HOPE IN THE POETRY OF STEPHEN GILL by Shaleen Kumar Singh

“Hope” is the thing with feathers-
That perches in the soul-
And sings the tune without the words-
And never stops-at all-“ (Dickinson 254)

Undoubtedly, Hope is the thing which perches in the soul of poets and usually seen in their outpourings empowering both the poets and the readers. In fact, ‘Hope’ has been the last weapon of a poet who loses all courage and zeal in his combat with toils, trails, troubles and tribulations of everyday life. It is the spring of poets’ inspiration that ever infuses vigour and zeal into their veins. Poets of all ages who motivate the entire mankind are always surcharged with the energy of hope and their poetic outpourings remain clad in the garb of new vigour, zeal and enthusiasm even in the darkest hour of dejection, disappointment and despondency. To Emily Dickinson, ‘Hope’ is something ‘that perches in soul/ and sings the tune without words’ but to Stephen Gill it is a constant companion in the seasons of pains and pleasures and it symbolically ‘sings lullabies/ in the morning’ and welcomes him ‘with a flower of dreams.’ ‘The Maid of Hope’ remains with the poet day in and day out, so he writes:
When I collect
The beads of my thoughts
She scatters them
And when I am upset
She shows skies
Through the window
Of the future. (Shrine 147)
It is nothing but the silver lining of hope in the abysmal darkness of uncertainty which drives the poet back on the shore of liveliness and infuses new zeal into him as well as ‘emerges /as sun in the void of solitude to dispel ‘the birds of depression.’ Stephen Gill’s poetry, though a protest against the global terrorists, fanatics and the enemies of peace; reaches sometimes the Nadir of melancholy and gloom, yet it never deviates from its path of delivering a universal message of peace and brotherhood because the poet remains hopeful unto the last. He is well- aware of the thing called hope from the very inception of his life when he ‘was growing up in Delhi’ in the atmosphere of riots and clashes. Remembering those days, he says:
I have experienced their stings. I know what fear is in the jungle of helplessness. I know what hope is when there is no hope. (Flame 26)
Or, at another place when he seems searching hope and finding it in poetry, he says:
To find hope I traced, riches, education, faiths and many other things. I tried to see the face of hope in political ideologies, including Marxism, Nazism and Dictatorship….To take the root of fear out, I took a long and painful journey of efforts. … Writing particularly poetry is one way to do that. Poetry is my refuge and my helper to help others to be aware of the enemies of peace.” (Flame 27)
Here, if we read between the lines, we will find that the poet traced hope in riches, education and faith but later on found it in the refuge of poetry or say, poetry became the treasure-trove of hope for Stephen Gill at last. And if we look at his poetry objectively, we will find hope has been cocoon that has woven the entire canvas of his poetry. Dr. George Hines admits the presence of hope in many of his poems, so he says:
Many poems express frustrations, sorrow, regret and despondency because of the present state of man and the world, but other poems express hope in better future.” (SGHW 90)
His comment is also worth quoting when he says:
Although the poet shows keen awareness of man’s personal and global problems in his poems of hope, he feels that they will be resolved, that life is always improving and will be better in the future, and that a fresh dawn with an unclouded sky is approaching. (SGHW 91)
The fascinating and mature talent of Stephen Gill which is marked with optimism, hope, vigour, zeal, enthusiasm, faith, reliance and assurance require comprehensive appraisal so that the future poets and critics may know what poetry is and what poetry should be. The vision of Gill is imbued with the hope for peace, hope for love, hope for harmony and hope for a new and better world where naked dance of maniac messiahs does not torment the humanity, ‘where waves snuggles sand/ and soul is free, where the horns of life/ are not entangled in the bushes/ of the zealots…/ where the cactus of shame/ does not mushroom/ and the evils birds of the bloodshed/ do not defile the nest..’ ‘the dove flies without fear/ and the lilies of justice blossom for all’, where the streams of youth/ do not cease flowing/ and despair does not nail tents/over the greenery of the dreams’, ‘where love is not suffocated/ and twigs are not damaged/ by the trotting swarm of savages…’ and ‘where creeds are not crushed/ and human Gods do feed/ the vultures of war…’ (Flame 146)
His collection The Flame is nothing but a realization- conscious or unconscious that ‘hope is still alive under the sun’ and the last canto of the book gives plenty of examples of hope after the symbolic story of Zeus, a Greek God who handed over a box ‘containing pain, bloodshed, fear, economic strangulation to Pandora with a forbiddance to opening it. But it was unfortunately opened by her and the contents of the box called ‘pain, bloodshed, fear, economic strangulation, anguish and suffering began to roam in the world,’ but again one can observe the following comment of Gill when he relates this symbolic story and seems hopeful:
All that was left was hope. Eventually it was also let out of that box. Expression of hope is in the last canto of The Flame. (Flame 24)
The Flame is the magnum opus of peace. Although, it is the longest poem in English on modern terrorism, it is also the most potent and sacred poetic offering to Goddess of peace. The book mirrors the naked dance of maniac messiahs as to how these openers of this Pandora’s box roam in the world in every shape to cause as much destruction as possible’. He adds:
