen. At the age of sixteen, Derozio was already contributing to the - India Gazette. At the age of eighteen, in 1827, his first collection, Poems, was . published. Died at the age of 22.
Derozio published two volumes of verse: Poems (1827) and - The Fakeer of Jungheera: A Metrical Tale and Other Poem (1828). Most of these poems today appear either juvenile or half-finished. It is in his shorter poems that Derozio's forte as a poet lies. Derozio is the first Indian nationalist poet of any 'language
HARP OF INDIA
Read here- https://allpoetry.com/The-Harp-Of-India
the titles were given by the editor, F. D. Bradley-Birt; in the original, the sonnets are untitled. The harp itself and the associated images of the wreath of Fame and the minstrel's grave are derived from the traditions of European poetry. Yet, the subject of the poem is clearly India. The octave describes the sorry condition of the harp, which lies unstrung on a lonely, withered bough, bound in the fatal chain of silence. At the turn from the octave to the sestet, the poet invokes the musicians of the past whose worthier hands once played many sweet melodies on the harp. At the end of the poem, the speaker wonders if those notes can be revived once again; if they can be, he wishes to be the one to do so: But if thy notes divine/ May be by mortal wakened once again,/ Harp of my country, let me strike the strain!" The poet himself calls it "Harp of my country" in the last line. Clearly, the reference is not just to a poetic tradition, but to the enterprise of an entire civilization. The poem, then, ends with the hope of renewal, but more importantly, on the personal note of the poet's sense of his own role in that revival. Derozio is aware of his being a frontrunner in this process.
"To India-My Native Land"
Reading and Explanation - http://www.mkc.ac.in/pdf/study-material/english/2ndSem/derozio-1.pdf
the ideology of nationalism is quite direct and unambiguous.
In both of them, three assumptions about India are clearly evident:
first, that India was a great civilization;
secondly, that she is now fallen; and,
finally, that her greatness may be revived.
Also common to both poems is the role of the poet in this process of renewal.
Both poems, also, share a forward looking, inspirational aspect, which was to be so common to the nationalist literature of the later years.
TORU DUTT
Born in 1856 in a well-known Westernised family in Calcutta, Toru had the advantages of good education and a happy family environment. Govin Chunder Dutt, her father, was a well-to-do Bengali gentleman, given to literary pursuits. In 1862, when Toru was six, the entire family embraced Christianity. This did lead to a temporary estrangement between Toru's parents, the mother finding it difficult to leave her ancestral religion, but later going on to become an ardent Christian herself. In 1869, the Dutts left for Europe, intending never 10 return to India. The family moved to London in 1870. In 1873 the family finally returned to India against their original intention.
In 1875 she published A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields, largely a rendering of French verse into English. Her poems were collected posthumously as Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1 882). Le Journal de Mademoiselle d'Arvers (1979). She also left an unfinished novel in English called Bianca, or the Young Spanish Maiden. Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan
SITA
Read here - https://www.scribd.com/document/484231490/sita-by-toru-dutt-pdf
The three happy children in the darkened room are obviously Abju, Tom, and Am. So, the very first line of the poem clarifies that the poem is not so much about Sita directly ns about three children Iistel?ing to the story of Sita.Rama banished Sita. She finds shdicr at the ashram of the great sage Valmiki. There her two sons, Luv and Kush, are born. Valmiki, who composed the Ramayana. tells the saga of Rama to Luv and Kush, who eventually recite it to Rama himself. The fair lady is Sita, the sorrowful Sita, weeping in her solitude. But does she weep alone? No, for, as the poet tells us, three pairs of eyes weep with her. Whose are these three pairs of weepi:lg eyes? Abju's, Toru's, and An's--of course. At the end of the story, the vision is hushed away. The poem ends with a question: when will those children gather once again at their mother's side':' The question is rhetorical because by the time of its writing, the two siblings of Tom, as is the mother in the poem, ate already dead.
THE LOTUS
Read here - https://commons.marymount.edu/sonnetthelotus/the-lotus/
rhyme scheme of poem is abbaabbacdcdee.
It is a Sonnet - Petrarchan style
The issue here is which flower is lovelier, the lily or the rose? 'The octave sets forth the problem which is then resolved in the sextet. How is the matter resolved? Flora, the goddess of flowers, offers the solution to Psyche, which combines qualities of both the rose and the lily, both passion and purity. The lotus represents the unfolding of higher consciousness, the gnostic state in which the dualities and contradictions of the mind are resolved.
