Signatures (One Hundred Indian Poets)

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Item Code: IDD731
Author: Edited By K. Satchidanandan
Publisher: National Book Trust, India
Language: English
Edition: 2003
ISBN: 9788123741079
Pages: 496
Cover: Paperback
Other Details 8.5" X 5.5"
Weight 630 gm
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Book Description
About the Book:

Signatures brings together representative sample of work from one hundred modern Indian poets from twenty languages. The poets include Jibanananda Das, Budhadev Bose, Bishnu Dey, Subhash Mukhopadhyay, Shakti Chattopadhyay, Sunil Gangopadhyay, Gopalakrishna Adiga, Chandrasekhara Kambar, Akhtar-Ul-Iman, Ali Sardarjafri, Amrita Pritam, Harbhajan Singh, B.S. Mardhekar, Dilip Chitre, Arun Kolatkar, Ayyappa Paniker, Sri Sri, Ka, Naa. Subramanian, Sitakant Mahapatra, Ramakanta Rath, G.M. Muktibodh, Ajneya,Kedar Nath Singh, Kunwar Narain, Raghuvir Sahay, A.K. Ramanujam, Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, Sitanshu Yashaschandra, G.M. Sheikh, Keki Daruwallah, Navakanta Barua, Nilmoni Phookan, Sachi Raut Ray, Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena, Namdeo Dhasal And Vinda Karandikar among others. An ideal textbook for students of modern Indian poetry, an authentic reference work for scholars of comparative literature and an excellent read for the love of poetry.

 

About the Author

 

K. Satchidanandand who has edited this volume is a well-known modern Malayalam poet, translator and critic with over 30 volumes of original work and over 15 volumes of poetry in translation to his credit. His work has been extensively translated into English, Russian, Spanish and Serbo-Croatian besides all major Indian languages. Summe Rain, a collection of his poems in English translation was published in 1995. He has represented Indian poetry at several international festivals, edited many anthologies including Gestures, an anthology of South Asian Poetry and won several awards for poetry, criticism and translation. At present he is the secretary of Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi.

Preface to the First Edition

Signatures is an anthology of about 400 poems by one hundred modern poets writing in twenty Indian languages including English. Our languages are so rich and diverse in their poetic output that it is admittedly impossible to represent every trend, of theme and form, in a single-volume anthology like this. What one can utmost aspire to do is to reflect this range and variety through a cross-section of genuinely modern Indian poetry produced over the last five or six decades. It has not been possible to include all reputed poets of all Indian languages here though I have made sure that the poets included here have all won critical acclaim as well as readers’ love and admiration in the languages they write in. I have deliberately avoided calling this an ‘Anthology of contemporary Indian poetry’; such a qualification would call for the inclusion of at least about five hundred outstanding established poets writing in Indian languages. This is, perhaps like all such collections, primarily a personal anthology though I would certainly have included more poems by these poets, and more poets but for constraints of space. I would love, given a chance, to make amends by preparing a more elaborate multi-volume anthology or a series of language-wise anthologies later.

Twenty five years of my constant reading of Indian poetry in the languages I know and in translation in those languages, besides my frequent interaction with contemporary poets, through national poets’ meets, translation workshops, personal meetings, correspondence and editorial work, have gone into the making of this anthology though the actual work may have taken much less time. I must have gone through literally thousands of pages of poems and translations and perused periodicals, individual collections and anthologies of every kind to arrive first at a bigger collection of about three thousand pages of Xeroxed material and then at this selection that I went on revising, adding and removing poets and poems until it was time to hand it over to the publisher and until I felt it had achieved some son of a representational balance in terms of trends, if not of poets and languages. The publisher had given me full freedom in selection provided it did not exceed a certain number of pages and featured at least one poet each from all the constitutionally recognized languages of India. Within these limits, I hope I have been able to capture the spirit and the variety of modern Indian poetry right from its first pioneers like Jibanananda Das, G.M. Muktibodh, Sachi Rout Roy, Akhtar-ul-Iman, Harbhajan Singh, Ka. Naa. Subramaniam, AyyappaPaniker, Sri Sri, Gopalakrishna Adiga, Navakanta Barua, Narain Shyam, Ravji Patel and Dma Nath Nadim to its talented younger contemporary practitioners like Joy Goswami, Balachandran Chullikkad, H.S. Shivaprakash, Gagan Gill, Pravasini Mahakud and Nilim Kumar. The first poet anthologized here was born in 1899, almost along with the present century, and the last in 1962, being still in his 30s. The poets here together suggest, if not reflect, the evolution of modern Indian poetic sensibility especially over the last half-century. The themes taken up by the poets range from nature, love and death to caste, class and gender oppression. The passage from Modernism to post-Modernism here is as hard to detect and define as was the earlier passage from Romanticism to Modernism; however, an attempt at conceptualizing the issue has been made in the introduction that follows.

