Musings on Indian Writing in English (Volume II: Poetry)

The history of Indian Writing in English is broadly speaking a development from poetry to prose and from romantic idealization to various modernistic forms, passing through the phases of Imitation, Assimilation to authentic artistic utterance and Experimentation. The experimental approach, the quest for originality, stress on individuality and rejection of all that is traditional has borne impressive results. The poets have been lifted from exclusive to an extensive range of creative experience, raised from conservative to a cosmopolitan culture to confront the new shape of things and acquire a new vision of human destiny. In a country with its own ancient, sophisticated and richly inclusive civilization, the continued and extended use of English for creative purpose is an extraordinary fact of national and linguistic life. It is a powerful testimony to the expressive and creative power of the Indian writers in quantity and quality it compares well with the best of poetry in Indian literature as well as English literature. Overcoming the problems of language, identity, audience publishers, the need for roots and hope for the future the Indian English poets have greatly contributed to the development of English literature and Commonwealth literature. The present volume is designed as a critical conspectus of Indian English poetry. It focuses on the major poets their characteristic themes, bilingualism, experimentation exile return and women poets. It includes poets past and present – Deronzio, Toru Dutt, Sri Aurobindo, Tagore, Sarojini Naidu, J. Krishnamurti, Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanuja, Kamala Das, R. Parthasarathy, Arun Kolatkar, Jayant Mahapatra and Vikram Seth – gifted men who have been able to triumph over their limitations and achieve impressive results. The book would be of interest to academic as well as connoisseurs of literature and succeed in winning for these poets the recognition and importance they richly deserve, as voices of the modern facets of that glory which commences from the Vedas, and bids fair to expand with our and humanity’s future.