OUR CASUARINA TREE
Read here - https://rpo.library.utoronto.ca/poems/our-casuarina-tree
five stanzas of eleven lines each.
The deathless trees in Borrowdale in the last stanza refer to Wordstvofih's "Micahel."
as the poem develops, we see that it is about much more than just a tree. You will notice that the tree expands in both time and: space, acquiring almost supernatural dimensions, 1: begins to represent a whole cosmos becoming, in a scrse, the tree of life itself. It is seen as sheltering a whale ecosystem. But most important, it comes to symbol some are; special memories to the poet (stanza three). These memories are the ver,. stuff of her being. h is thesc images that the poet wishes to preserve. Memory, which seems fickle.The tree, then, represents the very essence of the poet's self, an anchor to her subjectivity, something which stabilizes her notion of who she is when she is far away. The poet wants the tree to be eternal because she wants her own experiences to be saved from the ravages of time.
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Works -
Songs to Myrtilla (1 895; rpt. 1925) Uwasie: A Poem (c. 1 896) Baji Prabhou (1 9 10) Chitrangada (1 9 lo)* Ahana and Other Poems (1 9 15) Love and Death (1 92 1 ) Six Poems of Sri Aurobindo (1934) Poems (1941) Collected Poems and Plays (1 942) Poems Past and Present (1946) Last Poems (1 952) Savitri (1 954) More Poems ( 1 95 7) Ilion (1957)*
ISSUES IN SRI AUROBINDO'S POETRY
Aurobindo is not an easy poet to comprehend. A lot of work needs to go into trying to come to terms with him. The modernist poets have col:sistenily attacked mis poetry, P. La1 divided readers into those who liked Sri Aurobindo and those who couldn't stand him.
A Tree -
A tree beside the sandy river-beach
Holds up its topmost boughs
Like fingers towards the skies they cannot reach,
Earth-bound, heaven-amorous.
This is the soul of man. Body and brain
Hungry for earth our heavenly flight detain.
Read here -https://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/05/0040_e.htm
six lines long, with two stanzas. The first is a quatrain, with the rhyme scheme abab, followed by a couplet.
It is "Earth-bound, heaven-amorous" that is though it is fixed to the ground, with its roots in the soil, it actually reaches upwards, towards the skies. The coupler drives home the significance of the image: the human soul is just like this tree. Our body and brain are so grounded, so earthy, that they de:ain our heavenly flight. Unlike the tree, the human being is almost being blamed for this urge to remain bound and limited.
LIFE AND DEATH
Life, death,– death, life; the words have led for ages
Our thought and consciousness and firmly seemed
Two opposites; but now long-hidden pages
Are opened, liberating truths undreamed.
Life only is, or death is life disguised,–
Life a short death until by life we are surprised.
Read here- https://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/05/0049_e.htm
a quatrain and a couplet, but the latter is not separated or set off from the former. The rhyme scheme is also similar: ababcc. And similar is the attempt to reconcile two opposites, in this case, life and death.
What is this long hidden-truth that Sri Aurobindo has discovered? !t is this: "Life only is, or death is life disguised,--". I think we should pause a bit at the first part of the statement, "Life only is," because this idea is somewhat easier to understand. In this part of the line, Sri Aurobindo asserts that there is no dcath at all; everything is only life. Then he qualifies himself a little by admitting that if there is death at all, it is merely life disguised, life itself masquerading as death. Perhaps, they have passed from one kind of life to another. That is what the second half of the line implies. Death is. life disguised; that what appears to be death is another kind of life.
BRIDE OF FIRE-
Read here - https://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/05/0065_e.htm
short poem of four quatrains
The rhyme scheme is abab, but it is the rhythm that really powers the poem. The first and third lines are longer, composed of four somewhat irregular feet, with the more ponderous dactyls and anapests alternating with trochees and iambs. The second and fourth lines have only two feet each, one of which is an anapest and the other.
The addressee is a bride whom the poet desires, but he claims that he has slain desire to qualify himself for this bride's embrace. The entire language of the poem, then, suggests the attainment of higher ecstasies for which the lower ones have to be sacrificed.