In the case of translations a sincere attempt has been made to choose the best from the available ones. Yet the fact remains that Indian language poetries are yet to find their master-translators, notwithstanding the brilliant attempts made by A.K. Ramanujan, Dilip Chitre, Arvind K. Mehrotra, Jayanta Mahapatra, Baidar Bakht, and more recently by Vinay Dharwadker, Eunice D’ Souza, Ranjit Hoskote and others. Of course one should not forget the inherent difficulties involved in producing faithful echoes of Indian language poems in English which has a different ethos, culture, music, syntax, tradition and world of associations. My experience in inter-language translations has revealed to me the significance of language kinship in relation to semiotic and stylistic transfer. It is easier to retain the nuances of sound, sense and emotion of a Malayalam poem in Tamil or Kannada than in Hindi or Punjabi; yet even a 1-lindi version of it is certain to be a closer approximation to the original than one in English, French or Spanish. Certain poems have also an inbuilt quality of translatability in them; this depends on the dominance of the universal element of theme feeling and image in them over the more regional and even pan Indian elements. Still I hold that poetry is what is lost in translation is but a truism. The poem that loses nothing in translation and loses everything in translation must alike be bad since the former lacks the essential local element that makes it a verbal experience in a specific language and the latter the universal element that binds it to the totality 300 translations in the anthology, I dare to believe retain at least a memory of the original now being recreated in the context of another language and culture. This anthology is primarily meant for the Indian reader curious about his/her poetic neighborhoods and the whole milieu with its logic of semblances and differences. The editor and the publisher have reasons to be pleased if the effort gives the reader at least a foretaste of modern Indian poetry so as to provoke his/her desire to have more and to know more.

I am grateful to the national book trust for having forced me to take a second look at modern Indian poetry reinforcing some of my earlier impressions and compelling me to revise others. I also thank the poets the translators and the publisher of the books and periodicals from which these poems and translations have been for having given us permission to reproduce them here. The editor and the publisher would like to hear form those who could not be contacted for non availability of details or addresses.

 

Preface to the Second Edition

The warm response the first edition of Signatures received from the lovers of poetry all over India has belied the oft repeated contention that books of poetry have few takers in our times. Its copies were sold out within months and this slightly delayed revised edition is a response to continuous demands from the readers who failed to get hold to copies of the first edition. Two poets have been replaced in this edition seven poems have been substituted by recent works by the poets and twenty two new poems have been added from new anthologies released during the interval between the two edition. No doubt a lot of new talents have also come up in the meantime but representing them would require another anthology exclusively devoted to the generation born in the sixties and seventies of the twentieth century. I than the readers whose enthusiasm has made this new edition possible and the national book Trust India that readily responded to poetry’s call.

 

