Poetic Style Or Technical Aspects of Kamala Das’ Poetry

Poetic Style Or Technical Aspects of Kamala Das’ Poetry

Her Greatness in Technique of Writing Poems: 

Kamala shows remarkable command and ease over the use of English. She has formed a style which is characterised by a colloquial simplicity and clarity. She has a vast range of vocabulary. She understands the precise meanings of words and she can differentiate between the shades of meanings. A command of the English language is naturally the first requirement of an Indian poet writing through the medium of the English language. Since English is most familiar to her, she naturally and skilfully uses it to express her emotions, her feelings, her reminiscences, her love and sexual experiences, her frustrations and disillusionments. English authentically mirrors her life. 

Her Selection of Words: 

A deft and seasoned poetic artist, Kamala Das selects words effortlessly from a rich stock, but she does not wait for words. She writes in the white heat of emotions and not when the apt words come to her. She says: 

"Write without 

A pause, don't search for pretty words 

Which dilute the truth, but write in haste, of 

Everything perceived, and known and loved.”    (Without A Pause) 

Her Recognising the Value and Importance of Words: 

When an idea occurs to her, words suddenly come to her. It does not mean that she uses words carelessly. She identifies the value and significance of words and uses words which best describe vividly her emotions. Her poetry is an organisation of best words in the best possible manner. A few examples amplify this aspect of her poetry : 

"Puny, these toy-men of dust, fathers of light 

Dust-children, but their hands like the withered boughs 

Of some mythic hoodoo tree cast only 

Cool shadows, and with native grace bestow 

Even on unbelievers vast shelters." (The House-Builders)

'Puny', 'toy-men' and 'dust-children' reveal the insignificance, the littleness of house-builder. But they have a human significance which the affluent section does not recognize, because they are 'fathers of light'. Their physical weakness is revealed by a suggestive image of 'hands like the withered boughs'. 

A Felicity of Diction and Phrase-making: 

Kamala Das' diction is highly commendable because of the appropriateness of the words used and the felicitous manner in which she has arranged those words in her poems. Such expressive words and phrases abound in her poems—'fiery gulmohur', 'sun-stained cheek', 'puddles of desire', skin's lazy hungers', 'an empty cistern', 'coiling snakes of silence', 'flamboyant lust', 'the hungry haste of rivers', 'the ocean's tireless waiting', 'pock-marked face', etc. The words she uses in her poetry give a true picture of Kamala Das' moods and feelings. She deftly employs theme-oriented diction. 

The Use of Several Remarkable Words, Phrases and Lines in “The Freaks”: 

In the present poem, Kamala describes her husband's mouth as a 'dark cavern' inside which her uneven teeth can be seen gleaming. Here she says that the minds of both of them were willed to race towards love, as they lay together in bed, though the minds only wandered tripping idly over puddles of desire. And then she speaks of her skin's lazy hungers having certainly been aroused by her husband's fingers moving upon her body but arousing no deeper desire than that. In all these cases, the diction is not only appropriate by extremely satisfactory and even felicitous. 

Her Capacity to Use the right Words in the Poems Entitled The Sunshine Cat, The Invitation and Looking Glass: 

In the poem entitled The Sunshine Cat, she calls her husband a 'ruthless watcher' and she describes herself as 'burrowing her face' into the hairy chests of her lovers. As she lies weeping, her bed becomes soft on account of the profusion of her tears and it seems to her that she is 'building walls with tears'. In the poem entitled The Invitation, she says, "The sea is garrulous today", and she later speaks of "this whiplash of memories". In the poem entitled Looking Glass, she uses the phrase "the warm shock of menstrual blood" and the "endless female hungers". 