THE GOLDEN LIGHT
Read here- https://www.aurobindo.ru/workings/sa/05/0098_e.htm
This sonnet is Shakespearean in structure, consisting of three quatrains, followed by a couplet.
the central movement of the poem, it is suggestive of a descent. From the crown of the brain, the seventh chakra of the kundalini, the thousand petalled lotus of the sahasrara, this ' descent 'moves lower and lower through the being, enlightening, purifying, and transforming as it courses through the system.
These four levels also symbolize the four planes of consciousness-the mental, the psychic, the vital, and the physical which are important in Sri Aurobindo's yoga. All of them, even down to the physical, have to be divinized before "earthly life becomes the life Divine."
SAROJINI NAIDU
Sarojini Naidu (1879-1949) was born on 13 February 1879 in Hyderabad. Her parents were Dr. Aghorenath Chattopadhyaya and Varada Sundari Devi. She was the eldest of several children of which eight survived.
At fourteen, she fell in love with Dr. M. Govandarajulu Naidu, who was a widower nine years her senior, besides being from a different caste. Perhaps, fearing for the future of his daughter, her father arranged to send her to England on a scholarship from the Nizam. She was in England from 1895 to 1898, of which she spent over two years at Girton College, Cambridge. That environment, however, did not suit her. She failed to make a niark in her studies or in sports, but instead got to know some of the leading English poets of her time. Edmund Gosse b:came her patron and encouraged her to write. She returned to India in 1898 to many of her beau, Dr. Naidu. The marriage caused a sensation in a Brahrno ceremony, under the provisions of the Special Marriages Act, by P:rndit Veerasalingam Garu. Sarojini was already a celebrity in India. Soon after, she had four children in quick succession, but could not be contented vrith the life of a housewife. She plunged into public life and public service, publishing. her poems alongside her other activities. Before long, she became an important member of the Congress Party.
Already famous as a poet, she now became known as one of the front-ranking national leaders. She was the first Indian woman to become the President of the Congress in 1925 and also served as the President of the All India Women's Committee. She was jailed four times during the struggle for freedom and became the first woman Governor of India's largest state, United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh) after independence.
Sarojini's poetic career began when she was just eleven. Works -Songs by S. Chattopadhyaya, a la "Lady of the Lake", The Golden Threshold in 1905 -The poems in it belong almost wholly to two periods: 1896 and 1904. It made Sarojini a celebrity in both India and England. The Bird of Time-1912, The Broken Wing-1917
INDIAN DANCERS
Read here - https://allpoetry.com/Indian-Dancers
Sarojini wishes to create a certain effect of super-sensuality. The boundaries between various senses get blurred. There is a controlled, but rather deliberate creation of excess, conveyed by words such as "ravished," "rapture," "celestial panting," "passionate books," "flaming with fire'
The writing style of The Old woman can be called entirely different from Indian Dancers which is a heavily decorated and ornamented poem from the stanzas, metre and rhyme selection to the choice of words. All are hazy and take us in a dream-like sequence. Where the beauty and attractiveness of the dancers is shown and commented upon. She has talked about their physical beauty, how their bosoms are full of fire. Their houri-like faces are seen in the night by the audience and they are enchanted by them. Their smiles are compared to magical serpents, the poppies of lips. They are all rich and it is shown by the fact that they are dressed in purple which could only be used by rich people as it was expensive to create that color. While their beauty is described with eternal passion, their hard work and sweat behind the curtains is not mentioned even once. Their toil is kept hidden from the people. Just to make us feel like they are naturally possessing this kind of beauty and aura without any effort.
This poem is almost in a coded version where readers have to put their thoughts and imagination to understand the vision of the poet. The encrypted meaning behind the decorated heavy words talking about the exploitation of these seamless beauties.
LOVE AND DEATH
Read here - https://www.academia.edu/36819339/Love_and_Death_by_Sarojini_Naidu
Its form is Petrarchan, with the rhyme scheme abbaabba r:cdeed. depicts the ideal of love; like Savitri, the poet dreams that her love has freed her beloved from death. But the sestet reveals the hard and cruel reality which forces the poet to accept that her love hasn't been able to mitigate even one throe of pain, let alone bring the beloved back from death. The poem is modern in spirit in that it refutes the ideal represented by Savitri.