Introduction

The trauma of the modern experience—of finding ourselves in an environment that promises us adventure, power, joy, growth, transformation of ourselves and the world, and at the same time threatens to destroy everything we have, everything we know, everything we are and thus pours us into a maelstrom of perpetual disintegration and renewal, of struggle and contradiction, of ambiguity and anguish— had hit the Indian psyche rather late. Its penetration into poetry was gradual and rather timid. The first symptoms of a ‘High Modernist’ sensibility had appeared in the poetry of Jibanananda Das around 1930 and of Bal Sitaram Mardhekar around 1940; however only around 1960 did it seep into all the major languages of India and attain self- consciousness promoting cool conceptualization in some languages and hot polemical battles with the guardians of orthodox sensibility—in its romantic, neo-classicist or progressive incarnations—in others. The tensions bred by colonial education, the transformation of both Gandhism and Marxism, once ideologies of resistance, into formal establishments in the fifties, the loss of faith in every collective ideology including religion, scepticism about the very idea of progress in the background of a half-hearted industrialization that promoted economic inequality, impoverished rural life and gave rise to urban infernos with their faceless crowds, the growing disenchantment with the new polity and the erosion of values especially in the upper echelons of society, combined with the startling discoveries about the human unconscious, the novel perceptions of space and time and a new awareness of the formal experiments in literature across the continents nourished by the paper-back revolution and the increased import of books together compelled the most sensitive of Indian poets to mould new idioms that would best articulate the continuing complexification of experience. This search for alternative styles of thought, image and expression—a whole new semiotics and even poetics—was neither simultaneous nor uniform in all the languages of India: however by 1960 they had all produced texts that desperately tried to capture the multilayered ness of modern Indian life with its uneasy co-existence of different time-worlds, of the rational and the spiritual, of the real and the surreal, in their startling images, syncopated rhythms, employment of novel patterns of lines and stanzas, unexpected leaps of thought, transgressions of approved norms of poetic decency and propriety, odd combinatorial plays involving folk and classical, indigenous and exotic elements, and remapping of Indian mythology in the fresh contexts of society and language. The polyphonic and often polyglot plurality of the modernist Indian text reflects the poets’ attempt to express the new cultural ferment that far exceeded the formal resources of the prevailing modes. It is often marked by the tensions of organizing into a poetic unity the disparate levels of modern Indian experience. This as true of Gopalakrishna Adiga’s Bhoomigeete or Aappa Paniker’s Kuruksherram, as of Muktibodh’s Andhere Mein and Sitanshu Yashaschandra’s Magan poems.

It is by no means accidental that this anthology begins with Jibanananda Das, for, Modernism in Indian poetry in the initial years at least, was a revolt against what the editors of Vibbava, an anthology of modern Indian writing, call the ‘Tagore Syndrome’ that symbolized the patriarchal canon in all Indian literatures explained thus by them:

In terms of both style and ideology, one can notice a surprising similarity among the father-figures of different Indian literatures. Cultural nationalism, romantic love, nature, mysticism, metaphysical leanings and an ideal of nation-building formed the common ethos of the Tagore Syndrome and the concoction they produced had become a little too sweet and stale. The dominant form in poetry was the lyric and the fiction writer’s creed was realism. When this type of patriarchal authority became too much to bear, the new generation had to free itself from the clutches of what it thought was an overbearing literary culture. It is in this act of defiance, this urge to commit patricide, if need be, that we see the beginning of the new movement. (‘Tagorean Father and the Patricidal Urge’, Introduction to Vibhava, ed. U.R. Anantha Murthy, Ramachandra Sharma, D.R. Nagaraj, Bangalore, 1992, pp. 1-2)

This argument is corroborated in the context of modern Bengali poetry by Ron. K. Banerjee in the preface to his anthology Poetry from Bengal where he defines the modern Bengali poet as one ‘who set out to change the conventions governing Bengali literature and the worldview it embodied’ and interrogated the traditional values from the matrix of ‘a new urban sensibility of a developing techno. logical age with an attendant awareness of alienation, of persistent poverty as an economic fact.., of dehumanization’. Tagore’s poetry, he says, does not engage this new sensibility although he was acutely aware of the contemporary scene. This is also true of Nazrul Islam’s ‘incandescent lyrics’ and Satyendranath Dutta’s ‘brilliant rhythmic’ arabesques. He further observes:

Of course in Tagore’s poetry—with motz et son in intimate unity, with new cadences and rhythms, new tonalities echoing common speech—the millennial tradition finds a triumphant re-birth. Yet, it was a precarious triumph. Modern life demanded new forms, new language, freer rhythms. (Preface to Poetry from Ben• gal, ed. Ron. K. Banerjee, London, 1989, p. xvi)

Dilip Chitre also has made similar observations about what he calls a shattering of the gestalt during the Second World War in Mar-and Pound discovering Chinese poetry, B.S. Mardhekar rediscovered the poetry of Tukaram and Ramdas in the new context.

