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Welcome to Indian Poetry — March 2008
8 februari 2008
Finally, there’s the poets themselves — a varied group in multiple ways: There’s leading Urdu poet Gulzar, better known to many in his high profile avatar as Hindi film lyricist and filmmaker. For this edition, he offers four love poems (two published here for the very first time) that are tender, whimsical and intimate, yet uncluttered by gratuitous decoration.
In contrast to these gentle, romantic poems is the work of CP Surendran, an important poet in English. Taut and bruising, his poems evoke varying states of emotional weather – from grief and brutal irony to exultation and hostility.
The Bengali poems of veteran litterateur, Nirendranath Chakravarti, bring in yet another distinct sensibility: passionate and skilful, imagistic and ingenious. Words in one poem are described with a lyricism usually adopted in praise of a beloved; and the conventional romantic platitude of the red rose rejected in favour of the more mysterious image of moss, heaving restlessly beneath the water’s surface like “estranged love”.
The Hindi poems of well-known writer Gagan Gill probe the textures of elegy, from anguish to echoing desolation, yearning to lingering sadness. The careful use of repetition makes love less a theme in these poems than an atmosphere, a season.
And finally, there is Ruth Vanita, distinguished academic and poet, who offers four previously unpublished poems to this edition. While the emotional content is as high voltage as in any love poem, it is harnessed by a dexterous and disciplined technique. She also adds another variation to the dominant note of heterosexual love in this edition: the beloved addressed in these poems is definitely female.
Craft is what makes these poems special. In one poem by Chakravarti, the commitment to words seems almost to rival the affection for the beloved, even though the poet promises his precious Hemlata that “if I find those rhyming words,/ I’ll give them only to you.”
And yet, what also makes these poems special – and makes them stand testimony to the essentially seditious nature of the human heart – is the fact that craft cannot nudge feeling out. “Unseasonal are the monsoons here,” says Gulzar of the landscape of his love poetry. “Her body will turn blue/ from its own bite,” says Gagan Gill when faced with the possibility of not thinking of the beloved for just a day. And CP Surendran admits that there are times when that uncomfortable emotion is nothing short of a “moment of grace”.
For there are times when the poets, for all their dogged attempts to reinvent love, can only resort to saying the simplest things simply. And so in ‘Speech’, Ruth Vanita concludes by repeating a single, overused, eroded, yet utterly irreplaceable word: “– yes –/ Yours – yes, and again, again yes.”
The sixteenth edition of the India domain brings its share of surprises.
For one, there’s the theme: Love. Yes, of course, it’s the oldest literary theme under the sun — baked, burnt and ridden with all the hazards of prolonged solar exposure. But our five poets grapple with the vast heritage of clichés in their respective literary traditions in innovative ways.
For another, we have a fair amount of new work in this edition. Two poets have contributed previously unpublished work, and two of our translators, Salim Arif and Sampurna Chattarji, have specially undertaken to translate poems for this issue.For one, there’s the theme: Love. Yes, of course, it’s the oldest literary theme under the sun — baked, burnt and ridden with all the hazards of prolonged solar exposure. But our five poets grapple with the vast heritage of clichés in their respective literary traditions in innovative ways.
Finally, there’s the poets themselves — a varied group in multiple ways: There’s leading Urdu poet Gulzar, better known to many in his high profile avatar as Hindi film lyricist and filmmaker. For this edition, he offers four love poems (two published here for the very first time) that are tender, whimsical and intimate, yet uncluttered by gratuitous decoration.
In contrast to these gentle, romantic poems is the work of CP Surendran, an important poet in English. Taut and bruising, his poems evoke varying states of emotional weather – from grief and brutal irony to exultation and hostility.
The Bengali poems of veteran litterateur, Nirendranath Chakravarti, bring in yet another distinct sensibility: passionate and skilful, imagistic and ingenious. Words in one poem are described with a lyricism usually adopted in praise of a beloved; and the conventional romantic platitude of the red rose rejected in favour of the more mysterious image of moss, heaving restlessly beneath the water’s surface like “estranged love”.
The Hindi poems of well-known writer Gagan Gill probe the textures of elegy, from anguish to echoing desolation, yearning to lingering sadness. The careful use of repetition makes love less a theme in these poems than an atmosphere, a season.
And finally, there is Ruth Vanita, distinguished academic and poet, who offers four previously unpublished poems to this edition. While the emotional content is as high voltage as in any love poem, it is harnessed by a dexterous and disciplined technique. She also adds another variation to the dominant note of heterosexual love in this edition: the beloved addressed in these poems is definitely female.
Craft is what makes these poems special. In one poem by Chakravarti, the commitment to words seems almost to rival the affection for the beloved, even though the poet promises his precious Hemlata that “if I find those rhyming words,/ I’ll give them only to you.”
And yet, what also makes these poems special – and makes them stand testimony to the essentially seditious nature of the human heart – is the fact that craft cannot nudge feeling out. “Unseasonal are the monsoons here,” says Gulzar of the landscape of his love poetry. “Her body will turn blue/ from its own bite,” says Gagan Gill when faced with the possibility of not thinking of the beloved for just a day. And CP Surendran admits that there are times when that uncomfortable emotion is nothing short of a “moment of grace”.
For there are times when the poets, for all their dogged attempts to reinvent love, can only resort to saying the simplest things simply. And so in ‘Speech’, Ruth Vanita concludes by repeating a single, overused, eroded, yet utterly irreplaceable word: “– yes –/ Yours – yes, and again, again yes.”
© Arundhathi Subramaniam
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