Like all good sonnets, Love and Death contains an argument, a debate. The debate is between a certain idea of love, which asserts that love conquers all odds, even triumphing over death. The speaker imagines that her love gives her beloved the matchless dowry of immortality which engirts him from the cruel hands of overmastering Fate. She dreams that her love has ransomed him from Death itself, like Savtri had saved Satyavan. On the 9th line, the poem turns. Dream over, the poet wakes up to the harsh reality: her love has been unable to annul even one throe of predestined pain, to prolong her lover's breath even by one heart-beat. To all appearances, then, this is a sad, pessimistic, even brutally realistic poem.
THE OLD WOMAN
Read here- https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/old-woman-2
The Old Woman evokes karuna or compassion. The refrain, which is the first article of faith for a Muslim, works very effectively, underscoring the woman's stoicism and fortitude born of her faith. Each stanza consists of fourteen lines, with the last four constituting the refrain. How well the Arabic blends into the English. The other eight lines in each stanza ha~~e the rhyme scheme: abaabccdeed.
THE OLD WOMAN written by Sarojini Naidu n from The Bird of Time, The Old Woman evokes karuna or compassion.. The Old Woman evokes karuna or compassion. The refrain, - “La ilaha illa-l-Allah,
La ilaha illa-l-Allah,
Muhammad-ar-Rasul-Allah.”
which is the first article of faith for a Muslim, works very effectively, underscoring the woman's stoicism and fortitude born of her faith.
Each stanza consists of fourteen lines, with the last four constituting the refrain. How well the Arabic blends into the English. The other eight lines in each stanza has the rhyme scheme: abaabccdeed.
Sarojini gives us a possible history of the old woman, how she once was a wife and mother, but is now reduced to begging in the street. The second stanza is the most realistic; there is very little ornamentation or prettification in contrast to the Indian dancers.
The former is very sharply etched, while the latter are hazy and blurred. The image of women in Sarojini's poems, similarly, alternates between enormous clarity about their oppression but also tends to endow them with a beguiling or bewitching glamour and sensual appeal, which blunt her critical gaze at times.
The old woman as the name suggests is about an old and blind woman who was patiently sitting outside sarojini’s gate below a banyan tree in the street. She was a beautiful woman, a wife and a mother to someone a long time back but they have all abandoned her. She is now all alone begging on the street for food and money. But this fallen state has not shaken her faith and belief. She still sings in the praise of the almighty. She is suffering with hunger, pain an poverty but she decides to find solace in Him and ignores the fact that now there is no family to help her even to close her eyes. Her faith has given her enough strength to sing her chantings and wait for God's mercy to be upon her.
This Poem is written in easy and unornamented stanzas and the choice of words used in the poem are simple. Easy to understand by the readers. This poem starts with the description of the old woman without any lengthy introduction, jumps right into the topic. The Arabic words used in the poem as refrain help us in understanding the strong faith and the power of such a faith which allows the old woman to survive each day with no food.
The writing style of The Old woman can be called entirely different from Indian Dancers which is a heavily decorated and ornamented poem from the stanzas, metre and rhyme selection to the choice of words.
In conclusion we can say that even though both the poems are poles apart from each other in measures of writing and the story they both in the end talk about the condition of the women in our country. Their struggles whether they are beautiful, young, single and rich or old, handicapped, once married and poor. The plight of women is inevitable everywhere.
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UNIT 4 NISSIM EZEKIEL AND KAMALA DAS
IGNOU BOOK - http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/22861/1/Unit-4.pdf
Nissirn Ezekiel was born in 1924 in Bombay in a Bene-Israeli family. The BeneIsraelis are a small community of Jewlsh people, most of whom speak the local Indian language, in this case, Marathi. Nissirn studied English literature at Wilson College, Bombay, earning a B.A. and an M.A. He went to London. After his return to India without taking a degree, he served as an editor with several journals.
Work - published seven volumes of poetry: A Time to Change arid Other Poem (1952), Sixty Poems (19531, The Third (1958), The Unfinished Man (1960), - The Exact name (1965), Hymns Darkness (1976), Latter-Day Psalms (1982); his - collected poems were published in 1989. He won the Sahitya Akademi award in 1983 for Laffer-Day Psalms and has also been honoured with the title Padma Shri in 1988. Nissim has often been called the father of modem Indian English poetry.
ENTERPRISE
Reading and Analysis here - https://englishsummary.com/enterprise-nissim-ezekiel/#Stanza_1
This poem of thirty lines in six stanzas of five lines each is from The Unfinished Man. The dominant pattern is an iambic tetrameter, with the rhyme scheme of abaab.