The agony of Tukaram in search of God and the hard hitting moral didactic of Ramdas were something which could assure a new poignancy in the post-war situation which had led to a crisis in his individual way of feeling. (Introduction to An Anthology of Marathi Poetry, ed. Dilip Chitre, Pune, 1967) Mardhekar returned to this classical tradition in order to interrogate his immediate predecessors just as the British Romantics discovered Milton and Spencer in order to fight the new-classicists. However, while the saint poets did violence to reason through emotion, his ingrained sophistry and classicism were opposed to the Dionysiac agony and ecstasy of Tukaram. Chitre has shown how Mardhekar u-as torn between style and functional language in his attempt to still an anarchy of the mind in a formal harmony. Arun Kolatkar’s Maraihi poems also show the impact of the work of saint poets in their texture, but his automatic, surrealistic method gives new functions to the traditional devices. Bhalchandra Nemade similarly discovers an affinity of sensibility in the literature of the monastic Mahanubhav cult. At the same time, these poets were also influenced by poets from other cultures, from French surrealists to Russian futurists. This kind of a civilizational dialogue—whose terms were often set by modern west-oriented reading and scholarship—could be found in most of the modernists, and is especially visible in the first-generation modernisers. It was not mere transplantation, however, nor did it produce a culture of pastiche’ in poetry, as it perhaps did in fiction, since the art of the poet in India has a much longer tradition and deeper roots in the culture of the land. The outside influences were chiefly transformative in nature, as they were nativised by the individual genius of the writers, the geniuses of the languages they wrote in, and the contingencies of the specific cultural and literary conjunctures obtaining in different language-zones. Little magazines, translations and anthologies played a crucial role in integrating these influences into their native sensibility and idiom.

In one sense, the modernism of the initial phase sprang from the failure of the Progressivists in comprehending the problematic nature of the relation between the writer and his/her audience in modern society. They did try to resolve the conflict between the hegemonic and the subaltern elements in the Indian languages where they made their presence felt; but they often did not recognize the need for devising new aesthetic strategies to create new modes of perception and expression. Even in languages like Bengali, Malayalam, Hindi and Urdu most influenced by the Progressivist ideology the ‘progress’ was chiefly confined to the theme; hence, with a few exceptions like Faiz in Urdu they failed to carry conviction as aesthetic revolutionaries. The modernists refused to accept the conservative sensibility of the Progressivists who were close to the Romantics in style as well as their simplistic understanding of human life and their optimism that seemed facile before the complex contradictions of development, while also fighting the clichés of a sentimental Romanticism. Poetry came to be seen more and more as a revolt against the oppressive sense of futility and the alienation of the individual that haunt the modern marl. Ajneya, a pioneer of early modernism in Hindi declared that not only the life-style, but life itself had changed. ‘Now life is neither urban nor rural; its very structure has been lost.

There is nothing that unites it’. (Trishanku: Ajneya, Bikaneer, 1945, p. 20-21) Poets like Ajneya were not disturbed by the retreat of poetry into an elite exercise; on the other hand they glorified its status as an aesthetic product for minority consumption. Poetry’s real place, they thought, was away from the dockyards and market places. The modernists considered poetry a decanter discourse; the subject that spoke through their poetry was entirely elusive as they put on a variety of masks; angry, clownish, meditative, nihilistic, Bohemian, narcissistic, self-negating. The poems of Ayyappa Paniker in Malayalam perhaps best exemplify this break, down of the ego.

The reception accorded to the poetry of the early modernists is by now part of India’s literary histories. The romantic contemporaries of these poets refused to acknowledge its status as poetry: the Progressives found it too morbid, cynical, anarchic and claustrophobic to serve any useful social function. The tradition-bound readership found its angst and alienation entirely derivative and its verbal strategies obscure, elitist, imitative, unaesthetic and even shocking. However this poetry not only won over a good part of the readership that had initially tried to resist it but created a new readership primarily of educated urban middle classes who could easily identify with its structure of feelings. The academia found in it a new role as the privileged decoder of its semiotic mysteries and the exponents of its new hermeneutics. No one, not even its detractors could deny its daring innovativeness and its dark emotive force: everyone knew, like Eliot’s Magi that there was a new birth, though they were unsure of its messianic significance.