They go to universities, do usual business, greet their neighbors, smile, shake hands, eat and do everything as normal human beings. The next moment, they are seen killing citizens with the rage of their guns and explosives, killing even themselves. (Flame 24)
On the other hand, the book also propagates the message of peace and non-violence in an equal potent manner when Gill says:
The eternal flame knows no occupation, faith nor complexion and cannot be imprisoned within human bonds. It has engulfed millions, whose names can be traced in every age and land. This flame is known to engulf mortals even today, melting unknown metals into one. (Flame 28)
Hope is really sprinkler of peace in the dark cloudy nights and a potent vocalization of the eternal human value of peace. Again, ‘it is the binding force, for families, plants/every atom/ and every part of every individual.’ The Flame is the light of hope in the darkness of dejection. It provides solace in private agonies and binds people together with the cord of unity. Here, hope has been creeping in a calm manner throughout the poem and energizes constantly the poet even when he feels entirely shattered and disappointed while sketching the picture of modern terrorism. Despite all the dismal and ugly pictures of the present day world hag-ridden by terrorism and violence, The Flame has countless references where one can find Gill full of optimism, hopes and vision of better tomorrow. Here the comment of Helen Bar-Lev, a prominent poet and artist from Israel is significant to quote:
The Flame is a poem of tenderness, incomprehension, longing, anger, hope, and sadness. It is a poem which gives all the reasons for peace, and also the reasons we do not have it. Were there more Stephen Gills in this world. (Bar-Lev 5)
The poet seems brimming with optimism when he forbids to ‘ Let the arrows of despair’ hurt him and challenges ‘if/The clouds, the hills/And the waterfalls’/mock his attempts,’ he will react in a different manner:
I shall catch
Glimpses of your elegance
In the glow of the candles
With the temple that I build
For you. (Flame 132)
Or his liveliness and hopefulness can be discerned in the following lines:
Sea waves
Sing my song
And the rainbow colours
My amorous tale.
If I ever feel unfulfilled
I shall shed a few drops
To water the seedings of my passion. (Flame 133)
Dove, a symbol of peace and non-violence also seems mixed with hopefulness and radiance which is clearly visible in many of his trilliums (in Haiku Spirit) of his collection Flashes. Dove actually propagates the message of hope:
Dove flies towards skies
Green branch in beak
Message of our hopes. (Flashes 33)
It (Dove) ‘flies/ human sleep/ in the fold of dreams’ and ‘muses on a branch’ with ‘eyes half shut’ and reaches beyond the boundaries:
Dove draws no boundaries
No fuss
Gypsy of hopes. (Flashes 34)
In another collection Songs Before Shrine, Gill feels dove’s melody echoing in his soul and instilling hope and vigour in him. He hears the dove’s melody surging in his soul and watches its face and feels its beat in his flesh and blood and writes beautifully:
I envision it flying
Across my horizon;
I smell its presence
In the air. (SBS 13)
In another poem, ‘The Dove of Peace’, it is nothing but hope that is making Stephen Gill say:
For a long time
I have been hearing
The dove of peace will be freed
Shortly. (SBS 9)
And creates a mild but pricking irony:
To awaken that dove
Progress has been made
Today’s comfort
More sacrificed
Our homes now better adorned
With the thorns of hatred
A few more nuclear bombs
Remain to be developed
And contested. (SBS 9)
Or in another poem ‘Man of Today’, he sketches the shattered hopes of peace and holds the man responsible for all the traumas. He seems grim to see ‘songs of peace on one hand and distribution of weapons/ siding with the murderers on the other.’ So he asks:
On one side
Respect for the cats
Fondness for the dogs.
On the other side
Defeat for humanity.
No one knows
What is today’s man? (SBS 27)
Therefore, in such adverse atmosphere of agony, injustice, disharmony and peacelessness, the bud of hope is shrunk:
The wings of their dove
Cracked and clipped
Footprint of harmony erased
And hope-bud shrunk. (SBS 23)
Similarly in another poem ‘Evening of Harmony’, the poet finds the ‘sun of harmony sinking/ in the cave of despair/ as does the heart/ of a homeless orphan’, and adds:
Inside the home
The fireplace of hopes burns
Outside lurks a vacuum
Caused by retreating waves
Of lost sleep. (SBS 16)
But despite all such deep disappointments and despondency, the poet never leaves hope, nor his dove stops breathing in such adverse climate rather he urges hopefully:
Let the gleams of your glory
Ravage the plague of intolerance
For a new creature to emerge.
Cleanse the air
For the dove to breathe life
Into our homes
As well as in the universe. (SBS 7)
The poet’s dove ‘strives / to play with her wings/ while the brutal blades of nightmares/ clip them, yet the poet is not woe-begone, rather he writes:
The dove’s sight
Is the melody of blessing
For the comfort of homes
The dove’s presence
Is the rhythm of the creator
That cures the abnormal growth
of dissonance. (Shrine 56)
And adds :
As the oracle of hope
The soul- soothing dove
Sings
From her creative solitude. (Ibid)
In another poem ‘My Dove’ he finds the dove of longing sanctified in the sanctum of serenity’ and is above all nations. He sees dove as perfect vehicle of peace and hope on the earth so he says out loud:
She (dove)
Hues of undepictable truth
That consecrates
The emptiness of her surroundings
The leaf that she carries
Is from the evergreen tree
Of never ending hope. (Shrine 149)