It shows at once Nissim's commitment to certain poetic values--regularity, orderliness of form, clarity of thought, and precision of diction.
Poet is the speaker ; First person narrative. Poet is in a paradoxical mood.
Reference from the The wasteland from What the thunder said.
Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher
This poem of twenty lines in two stanzas is from The Exact Name.
Read here - https://allpoetry.com/Poet,-Lover,-Birdwatcher
The reason for its popularity is that it outlines a sort of poetic credo. The message of the poem is clear: "The best poets wait for words." But this waiting is, by no means, simple. The poet cannot waste his time, but like the careful birdwatcher, has to remain ever alert.
There is a third element that is introduced too, that of lovemaking. Courtship, birdwatching, and poetry and thus related; in each case, the attitude that is recommended is of passive alertness, not of anxiety, huny, aggression, or hyperactivity. The more one is agitated, the less one gains.
Background, Casually
First published in 1965 though collected in Hymns in Darkness, this longish narrative in 75 lines and three parts, is a sort of poetic autobiography. Yet, unlike Wordsworth's Prelude, there is no claim to high seriousness here. As the title itself suggests, Ezekiel wishes to be rather casual about his background. Each part of the poem has five stanzas of five lines each. The lines don't rhyme, but occasionally as in the first stanza, there are some half-rhymes: bornbone, eat-kite. The dominant foot, again, is the iamb.
the poem portrays the poet's uneasy relationship with India, his home.
Read here - https://allpoetry.com/poem/12161324-Background--Casually-by-Nissim-Ezekiel-by-Shashank-Chander
KAMALA DAS
Kamala Pas was born in Punnayurkulam, Kerala in 1934. Her mother, Balamani Amma, is a well-known poet and writer in Malayalam. Kamala spent several years in Calcutta, where she went to Catholic schools.
She was married fairly early, before she finished her college, so she happens to be perhaps the only leading Indian English poet without a degree to her name. She began writing early and published her first poems in The Indian P.E.N.
Works-
Summer in Calcutta (1965), The Descendants (1967), and The Old Playhouse and
Other Poems (1973). The first volume of her Collected Poems published in 1984 won
her the Sahitya Akademi award for 1985. Besides poetry, she also writes short
stories, some of which were collected in The Doll for the Child Prostitute and Other
Stories, and novels. There are two of the latter, Manas (1975) and Alphabet of Lust
(1976). Her controversial autobiography, My Story was published in 1974.
Kamala Das has been typecast as a confessional poet. There is no doubt that her poems are accounts of deeply personal experiences. But more than this confessional element, it is the brutal frankness of her verse that shocked and attracted readers. Kamala writes about sexual frustration and desire, of the suffocation of an arranged, love-less marriage, of numerous affairs, of the futility of lust, of the shame and sorrow of not finding love after repeated attempts, of the loneliness and neurosis that stalks women especially. As such, her poetry speaks not only of her personal distress, but of her outrage against the social norms of a patriarchal society. Kamala was featured in Time magazine for "breaking the sexual barrier."
An Introduction
This loosely structured poem of 59 lines is from Summer in Calcutta. There is no visible rhyme scheme nor is Das using metre consistently. Line breaks are dictated by natural pauses or breaks in meaning. There is a certain disjointedness in this poem which makes it more conversational and immediate. Again, I am reminded of what King said: "In Das's poetry the distance between the poet and poetry is collapsed" (ibid 2 1). This is how. the "confessional" element in the poetry operates at the technical level.
But the poem is a plea for more than artistic freedom or for expression in Indian English. There is a passion in the appeal which comes for a defiance of those who wish to silence the poet.
Read here - https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-introduction-2/
My Grandmother's House
Read here- https://www.poetrynook.com/poem/my-grandmothers-house
the "prelapsarian" stage. It harks back to the childhood of the poet, the security of a grandmother's house, where the self of the poet attains some sort of integrity.
The poem, sixteen lines long, is a sustained description, and thus more tightly knit. The main feature of the house is that the poet is loved there.
The Sunshine Cat
Read here - https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-sunshine-cat/
This is an extremely powerful poem of twenty-two line. from the same collection, - Summer in Calcutta. It is about the decline and disintegration of a woman. The protagonist seems to have suffered from a nervous breakdown. She is abused, locked up UI u room, and is finally reduced to being "a cold and Half-dead woman, now of no use at all to men."
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