 

Contents

 

Acknowledgements xxi
Acknowledgements for the Second Edition xxiii
Preface to the First Edition xxv
Preface to the Second Edition xxix
Introduction xxxi
Jibanananda Das (1899-1954) 1
Banalata Sen  
Night  
Nakes Solitary Hand  
Grass  
This Earth  
Buddhadev Bose (1908-1974) 7
My Tower  
Frogs  
Death by Accident  
Poet young and old  
Makhdoom Mohiuddin (1908-1969) 11
The Heart of Silence  
Prison  
Darkness  
Darkness  
Bal Sitaram Mardhekar (1909-56) 14
The Track Says  
But flowers still have a smell  
Although the lights  
Time ave a Gentle Tap  
Bishnu Dey (1909-87) 18
Birthday  
Futile Vigil  
So Long Ago  
Sonnet No. 1  
Beyond the Ascent of the starving hill  
Fear no more the darkness  
P.S. Rege (1910-78) 23
The Trees know everything  
Ajanta  
Night Such as this  
Hands  
Badami Vaisakh 1880  
BB. Borkar (1910-84) 26
Ankle Bells  
It is not freedom then  
Sri Sri (1910-83) 29
The Bull in the city  
Poeme Sil Vous Plait  
Three Cheers for man  
Ajneya (S.H. Vatasyayan 1911-97) 34
Houses  
Border Check point  
Kalemegdan  
Hiroshima  
Oedipus at phocis  
Shamsher Bahadur Singh (1911-93) 39
This Helplessness  
A Yellowish evening  
Forlom is the road sad the rivular  
Love  
Come Back o Stream  
Even then why  
Ali Sardar Jafri (1912-2000) 44
Why Can’t I sleep  
My Journey  
Robe of Sparks  
Silence  
A poem  
Negro my brother  
K.A. N.A.A Subramaniam (1912-88) 50
Experience  
Temple Danceuse  
Journey  
Akhtar-ul-Iman (1915-96) 53
The Boy  
The Difference  
Compromise  
Indifference  
Tyranny  
Sachi Rout Roy (1916-2004) 59
An Hour’s Sea  
A Festival of fire  
The Onlooker  
Birthday  
Dina Nath nadim (1916-88) 64
Raincoat  
The Robber  
Mist  
Blade Of grass  
Gajanam Madhav Muktobotdh (1917-69) 68
The Orang Outsang  
Brahmarakshasa  
The Void within  
Vinda Karandikar (1918) 78
Fierce like a Maniac Murder  
A Six Beat Rhythm for the Drum  
The wheel  
The Insane  
M. Gopalakrishna Adiga (1918-92) 82
Ghosts and pasts  
Song of the earth  
Amrita Pritam (1919-2005) 44
I am the Daughter of the land of dravida  
An incident  
The first book  
the first religion  
My address  
Subhas Mukhopadyay (1919-2003) 93
He Didn’t know  
At my Heels  
Sunset  
Proposal  
No matter how far  
Harbhajan Sing (1920-2002) 97
Before Parting  
Stars and I  
Someone peeks  
The Brass Horse  
Wall  
Narain Shyam (1922-89) 103
The Glow Worm’s Gleam  
An ode  
The Escape  
Skirtful of sand  
Kaifi Azmi (1923-2002) 107
The Night of the Apocalypse  
Humiliation  
Imagination  
Don’t visit me now my love  
The cricle  
Sadanand Rege (1923-82) 114
Lunatic Lyrics 1  
Horses  
Three poems for lao-Tze  
Guruprasad Mohanty (1924-2004) 117
A poem for baba  
The Doves of my eyes  
Sonnet  
Munib-Ur-Rahman (1924) 121
The Mirror  
A Santhal Dance  
Telephone  
Tall Buildings  
Nirendranath Chakravarty (1924) 124
Death’s Hand  
Open Fist  
Quicksands  
On the Battlefield Easily  
Calcutta’s Jesus  
Nissim Ezekeil (1924-2004) 129
Latter Day Psalms  
Abdul Rahman Rahi (1925) 133
Confession  
Shadows  
Illusion  
B.C. Ramachandra Sharma (1925-2005) 136
On the death of a friend  
Freedom  
The Poet  
Virendra (1925) 139
The Birth of my son  
The Fair  
Bhanuji Rao (1926-2001) 142
Heaven  
On same days  
Digha  
Fish  
Navakanta Barua (1926-2002) 146
Two Stanzas for a river  
Judas of the Armenian miniature  