Her providing a Personal Touch and Intense Emotions to Her Style: 

Kamala Das has cultivated an extraordinary poetic style which is conversational, colloquial, fluent and graceful and which fits in the confessional nature of her poetry. She does not compose poems of love or nature. She writes only about herself. So, she imparts a personal touch to words. Mark the simplicity and colloquial ease in the diction in the following extract which expresses her intense emotions: 

"Another's name brings tears, your's 

A calm, and a smile, and yet Gautama, 

That other owns me; while your arms hold 

My woman-form, his hurting arms 

Hold my very soul."    (An Apology to Gautama) 

Her using Repetitive Vocabulary: 

Kamala Das uses one of the stylistic devices, the frequent repetition of words, lines, and even sections of a poem. This device is perfectly acceptable because it serves to reinforce or emphasize an idea or an emotion. For instance: 

"..wide skirts going round and round Cymbals 

Richly clashing, and anklets jingling, jingling. 

Jingling….. ."    (The Dance of Eunuchs) 

"No more night, no more love, or peace only 

The white, white sun burning, burning, burning."  (The Testing of Sirens)

Repetition of words works well in the poem Substitute. The words repeated here are: “It will be all right.” Actually the repetition here is intended to convey just the opposite of what the words themselves conveyed. Her intense yearning for love in An Apology to Gautama is revealed through the repetition of love thrice: "I must/hear you say, I love, I love, 1 love." The repetition of ‘I' in the concluding lines of 'An Introduction' asserts the poetess identity: 

“It is I who drink lonely 

Drinks at twelve, midnight, in hotels of strange towns, 

It is I who laugh, it is I who make love 

And then, feel shame, it is I who lie dying 

With a rattle in my throat. I am sinner, 

I am saint. I am the beloved and the Betrayed." 

Omission of Punctuation marks and the varying Length of Lines: 

Kamala Das' poetry is marred by her omission of punctuation marks and in this way her poetry was difficult to read for an average reader. The commas and inverted are oftenly missed in her poems. There is also found a great variation in the length of the lines of the poems. Some lines are long, some are too short and some lines have only one or two words, hence the sentences are bewildering. Sometimes there is an omission of capital letters at the beginning of the lines. 

The Use of Images and Symbols: 

Kamala Das' images are drawn from the familiar and the common place, and they poetically reveal the poetess' own life. Her unfulfilled love, lusts and sexual bouts, agony and sexual bouts, agony and anguish, sterility and inner vacuity, sadness, disease, sickness and death wish are expressed through the images of human body, sun and heart, burial and cremation, nature, sex, sleep and the myth of Radha and Krishna. 

The images of human body are frequently used in Kamala Das poetry. The beauty and glory of human anatomy attracts her but its raging lustfulness disgusts her and it becomes the image of ugliness and corruption. She abhors the male body, which destroys female chastity and individuality, is expressed through images of horror and ugliness. The lover, who ignores the emotional fulfilment of the beloved and indulges in sexual acts, has a 'pock-marked face', is 'a filthy snob', (The Testing of Sirens); his mouth is 'a dark- cavern, where stalactites of uneven teeth gleam' (The Freaks); his lips are 'like petals drying at the edges, the burnt checks and the dry grass of your hair' (The Seashore), he is "old fat spider weaving webs of bewilderment' (The Stone Image). 

The female anatomy is described through image of sterility and barrenness, of pathos and loneliness. The beloved's heart is "an empty cistern, waiting/through long hours, to fill itself/with coiling snakes of silence". (The Freaks). The woman-body is an image of sexual exploitation, 'of skin's lazy hungers’: 

"He did not beat me 

But my said woman body fell so beaten. 

The weight of my breasts and womb crushed me." 

The female body with all its attractive parts-breasts, pubis, hair etc. is only an object for the gratification of man's lust. In The Looking Glass, Kamala Das uses human body, both male and female, for expressing the fulfilment not of love but of lustfulness. Female body with all its gracefulness and delicacy is meant for surrender before the body : 

"All the fine details that make 

Him male and your only man. Gift him all, 

Gift him what makes you woman, the scent of 

Long hair, the musk of sweat between the breasts, 

The warm shock of menstrual blood, and all your 

Endless female hungers."