Keeping these fears, dejection and terrible atmosphere in mind, he prays for better days to come. He appeals:
Strengthen my voice to weed out
The fear
The sickness
And the satanic wrath of the past
And to help
Truth to appear. (SBS 5)
The poet in Gill visions for better world and coming years so he asks the Almighty to ‘pacify the frenzy the violence’ as well as equip poet’s pen with ‘amazement fused with vitality’. He wishes ‘to harvest/ a ripe manna of harmony/ of the youthful enlightenment’ and ‘blossom a richness of pleasing nutrients/ of calm energy’. His songs also come together with the hopeful movement of dove. So he says:
Fragrance of spring
Sustain a structure of strength
With the braces of my lyrics
That will secure breathes together
In a mystical dance
To the tune of the song of the dove. (SBS 2)
Mother is another icon of hope and sacrifice to Stephen Gill. Her loving care and memories always remain with the poet. He finds his mother in ‘all three novels Why, Immigrant and The Loyalist City’ and even dedicates his collection Songs Before Shrine to her. His poem ‘To Mother’ can be seen here when he finds his mother as the perfect image of hope and says:
Image of sacrifice
Message of hope
You are highly prized
The gift of the life
I owe to you. (SBS 1)
Though Gill is well aware of the hardships and adversities of life and he knows the intensity of pain, loneliness and defeats. Therefore, he writes:
Whole life I shaped my path
Gusts of loneliness never stopped
Light missing. (Flashes 52)
Yet he keeps on living the life without grumbling or murmuring:
No haste
No worry
No malice
And no darkness of prejudice
Lurks here.
Eyes set on my horizon
On calm waves I sail here. (SBS 38)
And hopes for the spring’s arrival, so he writes:
Youth will run and roam
Flowers grow and bloom
Trees will be graced
Birds sing
And greenery abound. (SBS 83)
It is a time when ‘songs arise/ hopes throb/ and madness spreads.’ (Ibid, 83)
The abundance of optimism, hope, peace, love and harmony make the poet hopeful for a glorious dawn in this age of trouble and adversaries. Dr. George Hines says aright:
The poet envisages a future in which all living things will cooperate in harmony and will ‘smile together in life’s field. (SGHW 92)
Gill is well aware of the duties and responsibilities of a true poet. Poets are the sentinel of the conscience who draw a vivid and transparent picture of the society and point out the foils and foibles of human character. They lash at the weakness and demerits of the human being as well as empower them to write against maniac messiahs. Gill knows when a poet is needed:
When dearth and sward
And hope despaired
Sound their notes
Poet is acclaimed
And sought. (SBS 39)
He knows that the ‘poets are adventurous’ who ‘dive with swimmers/ dance with singers/ and enter/ the souls of tyrant/ as they paint/ voyaging/ in the seas of thoughts flowing/ the waters of emotions/ with the delicate oars/ of pens’. According to Gill, the poets are the givers of joy and happiness. They should not die in the dark and despair. His plea is aright:
Writers must use their coin
That is the Lord’s wish.
Should poets
Let the flower of hope be wasted
By the sickles of racial winds
Is the question now. (SBS 29)
In another poem ‘Birth of Poems’, he shows much hopes with the poets:
Poets free
The birds of their blood
And
Weave purrs and growls
With a single loam
They are cats
Walking in darkness of solitude. (SBS 32)
Stephen Gill has high hopes with poetry. He considers his own poems as ‘the brooks/ that flow leisurely/ through the green valleys/ of blessedness’. He considers that his poetry can ‘root out terrorists/ that sail on the currents of cruelty’. His poetry is a constant struggle for peace and for human rights which finds the ‘rhythm of life/ within the castle of grace’ and ‘cannot be abducted’. According to him, his poetry is the mine of hopes.
My songs
Beauty in living
Hope for warmth
And thirst of prosperity
The rainbow of my joy
Link distance islands of disharmony. (SBS 43)
Stephen Gill wishes to be the first claimant of dreams and shows his deep craving for hope and optimism which can be glanced in the following lines:
If there were dreams for sale
I would be the first to buy
No matter how high the price. (SBS 69)
And he further says:
I’ll pay any price
For the dreams
That lighten the burden
Brighten the day with sunrise
And make life
A time to remember. (Ibid)
In many of his poems, Stephen Gill states that our present sorrows and difficulties are temporary. Man should try to develop his environment with love, peace, truth and higher human values and renovate his soul with the beaming light of illumination and fresh hope. Here the emphasis of spirituality establishes the fact that man should follow the spiritual and natural laws. In connection of Gill’s poetry, it is again justified to quote George Hines’s words when we find him saying:
Just as the sun melts the morning mist, the poet hopes for a spiritual sun which will melt the ignorance, fear, hatred and greed which are ‘deeply amassed around our necks. (SGHW 92)
Stephen Gill’s poetry is a unique medley of hopes and despairs. In his crystal clear images of contemporary life full of destructive complexities in which man is hoarding material affluences and thereby entering into cut-throat competitions leading to mental disturbance, psychological imbalance and spiritual ‘insolence, he lits new lamps of hopes whose light will definitely torch the paths of future generations as well spread the message of optimism and re-constructive idealism among the people which is the real need of the hour. Though his poems are full of dismal and terrible pictures of terrorism and its consequences, yet they encourage man to ride through the rough tempestuous sea of life and cross all the boundaries of callous calamities and dreadful disasters.
Stephen Gill knows well that written words create miracles but for that sacrifice is needed. In an interview with N. K. Agarwal he says:
Writing is also therapeutic to me, in order to give light, candle burns itself. That is what a poet does. I write to disseminate my message in an art form. This is a process of burning oneself or going through the pains of a pregnant mother. (Kafla, 49)
Gill is much hopeful with his poems, so he says:
I hope my writings about peace will cause change in the thinking of my readers. (Kafla 49)
Such writings full of optimism and certitude will confer inner peace to the individual as well as provide him an alternative succor for his troubled mind and agonized soul by inspiring him to bind each and every human being in the sacred bonds of love, fraternity, peace and global brotherhood so that Human progeny may live a prosperous, peaceful and ideal life.