God’s Guards  
Palestine  
N.N. Kakkad (1927-87) 149
Everyday I see  
Death of a rogue elephant  
Behold these sheep on the road  
Kunwar Narain (1927) 152
The Key to Success  
Remaining Human  
To Delhi  
Horoscope  
Ibn Batutah  
Off centre  
Mohammad Alvi (1927) 157
Offer  
The Fourth Firmament  
Epitaph  
Looking for the last day  
Sarveshwar Dayal Saxena (1927-83) 160
Hunger  
Dust  
Often Some Sorrow  
Now I will not let the sun set  
waiting  
Balraj Komal (1928) 165
The circus Horse  
Martyr  
The Sight of a city that called  
A Sky Covered with dust  
Jayanta Mahapatra (1928) 168
Life signs  
Red Roses for Gandhi  
Sanskrit  
Grand father  
Living in Orissa  
Raghuvir Sahay (1929-90) 173
Hindi  
Privacy  
Cycle Rickshaw  
History of a bridge  
Tocsin  
Survival  
Ajanta (1929-98) 177
Slumber  
The Curved Line  
Ismail (1928-2005) 181
A Tortoise in the well  
Scents of the evening  
Boulevards of Paris  
Her eyes in sleep  
The Sunfish  
A.K. Ramanujan (1929-93) 184
Obituary  
No Ammesiac king  
Second Sight  
On Note Learning form Animals  
The Guru  
G.R. Santosh (1929-97) 189
Poem 1  
Poem 2  
K. Ayyappa Paniker (1930) 192
Horse play  
Passage to America  
I met walt Whitman yesterday  
Freedom  
Philistines  
Pasuvajya (Sundara Rama Swamy 1931) 198
Love’s Wings  
The Sea Laughed  
Life  
Challenge  
At Kanyakumari  
Attoor Ravivarma (1931) 202
Sitting  
Metamorphosis  
One’s own  
Re call  
Shrikant Varma (1931-86) 207
The Justice of Kashi  
Kosala lacks in ideas  
Process  
A Statement of the press  
Last Testament  
Arun Kolatkar (1932-2005) 212
Pictures from a Marathi Alphabet chart  
Old Newspapers  
A prostitute on a pilgrimage  
Teeth  
Suicide of Rama  
woman  
Hiren Bhattacharya (1932) 217
The Earth my poem  
Longing for sunshine  
The Dream  
Time  
The storm  
A word  
These my words  
Sankha Gosh (1932) 220
Holiday  
Name  
Earth Earthen jar of water  
The Sleep  
Its lost voice  
Munya  
Nilmoni Phookan (1933) 223
Ecstasy  
Suddenly Lost  
Only the Sound of Stillness  
Nirmal Prabha Bordoloi (1933) 226
The One who is to arrive  
Songs of Darkness  
Early Dawn hours  
Two hands  
Shakti Chattopadhyay (1933-95) 229
Death  
To Enter The forest  
the Visitor  
On my Birthday  
I must escape from perspective  
A day follows another  
God Lives in the water  
Kamala Das (1934) 234
The Descendants  
An Introduction  
Life’s Obscure parallel  
My Grandmother’s house  
Kedarnath Singh (1934) 238
Banaras  
Cranes in the Drought  
Things  
Broken Down Truck  
Ramakanta Rath (1934) 244
Murder on the Agenda  
The Portrait  
Sriradha (An Excerpt)  
The Soldier in Exile  
Sunil Gangopadhyaya (1934) 250
Neera’s Illness  
City of Memories 13  
Beside Love  
Captive Are you awake  
In Solitary Midnight  
Kadammanitta Ramakrishnan (1935) 255
Boiled Eggs  
Feline Fancies  
The Lucky Ones  
J.P. Das (1936) 261
The Corpse  
The Ruins  
The Dream  
Dhumil (1936-75) 265
My Story  
The Cobbler  
Shahryar (1936) 271
The Gateway to Dreams is closed  
So much light  
A Black poem  
A few rays worth of sun  
For those who have given up dreaming  
we too could have seen  
Chandrasekhara Kambat (1937) 274
The Fiend of the folktales  
My Grandfather  
Mother Ganga  
Keki N. Daruwallah (1937) 283
Of Mohanjo daro At oxford  
Crossing of rivers  
Bird Eclipse  
Living of Hyphens  
