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| A Survey of the Indian Poetry in English Till 1980 |
Derozio, Ghose and Dutt sisters:
Indian-English poetry made its beginning under adverse circumstances and passed through a chequered career. It initially thrived in the hands of such poets as Henry Derozio (half-Indian and half-Portuguese). Kasiparsad Ghose, the distinguished members of the Dutt family, Toru Dutt and her elder sister Aru Dutt. Derozio, who is rightly called 'the National Bard of Modem India gave us The Fakir of Jungheera and Other Poems (1823), which describes the fluctuating fate of the Brahmin widow named Naleeni and is full of Byronic echoes. After Derozio, Kasiparsad Ghose kept the torch of Indo-Anglian poetry burning by publishing The Shair, or Minstrel of about 200 pages in 1830.
Dutt family:
In the second quarter of the 19th century, the talented members of the Dutt family—Gogoro Chum Dutt. Raj Narain Dutt, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, and Shoshee Chunder Dutt—composed verses of varying length and quality. Madhusudan Dutt (born in 1824) produced a long metrical romance in English, The Captive Ladie (1849), recounting the love-adventures of Prithvi Raj Chauhan and Sanyogita. He is remembered today more for his Bengali epic entitled Meghnad-Badh Kavya than for his English romance, Hur Chunder Dutt wrote two volumes of verse—Fugitive Pieces and Lotus Leaves but he is not rated high.
Aru Dutt and Toru Dutt:
Of the two daughters of poet-father, Govil Dutt the elder one—Aru Dutt— has given us just eight poems in all collected in Toru's A Sheaf Gleaned in French Fields (1876). Toru Dutt (1856-1877), has written only one volume of original poetry culled in Ancient Ballads and Legends of Hindustan (1882), but this work alone is enough to give us a peep into the classical Indian tradition full of religious fervor and philosophical speculations. This work also demonstrates her deep love for the Motherland, its folklores and legends, its ancient tales of high moral and spiritual character. Her ‘Savitri' is simply superb both as a legend and as a piece of artistic creation.
Romesh Chunder Dutt and Ram Sharma:
Romesh Chunder Dutt produced his remarkable verse-renderings of the two great Indian epics. The Ramayana and the Mahabharata which are truly a triumph of condensation and in Prof. Iyengar's words, "the best introductions in English to our great national epics." Nobo Kissen Ghose popularly known as Ram Sharma reveals himself as an authentic poet in such sustained pieces as Willow Drops (1873-74), The Last Day (1886), and Shiva Ratri, Bhagaboti Gita, and Miscellaneous Poems (1903). His dream fantasy, The Last Day is a remarkable achievement. But the truth remains that he is a poet of the middle order.
Rabindranath Tagore and Manmohan Ghose:
Rabindranath Tagore, primarily a Bengali writer who translated his own works into English. Apart from the English versions, he made of his poems and plays, he wrote in English The Child. His Gitanjali (1913), a prose poem, compelled world-wide attention, and he was now recognised as a poet not of Bengali only, but of India's and the world's. Manmohan Ghose's Love Songs and Elegies was released in 1898, and his Songs of Love and Death in 1926 (two years after his death). The latter is a work of enduring quality. Manmohan has been rightly called by George Sampson 'the most remarkable of Indian poets who wrote in English.’
Sri Aurobindo:
Manmohan's younger brother Sri Aurobindo is fairly known today as a poet and as a critic of life and letters. The two sumptuous volumes of his Collected Poems and Plays give us the best of what he wrote before 1942. He has a record of poetic achievement without a parallel in our day. Urvasie and Love and Death are his beautifully articulated narrative poems, while Baji Prabhou is a first-rate poem of action. Persues the Deliverer is a blank verse drama. His Savitri has created a new land of epic poetry. Sublimity is the hallmark of Sri Aurobindo's work, and he has been aptly called the Milton of India.