Work Cited:

Dickinson, Emily. The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson. Johnson, Thomas H. (Ed.) Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1955.
Gill, Stephen. Shrine. Allahabad: Cyberwit.net, 2008.
----. Songs Before Shrine. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2007. (Abbreviated as SBS in the text.)
----. Flashes. New Delhi: Imprint, 2007.
----. The Flame. Canada: Vesta Publications, 2008.
Hines,Dr. George, Stephen Gill and His Works, New Delhi: Authors Press,2008 (Abbreviated as SGHW in the text)
Bar-Lev, Helen. “Stephen Gill’s POEM THE FLAME GIVES ALL THE REASONS FOR PEACE”,
www.stephengill.ca/gazette.htm

Kafla Inter-Continental, No 36, IICA, Dev Bhardwaj, (ed.) Chandigarh. Jan-April 2008, ‘Stephen Gill on his Writings and Diaspora’ an interview by N. K. Agarwal.

End to End, by I. K. Sharma, Jaipur: Sand-Pra Publications, 1/30, SFS Mansarovar, 2008, Price-100/- Reviewed By Dr. Shaleen Kumar Singh

Dr. I. K. Sharma is a veteran scholar, translator, reviewer, Associate Editor (IBC) and poet from Rajasthan. He belongs to the age of O. P. Bhatnagar (on whom he has edited a book of critical essays entitled O P Bhatnagar – A Critic with a Big Heart 2006) Nar Deo Sharma, Prakash Joshi, R. S. Pathak, A.N. Dwivedi, K. Shrinivas, Atma Ram, P. K. Joy, P. C. K.Prem, T. V. Reddy and many more. It was an age when these poets were writing and thinking of strengthening the foundation of Indian English Poetry and Criticism so that it may be recognized as separate offshoots of knowledge of Indian Literature. Therefore the contribution of the above mentioned poets, critics need comprehensive appraisal. Dr. I. K. Sharma, with his poetry collections entitled- The Shifting Sand Dunes (1976), The Native Embers (1986), Dharamshala and Other Poems (1993), Camel, Cockroach and Captains (1998), and My Lady Broom and Other Poems (2004) and now End to End has acquired a prominent place among those luminary poets published from big publications Houses like O.U.P, Macmillan, Harper Collins and Longman. Here it is to be noted that his poetry has no less sensibility or poetic mettle than those of luminaries rather it excels them at some places.
The present collection under the review is dedicated to ‘those who/ muse about…/ and/ amuse themselves…’ The collection carries 27 poems in which a few poems are already published in some leading journals of India. The poems of the collection are of varied tastes and hues in which the experienced acumen of poetry is visible crystal clear. A careful study of the book reveals that the book is marked with the characteristics of simplicity, precision, music and spontaneity mixed with meditativness. The poems of the collection are both subjective and objective. Reckoning the days of childhood when ‘Nothing is sweeter than the mother’s lap’ and where ‘all sore notes of care end;/ to which no emperor can pluck this place of joy’/ ‘that a sage seeks in forest, many in ascetic yards,’ he sketches the school days somewhere keeping his own childhood in mind in the poem ‘School Interval,’ “Their sky breaks/ as the bell tolls,/ their minds turn and turn/ to raids of the ball;/ they, heads bent tumble into their pen/ like lambs with a brand on their skin…” (2)
He reaches to the evening of life i.e. Old age and answers beautifully in the letter to the editor in which someone wrote to the poet, “I am 84 waiting for the Whistle of Destiny.” But the poet responds strongly and says, “ Age whispers no doubt on the brink,/ nags to, but eighty four is no fatal number/ for him who floats ever in books’ pool,’ and musters up energy by saying-“ there is enough bounce in your bones,/ and right swing in your pen.’ (11)
Some poems like ‘Swami Dayanand Saraswati,’ ‘Wild Love,’ ‘The Singer Who Lost His Voice,’ ‘A Tribute,’ ‘A Tribute to Chidambaram,’ ‘May 13th,’ ‘How Untrue….,’ and ‘The Terminator’ are written on important persons, events and dates of history. But the poems like ‘Termites,’ ‘Just Like That,’ ‘When No One Stops to Kiss My Face’ and ‘Loss’ are fine examples of simplicity, pithiness, symbolic and evocative imagery. But ‘The Lost Face’ on her wife mirrors his deep love to his wife in which he says in the end;
From her ashes rises music
That in me shall not die
No face, no face ever
Shall fill my empty sky. (38)
And the poem ‘May 13th’ shows poet’s deep love to Jaipur and its people as well as his indomitable zeal against the terrorists. On 13th May a synchronized bomb attack by terrorists caused a huge massacre ‘in the city of cool gems’ when people tried to tie ‘bands of love’ and ‘dye every hurt with a soothing voice’ yet the terrorists tried to plant ‘venomous darts’ ‘to rip pink petals’ of ‘faith.’ The poet in Sharma is not terrorized, so he writes:
Wet with blood our armour is
Yet our heart is Chetak
Willing to maul mid summer madness
Of a hundred fusty gangsters.” (31)
Alike a perfect social conscious and ideal poet he knows his duty to bind the people in the thread of love and fraternity so that people may live a life of fearless citizen aware of his duties and responsibilities in the dark hour of fear and dejection.
The poems of the collection are both meditative and amusing. The choice of themes and then the tackling of it in a skilled manner establish the fact that Sharma’s poetry is superb and excellent and his poems bear the stamp of his wide knowledge as well as concern for individual and social harmony. This collection is replete with many experiences of love, hate and kaleidoscopic images of life and it gives an interesting reading resulted in joy and hope that Dr. Sharma will not end here but will write more and more.