Sitakant Mahapatra (1937) 289
Death of Krishna  
Time Does not fly  
The Other view Yashoda’s Soliloquy  
Vinodkumar Shukla (1937) 295
Those that will never come to my home  
It affirms that there is a child  
The deer is swift  
one should see one’s own home from far off  
While Discussing the political significance of drought  
Dilip Chitre (1938) 298
The Eyes of Bandu waze  
Private poem in a public garden  
Change  
Gnanakoothan (1938) 304
My little world  
The son complaints to his mother  
Untitled  
Tamil  
The Night Jasmine  
Nabaneeta deb Sen (1938) 308
One day like gregor samsa  
The Real Thing  
Nocturnal call  
The lie  
Gain  
Fig Tree  
Ravji Patel (1939-68) 313
Whirlwind  
Crowd  
At last  
A quiet  
During the moving moments of loneliness  
The Saffron suns  
Nida Fazil (1940) 317
The Third man  
Prayers for the dead  
The distant star  
The bridge of words  
Padma Sachdev (1940) 320
Moment of courage  
Life  
Transit Camp  
Pain  
Bondless evening  
Ashok Vajpeyi (1941) 323
The Word  
A song of spring  
The nude in the sky  
Metaphors of love  
Words and leaves  
After the end 2  
Sitanshu Yashachandra (1941) 328
Sea horses  
The sea  
Orpheus  
Under stones  
Soubhagya kumer misra (1941) 331
The Garden Keeper’s song  
The stone  
Mohan Alok (1942) 334
Well why do we  
Again  
A piercing cry  
Surjit Patar (1945) 337
As I was about to touch you  
My Sunshine  
The Return Home  
K. Satchidanandan (1946) 342
Genesis  
Gandhi And poetry  
How to go to the tao temple  
Stammer  
The Drum  
Arvind Krishna Mehrotra (1947) 356
Borges  
The Exquisite corpse  
the photograph  
Engraving of a bison on stone  
Dry Farming  
Let’s face it  
Mangalesh Dabral (1948) 360
Words  
Poem of Dreams  
Poem of paper  
The quit house  
outside  
city  
Agha Shahid Ali (1949-2001) 364
Farewell  
Sone et Lumiere at Shalimar Garden  
Ghazal  
A villanelle  
Namdeo Dhasal (1949) 369
Mandakini Patil  
fever  
Stone Masons my father and me  
Yumlembam Ibomcha Singh (1949) 374
The Next birth  
Metamorphosis of a puppy  
Fish and women  
Pash (1950-88) 379
The Most Dangerous Thing  
No I am not losing my sleep  
Every one doesn’t have  
When revolt rages wild  
Meena Alexander (1951) 381
Deer Park at Saranath  
House of a thousand doors  
Natural Difficulties  
Lost language  
Siddalingaiah (1954) 379
My People  
I must have a word with you  
I saw my beloved  
Joy Goswami (1954) 390
To the remotest star I speak  
the funeral song  
The frozen plant  
H.S. Shivaprakash (1954) 396
Ambapali  
Rikyu  
Savitri Rajeevan (1955) 400
The Slant  
The window  
The Idol  
The Body  
Anuradha Mahapatra (1957) 406
God  
Platform on Stilts  
Bestial  
Cow and Grand mother  
Balachandran Chullikkad (1957) 409
Freedom  
Ghazal  
A labourer’s laughter  
A. Jayaprabha (1957) 419
Silence  
Loneliness  
The Girl  
Pravasini Mahakud (1957) 423
The Voice of Loneliness  
Before anyone comes  
Sukumaran (1957) 427
Inspired by Music  
Summer Notes 5  
Here am I  
Bhujang Meshram (1958) 430
About their speech  
Being  
Winds  
Gangan Gill (1959) 433
Elegy for Kanjika  
Day of the dead  
Three sisters  
The Tunnel  
Nilim Kumar (1962) 436
Guwahati  
we both felt very lonely  
Poem 1  
Snow  
Shilong 16th April 89  
Brief Notes on poets 441

 

Sample Pages


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