The Oxford India Anthology of Twelve Modern Indian Poets

by Mehrotra, Arvind Krishna

• ISBN13: 9780195628678
• ISBN10: 0195628675
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-06-17
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, a well-known poet, translator, and critic-historian, has here put together an unusually sensitive selection of fine verse in English by his best contemporaries. Complete with insightful biographical and critical introductions to each poet, this is the definitive anthology of modern Indian poetry in English. The collection contains over 130 works by twelve poets, including Nissim Ezekiel, Jayanta Mahapatra, A.K. Ramanujan, Keki N. Daeruwalla, and Vikram Seth. Many of the poets chosen either present new facets of recongnized faces, or deliberately differ from those repeatedly represented in standard anthologies. Good poems in English by Indians have appeared sporadically for perhaps a century; consistently good Indian poets writing in English have appeared essentially in the last four decades; and a small group of significant new voices in the past few years has deemed necessary a carefully defined picture of the state of the art. This collection will be attractive to anyone interested in contemporary poetry, and in poetic usages of English in contemporary India.

Table of Contents

Preface
Acknowledgements
Introduction	p. 1
A Poem of Dedication	p. 13
My Cat	p. 14
For Love's Record	p. 14
Case Study	p. 15
Poet, Lover, Birdwatcher	p. 16
Paradise Flycatcher	p. 17
Two Images	p. 18
After Reading a Prediction	p. 18
A Rain of Rites	p. 23
I Hear My Fingers Sadly Touching an Ivory Key	p. 23
Hunger	p. 24
Hands	p. 24
The Moon Moments	p. 25
A Kind of Happiness	p. 26
The Door	p. 27
The Abandoned British Cemetery at Balasore	p. 27
The Captive Air of Chandipur-on-Sea	p. 29
Of that Love	p. 29
The Vase	p. 30
Days	p. 31
Waiting	p. 32
The Striders	p. 38
Breaded Fish	p. 38
Looking for a Cousin on a Swing	p. 39
Self-Portrait	p. 40
Anxiety	p. 40
Case History	p. 40
Love Poem for a Wife. 2	p. 41
The Hindoo: the Only Risk	p. 44
Snakes and Ladders	p. 44
On the Death of a Poem	p. 45
Highway Stripper	p. 45
Moulting	p. 49
Chicago Zen	p. 49
Woman	p. 56
Suicide of Rama	p. 56
Irani Restaurant Bombay	p. 57
Crabs	p. 58
Biograph	p. 60
The Bus	p. 62
Heart of Ruin	p. 63
Chaitanya	p. 64
A Low Temple	p. 64
The Pattern	p. 65
The Horseshoe Shrine	p. 65
Manohar	p. 66
Chaitanya	p. 66
The Butterfly	p. 66
A Scratch	p. 67
Ajamil and the Tigers	p. 68
Chaitanya	p. 70
Between Jejuri and the Railway Station	p. 71
The Railway Station	p. 72
Hawk	p. 80
The King Speaks to the Scribe	p. 82
The Unrest of Desire	p. 84
Wolf	p. 85
Fish are Speared by Night	p. 86
Chinar	p. 87
Night Fishing	p. 87
Autobiography	p. 92
Words to a Boy	p. 93
Two from Israel	p. 93
Prophet	p. 96
Key	p. 96
Library	p. 97
Sinbad	p. 98
The word works. The world doesn't	p. 98
What is this adrift from Chile	p. 99
On my stele, mark colours	p. 100
She in her youth arose	p. 100
Time and the river, aflame	p. 101
Floes creak out of the north	p. 101
Future Plans	p. 102
The Light of Birds Breaks the Lunatic's Sleep	p. 106
I came in the middle of my life to a	p. 106
The door I was afraid to open	p. 107
All I hear is the fraying of the wind	p. 108
I woke up and looked at my empty white bed	p. 108
Where can I hide now in this	p. 109
O quick knives curving into the core	p. 109
In Limbo	p. 110
Pushing a Cart	p. 110
Of Garlic and Such	p. 111
The Felling of the Banyan Tree	p. 111
Father Returning Home	p. 112
Panhala	p. 113
Feeding the Poor at Christmas	p. 116
Sweet Sixteen	p. 116
Miss Louise	p. 117
Forgive Me, Mother	p. 118
For My Father, Dead Young	p. 118
de Souza Prabhu	p. 119
Women in Dutch Painting	p. 119
She and I	p. 120
Eunice	p. 120
Advice to Women	p. 121
For Rita's Daughter, Just Born	p. 121
Meeting Poets	p. 122
Land's End	p. 128
Evening on a Mountain	p. 129
Halt X	p. 129
Bats	p. 130
A-----'s a giggle now	p. 131
Black vamps break out of hell	p. 132
In a brief clearing	p. 132
He travels the way of devotion	p. 133
Less time for kicks	p. 133
No Satan	p. 134
His hands were slavish	p. 134
Few either/ors	p. 135
Nine Poems on Arrival	p. 136
Freedom Song	p. 137
Connection	p. 138
Postcard from Kashmir	p. 141
Snowmen	p. 141
Cracked Portraits	p. 142
The Dacca Gauzes	p. 144
The Season of the Plains	p. 145
The Previous Occupant	p. 147
Guest	p. 151
The Humble Administrator's Garden	p. 151
Evening Wheat	p. 152
The Accountant's House	p. 152
From an 'East is Red' Steamer	p. 153
Ceasing Upon the Midnight	p. 153
Unclaimed	p. 155
From The Golden Gate	p. 156
Soon	p. 160
Fireflies	p. 163
Foreshadows	p. 163
Gifts	p. 164
Wounds	p. 164
Domestic Creatures	p. 166
Bats	p. 167
Departures	p. 168
Moving Out	p. 169
Select Bibliography	p. 171
Index of Titles	p. 175
Index of First Lines	p. 179
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