Rustling Leaves by R. K. Bhushan, New Delhi: Authors Press, 2008, ISBN 978-81-7273-449-7, pages 80, price 100/- Reviewed by Shaleen Kumar Singh

R. K. Bhushan is a poet of vibrating sounds, colours, aroma and sundry images ranging from leaves, stones, flowers, sky, waters, winds, storms, rivers, lilacs birds, to hope, dreams, shadows, loneliness, betrayal Adam-Eve, laughter, songs, love, beauty, romance, heavens, aspirations, absolutions, questions, answers, assertions, suppositions, suggestions, and even words, thoughts, vision and ever more. His poetry springs from the unknown and strikes at the unknown within us. In fact, he is a master craftsman with whom words, thoughts, rhythm and vision walk together and carry his readers to the ghats of everlasting ecstasy and epiphany. Born at Kartapur in Jalandhar district, Bhushan taught language and literature for about thirty seven years and retired later on as the Head, Post Graduate Dept of English from L.R.D.V. College. He is widely published, admired and awarded poet who has been decorated with the International Poet of Merit Award, in 2001 by the Poets International Society of Washington DC., U.S.A. His previous collection Sentinels of the Soul was highly acclaimed by critics in India and abroad.

The present collection is divided into three sections of ‘Adam in Riot Moods,’ ‘Beastly and The Beast’ and ‘Romance of Reflections’ carrying nineteen poems in first section, sixteen poems in second and ten poems in the last section. The poems of the collection have variety of themes like love, death, life, soul, silence, anxiety, pride, gods, divinity, mind, time and illusions that corer a broad spectrum and stir a ripple in heart and soul of the readers. In most of his poems, Bhushan has attempted to assume the role of a keen observant but amazingly he appears to be actively indulgent at the same time. The poet is a meditative and self-observing scholar who has spent a plenty of time in introspection and extrospection. Therefore, his self-confessional remark captures our attention when he says: “If I have had any complaints in life, they have been mostly against myself”. (Preface)

As a serious thinker, he questions himself: “Despite my notorious sprightliness and vivacious temperament, I have often wondered: “What has life and its love given to me?” (Preface) and again when he fails to materialize his dreams and ideals and has to crash-land on the path way of harsh realities, he questions again: “Was my measure too big?’ But these petty grudges stand nowhere when we read him saying: “Yet the veritable optimist that I am, I have treated these as transitory, momentary and varying features of the earthy phenomena that undoubtedly dim and eclipse the dazzle of the sun. But the sun continues to shine with the stand of perfect neutrality reaffirming in three simple words: Life goes on”. (Preface) In fact this self -motivating and optimistic approach of Bhushan is the stepping stone to understand his poetry as well as the whys and wherefores of his poetry.

In the present collection, we can find several instances wherein the poet has tried to express big ideas in small words:

Whatever is undone, delights me not;
Whatever is undone, worries me a lot (5)
* * *
Life of spirituality yields the hope;
Life of materiality fails to cope (14)
* * *
Laughter is the love of life;
Life is the song of laughter (20)
* * *
Why the sight troubles your soul;
Perform your own functional role (72)

The poems like ‘Lyric of Human Soul,’ ‘Dare Deny the Devil?,’ ‘Missing Links in the Process -1,’ ‘Missing Links in the Process -2 ,’ ‘The Holy and The Human’ and ‘Unforgettable,’ ‘Theatre of the Absurd,’ are humanistic and social conscious; ‘Zeal of the Zest,’ ‘Number of Silence,’ ‘Autopsy,’ ‘Life’s Pearl,’ ‘Give Me Laugh on Lease for Life,’ ‘Death Prized,’ ‘Life Ever Remained A Search for Urvashi,’ ‘Sacred to the God’ and ‘Divinity’ are optimistic and philosophical and ‘Finished Art of Unfinished Love,’ ‘Lover’s Anxiety,’ ‘Rolling in Romance,’ ‘Marvel of the Moment,’ ‘Lover’s World,’ and ‘Do I Miss You?,’ are chief love poems. Besides, a few poems like ‘A Vesper,’ ‘Rolling in Romance,’ ‘Life’s Pearl’ and ‘Rustling Leave have charming delineation of nature in which the poet with his tools of words, symbols and imagery has left a lasting impression on the reader’s mind.