Sarojini Naidu:
Like Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu too started as a poet, but later drifted to politics. Her poems are replete with "jeweled phrases." The introduction of Indian themes provided a new vitality to her poetry. The publication of the first collection of her poems The Golden Threshold (1905), made her famous in the whole of the English-speaking world. The succeeding volumes, The Bird of Time (1912) and The Broken Wing (1917) considerably consolidated her position as a poet. Sarojini's marvellous mastery over verse form enabled her to compose such flawless lyrics as "To a Buddha Seated on Lotus" and "The Flute-Player of Brindavan." In all the four volumes by Sarojini Naidu we witness her unerring sense of beauty and melody. She is an artist of the first rank and on the strength of her perfect rhythm and verbal felicity she has come to occupy a place near Toru Dutt, R.N. Tagore and Sri Aurobindo in the realm of Indo-Anglian poetry.
Harindranath Chattopadhyaya:
Sarojini's younger brother, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya (1898-1990) is as well known to the poetic world as his sister. He has written some brilliant pieces of poetry. Many of his poems are marked both by a devotional note and a Vedantic awareness of God's omnipresence. Despite his belief in the Marxist ideology, Harindra has remained “an idealist and a seeker of spiritual truth" in his poetry.
Indo-English poets of today:
Of all Indo-English poets of today, Nissim Ezekiel and P. Lal enjoy immense historical significance. Both produced a fine body of poetry on varying themes and moods. P. Lal has promoted a number of emerging talents by publishing their works free of charge. Ezekiel's disciplined art has been a source of inspiration to many young practitioners of English verse in India.
Nissim Ezekiel:
Nissim Ezekiel (born 1924) has seven volumes of verse to his credit, which are: A Time to Change (1952), Sixty Poems (1953), The Third (1959), The Unfinished Man(1960), The Exact Name (1965), Hymns in Darkness (1976), and Latter-Day Psalms (82). As a poet, he is aware of his cultural milieu and native (that is, Indian) problems. His sharp sensibility enables him to grapple with the situations around him. He gives careful thought to his ideas, medium of expression and form of words and phrases. In him the reflective and philosophical strains are predominant.
P. Lal:
P.Lal's poetry (born 1929) sensibility remains largely romantic, though he is strongly opposed to romantic excesses. He produced only in the sixties, — The Parrot’s Death (1960), Love’s the first and Other Poems (1963), ‘Change', They Said (1966), Draupadi and Jayadratha (1967), and Calcutta: A Long Poem. Thereafter, he turned to verse translations and did the laudable job of rendering the Mahabharata in ten years. As a poet, Lal shuns propaganda and sticks precisely to the concise phrase and concrete imagery.
Dom Moraes:
Dom Moraes (born 1938) possesses extraordinary power of perception and expression. He has emerged as the most successful of the 'new' poets with a number of his volumes—A Beginning (1957), Poems (1960), John Nobody (1965), and Selected Poems: 1955-65. His sensibility is essentially romantic and he is a subjective and confessional poet.
A. K. Ramanujan:
A. K. Ramanujan (1929-1993) has earned recognition of his merits and talent with the publication of—the four volumes being The Striders (1966), Relations (1971); Second Sight (1986), and The Black Hen (1995). The family serves as a "central metaphor" to him. His favourite themes are: Indian men, women and their manners, family and relatives, love and life and death, and cultural conflicts. As a poet of love, he is warm and intimate, and his images are conveyed through memorable phrases and sensuous images.
Deb Kumar Das:
Deb Kumar Das worked under the impact of T. S. Eliot but emerged as a poet deserving consideration. His well-known poetical works are: The Night Before Us (1960), Through a Glass Darkly (1965), The Winterbird Wakes, The Eyes of Autumn, The Labyrinths and The Fire Canto.
Pritish Nandy:
Pritish Nandy is an irrepressible voice with verve and vigour that has emerged during the sixties and the seventies. Amongst his published works are: Of Gods and Olives (1967), On Either Side of Arrogance (1968), I Hand Your in Turn My Nebbuk Wreath (1968), From The Outer Bank of the Brahmaputra (1970), Madness is the Second Stroke (1971), The Poetry of Pritish Nandy (1973), Dhritarasthra Downtown: Zero (1974), Riding the Midnight River (1975), Lonesome Street (175), In Secret Anarchy (1976). A Stranger Called I (1976), Tonight This Savage Rite.