The language of the poet is evocative, decorative and passionate. The good command over English language and literature can be seen in the poems like ‘Fragrance from Afar,’ ‘Genius Infinite -1,’ ‘Genius Infinite-2,’ ‘Fall on the Mall’ and ‘Eve and Adam.’ The narrative quality of the poet is much similar to Ted Hughes which though being long is never monotonous or devoid of meaning. The poems like ‘The Glory of The Pride,’ ‘Dare Deny the Devil?’ ‘Missing Links in Process-1,’ ‘Missing Links in Process’-2’ and ‘Genius Infinite’ are the fine examples of the same. The poet is at home in his choice of words, phrases and idioms so his poetry is crystal clear and not complex.

In nut shell, the book Rustling Leaves with an attractive jacket has turned out to be an alluring offering of R. K. Bhushan. The poems of the collection are of serious nature that lead to an illumined awareness of human situation and enhance to the level of spirituality so that man’s life may reach the ultimate goal. I hope and trust ardently that the book will make an interesting reading and attain its desirable goal of Charaveti Charaveti.

Tribals in Indian English Novel: A.K. Chaturvedi, Atlantic Publishers, New Delhi ISBN -975-81-269-09445 Reviewed by Dr. Shaleen K. Singh.

A.K. Chaturvedi, a senior lecturer and scholar of English literature has been seriously involved in criticism of Indian English novel for a pretty long time and has published most of his research papers in distinguished literary and critical magazines of India. He is currently Assistant Professor in English in a Govt. College of Gwalior.

The book under review is designed beautifully in hard bound exhibits the author’s hard labour which he undertook in the preparation of the book. Though a few pieces from the book are already published, yet the author has arranged all of them in a single volume which ‘seeks to bring out the similarly between the primitive life as portrayed by the Indian English novelists and as lived by the tribal in the remote rural area of India’.

Chaturvedi in the book starts from the historical background of Indian English novels to the English education in India and then elaborates clearly the reasons of late development of Indian English fiction. A few of his reasons why authors chose English as a medium of their expression are no less interesting when he says that Indians wrote in English because they were desirous of impressing the British public and here Chaturvedi gives references of Shambhu Nath Mukherji’s letter to Meredith Townshend to prove his argument. And he appears more hopeful to the future of Indian English novel than the counterpart literature in the regional languages.

In the second chapter of ‘Tribal in ancient India Literature’ the author at first defines the tribal from Indian and Western resources, then searches its roots in Ancient Indian literature like that of Kadambari, Ramayana, Mahabharata and the most ancient book in the Rig Veda. Here he has tried to remain honest in his opinions when he looks at the both pros and cons on the point of discrimination and the treatment with the tribal by the upper strata of society.

The third chapter ‘Searches’ references of the tribal and the issues pertaining to the tribal in the four major Indian English novels viz. Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy Vishwas, Kamla Markandey’s The Coffer Dam, Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.

In Arun Joshi’s The Strange Case of Billy Vishwas, Chaturvedi finds tribal world as symbol of ‘elemental life when nature the absolute are not conceived as separate entities but the Tribal village to which Billy escapes is a haven for him. Here he is free of worldly restraints. It is the place where the border lines of divinity, superstition and magic converse’.

Similarly in the sixth novel of The Coffer Dam (1969) Kamla Markandaya, Chaturvedi finds ample references of tribal issues and incidents in the picture of a Tribal village near which the British engineers, Howard Clinton and Mackendrick intend to build a big dam to control and channelize a turbulent river “that rose in the lakes and valleys of the south Indian highland and thundered through inaccessible gorges and jungle dawn to planes with prodigal waste”.

In Gita Mehta’s A River Sutra, which according to Chturvedi, unlike her previous novels is one that could not make a mark, is seminal book that ‘reflects the shift of novelists concern to Indian sensibility and deals with the themes like cultural values, music, art forms, ethos and tribal life’. Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss the booker prize winner novel deals the issues of Tribal’s marginalization in a very limited space. According to the seventeenth chapter of the novel, where the pathos of the tribal of the stone town, Janjiwar are clearly visible. Here the issue of tribal’s marginalization is very significant because for long Trival community which suffered the lack of resources, poverty, illiteracy and even starvation despite false promises of the govt. and groundless development programmes of Govt. and non-Govt. sectors. Tribal, though have seen the light of development and the authors poets and journalists have looked deep into their life, yet they need all round support in our Nation, so that they may not remain a issue or object of the author’s writing but may walk hand in hand on the road of progress.

To sum up, Chaturvedi deserves high accolades for his arduous labour in the book which is fully critical precise, objective and to the point. In his mission of research of the subject matter, Chaturvedi nowhere seems strayed or superfluous. So, the book needs wide distribution among critics and laureates of Indian English criticism so that they may understand the literary contribution of Dr. Chaturvedi.