Shiv K. Kumar:
Shiv K. Kumar distinguished academic poet, has published to date six volumes of verse—Articulate Silences (1970), Cobwebs in the Sun (1974), Subterfuges (1976), Woodpeckers (1980) etc. He is ore known as a poet of love and sex. Irony is his forte, which sometimes becomes devastating and consuming. Daruwalla, like Arun Kolatkar, is made up of a different fibre altogether, and breathes in the air of freshness and originality by taking resort to the open countryside landscapes and natural surroundings. His poetical collections are: Under Orion (1970), Apparition in April (1971), Crossing of River (1976), and Winter Poems (1980), and The Keeper of the Dead (1983).
R. Parthasarathy:
R. Parthasarathy appears to be very fastidious and disciplined in his art. His diction tends to be chaste and tense, and his style austere and exacting. His Rough Passage (1977) came out after a long silence. Strangely enough, this poet decided to withdraw his The First Step: Poems 1956-66(1967) after making an appearance in the poetic world.
Keshav Malik and Rakshat Puri:
Keshav Malik and Rakshat Puri are poets of some stature and repute. Malik is definitely the better one, with four volumes of verse to his credit—The Lake Surface (1959), Rippled Shadows (1960), More Poems and Storm Warning (1979). His poems reveal a fine artistic taste and a sure touch. They move in the world of love and romance rather than in the world of harsh reality. At a later stage he is seen probing into the mysteries of life and death. To his verses Malik often lends an "organic" touch. His poems in The Lake Surface are cast in glowing images and symbols, whereas those in More Poems are mostly short and lyrical. David Daiches described his poetry as representing 'a notable achievement in English. R. Puri has by now released at least three volumes of verse— Poems (1969), The Year Like a Fuse and Other Poems (1971), and Nineteen Poems (1972), betrays the impact of Eliot and Pound on his works. He seems to be crying out against the dehumanized and devitalized nature of modern man in a tone of dejection and disillusionment.
Amanuddin:
As a poet, Amanuddin has displayed a wonderful talent engaged in creativity in the fields of both poetry and drama. Amongst his published poetical works are The Forbidden Fruit (1967), Tiffin State Hospital (1970), Shoes of Tradition (1970), The Children of Hiroshima (1970), Poems of Protest (1972), Lightning and Love (1973), The Age of Female Eunuchs (1974), Adventures of Atman (1977), Gems and Germs (1978), and Challenger Poems (1988), The two plays written by him are: System Shaker (1972) and The King Who Sold His Wife (1978).
Bearers of Aurobindonian torch:
Krishna Srinivasm K. V. S. Murit, K.R. S. lyengar, and Deb Kumar Das and even V. K. Gokak and R. R. Menon are carrying forward the Aurobindonian torch. The works of these poets are quite varied in nature and merit but establish the truth of fecundity of imagination and diversity of perception.
The upsurge of a number of perceptive and talented women poets in field of Indian poetry in English shows that women poets are not lagging behind. In fact, women writers were almost always present on the literary scene of India right from the Vedic and Upnishadic days. In the 19th century, we had Aru Dutt and Toni Dutt who composed their rhythmical and rhymed verses in English. In the early 20th century there was Sarojini Naidu (the Nightingale of India) who sang her mellifluous songs of high lyricism and emotionalism.
Poets of the post-Independent era:
The post-Independence scenario presents Kamala Das standing out for her sweep of lines and great urgency of poetic purpose. She is quite witty and frankly confessional, recalling Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and Judith Wright. Besides her, Gauri Deshpande, Monika Varna, Lila Ray, Margaret Chatterjee, etc. have made substantial contributions to the growth and diversification of Indian-English poetry. Others who have shown a certain amount of promise and talent are: Gauri Pant, Suniti Namjoshi, Lalita Venkateswam, Ann Sujatha Modayil, Lakshmi Kannan, Vimala Rao, Malathi Rao, Meena Alexander, and Eunice de Souza. They still have succeeded in voicing in their own tender way the hopes, fears and aspirations of the feminine world. We come across a peculiarly delicate feminine sensibility in the works of these women poets.