REPRESENTATION OF INDIAN WOMEN IN MEN’S POETRY by Dr.Shaleen Kumar Singh

“To the unique phenomena of the unprecedented growth of indo-English literature during the post independence era, Indian male poets have contributed fairly a good deal of verse, which is worthy of critics’ attention”(SCIEV), is aptly remarked by A.N. Diwedi, a notable Indian English critic in his collection of Critical Essays on male poets. In the contemporary situation, Indian male poets have enriched all the genres of literature as well as voiced their notions on almost each and every theme from political situation to social disorganization, from love, fantasy, and sex to human foils and foibles, from rapid development of Science and Technology to rapid decline of ethical, moral and human values and gross realities that are being faced by modern man and woman also. As recent Indian poetry in English is no longer the shadow, it has become the substance, nor is it an echo but a potent voice worth listening to. It has acquired its own identity on the global scene and has become the synonym of success. A large number of male poets like Nissim Ezekiel, Keki N. Daruwala, V.K. Gokak, R. Parthsarthy, Krishna Srinivas, Dom Mores, A. K. Ramanujan, Shiv K. Kumar, O.P. Bhatnagar, D.H. Kabadi, Pritish Nandy, Keshav Malik, V.S. Skanda Prasad, Syed Ammeruddin, Baldev Mirza, I.K. Sharma, H.S. BhatiaI.H. Rizvi, Pronab Bandhopadhyay, Prakash Joshi, R.N. Sinha, Suresh Chandra Diwedi, Niranjan Mohanty, P. Raja, Narendra Pal Singh, Mahanand Sharma, Aju Mukhopadhyaya, G.K. Kottor, Tabish Khair and a numberless more have penned on the Indian women with their own viewpoints and angles. Owing to this reason, there is a need of comprehensive discussion over the title. The purpose of this paper is to make an in-depth study in the poetry of Indian English male poets who have represented Indian women
We can commence with comment of O.P. Bhatnagar who remarks:

“The milieu, ever since Indian poetry in English came to be written has been one of change, due to the influence of the western notions of love, individuality, freedom and equality of woman on one hand, and industrialization, social reforms, education and economic independence of woman on the other.”

Talking about the poetry on the Indian woman, the factors of development in the field of education an outlook cannot be under-rated if we take contemporary poetry into account. Modern poets have witnessed the idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of the present time and their poems bear the testimony and tale of such bare realities of life of man and woman.
Nissim Ezekeil, the first Post-independence Indian English poet who gave Indian English poetry ‘A local habitation’ and a name, though he is of Bene Israel origin, he possesses a strong sense belonging to India, the country of his birth and living. His poetry covers a wide range of subject and variety of expression and vivid pictures. In the poem ‘On Bellasis Road’, he makes a graphic picture of Indian woman:

“I see her first
As colours only
Poised against the faded
Red of a post-box
Purple sari, yellow blouse
Green bugles, orange
Flow on her hair
A moment later
A sense her as a woman
Bare as her feet
Beneath the shimmer.” (IVE 3)

In the earlier poems of Ezekeil, we find the themes of love and woman both similar to the themes of Kamla Das. B.K. Das observes:

“He (Ezekeil) looks at love and woman from a man’s point of view as Kamla Das views love from a woman’s point of view. Flattery and bold advance are necessary for ‘survival and success’ in love and married life.” (CEP 24)

According to Ezekeil Sex and Sensuality are a part and parcel of life and in order to accept art one has to affirm sensuality for Ezekeil believes in art for art’s sake. In his passion poems and Nudes Sex moves centripetally and physical satisfaction of love holds the key in the poems. Some other poems like ‘Two Nights of Love’, ‘Recluse’, ‘Jewish Wedding in Bombay’; the consummation of love remains predominant. As Ezekeil examines a situation clearly and express it in his own words in on outspoken manner while observing a situation on which a woman was wood by a man in an unmistakable term, he says:
“You are a wonderful woman, he said
And she laughed happily
Having heard it before from many men
To see her naked
And to know how she surrendered
Who was so hard and vain
In that moment of mutual deception
And almost lovable.” (CEP 24-25)

In his ninth collection ‘Hymns in Darkness’, he makes the woman appear in the role of sex objects where he describes this intimate scene between man and woman in a calm and cool way:

“Don’t she says, don’t
Conniving all the same
Short of tearing her clothes
His using all his force
Soon his had what he wanted
Soft, warm and round.” (CEP 26)

In another poems lime ‘Motives’, ‘At the Party’ and ‘At the Hotel’, the persona of his poems looks at the woman from the point of view of male protagonist and his poetry in mostly satirizing doting on the man-woman, their manners and behaviourial norms, relationship between the spouses, their sexual preoccupations and the environments through which all the persone in his poetry have to pass the biological point of view and takes it as a normal instinct in man and woman. Sex should not be a myth but a reality like other realities of life; this has got to be described through in an artistic way:

“Ethereal beauties may you always be
Dedicated to love and reckless shopping
Your midriffs moist and your thighs unruly
Breast beneath the fabric slyly plopping.”(ibid)

B.K. Das observes:
“Ezekeil uses unconventional words like ‘unruly thighs’, ‘plopping breasts’, ‘midriffs moist’ and describes female anatomy as well as garments in his poetry.”
Ezekeil like Kamla Das and Shiv K. Kumar uses erotic vocabulary in his poetry and makes an objective look at the realities of life. Here the comment of Prakash Joshi can summarize his poetry when he says:

“Mr. Ezekeil is a poet of body who loves the nakedness of woman as the work of God though she may manifest his in the form of a bitch.” (49)

“A.K. Ramanujan”, who according to C.N. Shrinath:

“is a fine craftsman with a super control over his medium in a fair response to his poetry.” (CEP 29)
Some critics of A.K. Ramanujan find in his poetry the syndrome of expatriation, alienation and obsession, yet quite a few speak of Ramanujan’s rootedness in his Hindu experience and his ‘Indian sensibility sharpened and conditioned by a western education’. Family is the nerve centre of Ramanujan’s poetry. Most of his poems have their origin in poet’s recollected personal emotions and have a touch of nostalgia and pathos. His description of woman is catalogued in many forms of woman as mother, wife, daughter (widowed daughter). His poetic outputs namely ‘The Strides’, ‘Relations’(1971) carry distinguishing features of autochthonousness, Indian myths, symbols, people, customs, rich cultural and spiritual heritage constitute corpus of his poetry. The image of Indian woman by Ramanujan is drawn with his portray of family in some of his remarkable poems like ‘Of Mother’, ‘Among Other Things’, ‘Love Poem for a Wife’ and ‘Small Scale Reflections on a Great House’, where ‘Family, the theme haunts the poet and there are some other poems which owe their origin to recollected personal emotions and deal with his memory of relations. In the light of this view ‘Of Mothers, Among Other Things’ is a soft soothing poem which encompasses the mother’s youth, her unerring care for the ‘Crime Cradles’, her devotion to her worth unmindful of the rains and the fluttering loose Saris and her painstaking responsibilities. He says:

“My cold parchment tongue licks bark
In the mouth when I see her forth
Still sensible fingers slowly flex
To pick a grain of rice from the kitchen floor.”(TS,26)

Another poem ‘Love Poem for a Wife’ highlights the poet’s sense of estrangement from his wife but there is no such writing of the heart and the tone has softened considerably in portraying the lean and thin but lovely and charming face of poet’s wife:
“My wife’s face still fast
As sleep as blessed by
Butterfly, snake, ship rope,
And grandmother’s other
Children
By my only love’s only
Insatiable envy.”(Rel.,5)

The poetry of A.K. Ramanujan is a projection of his feelings through the invention and structuring of images particularly Indian Hindu life where woman is circumscribed into his own boundaries of thoughts, imagination and Indian ethos.
Dom Mores is much similar to A.K. Ramanujan when he reopens the book of his memories related with his mother when he says:

“These relics of my mother, which
Came brown paper, caused me griefs
The rich brecades the ornaments
Napthalena balls dead photographs
And a white bra, lapsed in the cups
Since she last slipped it off to sleep.”( NBIPE, 123)

‘Letter to my Mother’ which is in the section New Poems revealsMoraes as a mature poet who has renounced the childhood of fairies, angles and demons and tries to enquire the pathos of mother and through her the country of his origin and finally reach at a mood of humbleness:

“You pray, you do not notice
The corpses around you
Sorrow has stopped your eye
Your dream is desolate
It calls me everyday
But I cannot enter it
You know I will not return
Forgive me my trespasses.”( SCIEV, 80)

Most of the Indian English poets have tried to draw a sketch of contemporary Indian society which is characterized by economic, physical, cultural and personal laughable and pitiable and man and woman both are dehumanized or insensitive to the pains and throes of their beings. Contemporary Indian English delineate a transparent picture of Indian women like we may glance the poem of Pronab Babdhopadhyaya who depicts the degradation of woman when he says:

“Ila ray must run
Another hundred or two
Selling off
Her evening ardour youth.”( CIEP, 136)

And at another place he writes:

“On the dark silken chest
Of the woman night
The dead mother
Sucking the sleeping child
The bare naked rails
The hardened python
Of a weary civilization
The pavements as seasons of the year
Shift mood. Colour, stance.” (139)

In the poem ‘Indian Woman’, Shiv K. Kumar Describes the Indian women who while making a queue near a well for water wait for their men’s return who have gone ‘beyond the hills’. Here he wishes to draw the image of rural and tribal India come alive in the poem:

“In this triple baked continent
Women don’t etch angry eyebrows
On mud walls
Patiently they sit
Like empty pictures
On the mouth of the village well
………………………..
With Zodiac doodling on the sands
They guard their tattooed thighs
Waiting for their men’s return.”( IVE,53)

There are scores of poets who describes the physical beauty of women in their poems. For them women is considered be merely a commodity to be exploited and where all scribbling of these poets are to meander to and fro alike pendulum of confusion like Keshav Malik when feels sad at the loss of beauty of woman, says:

“Lady I see how time dates your beauty
Your Sylph like figure wrapped each revolving year
With layer on layer of rich fat,
Till to my recognition you are all but lost-”( MIEP,105)

Some poets like Syed Ameeruddin and Tabish Khair mingle their feelings of love when they draw the picture of woman infuse the element of nature in it also. Tabish Khair says:
“Into the winter of my maidenhood
You came as the spring
With the promise of budding flowers
And past a summer of warm womanhood
You left me as the autumn
With the empty rustle of manhood.”( COIEP, 79)

Similarly Syed Ameeruddin appears to be celebrating in the feeling of love and longing when he is in the communion of woman or her beloved:
“Let us celebrate
The night of White shadows
Shed by liquid moon
Sunk in the debris of rivers
Come beloved!” (COIEP, 20)

But unlike many of his presceder-poets O. P. Bhatnagar takes woman not for sex or baby food. Though in his mocking tone he tries to tell us:

“That sex is not a baby food
To stick to only one brand
Least it may cause indigestion
To one’s delicate system in growth.”

Rather he makes us to see sex in a refreshing manner when he says:


“Sex should come as challenge
Not as shame or consolation
Or something to shy from
It’s a pleasure on which body grows
And soul feeds like honey
Made rich by the extracts of different flowers;
Serving ideas with a different hue
Causing wide stomach upsets
Agreeable but only to a few.” (COIEP, 55)

Bhatnagar seems nowhere apologizing of permissiveness in sex rather he appears to be criticizing the conventional morality which is imposed on woman only which is a clear affirmation of Bhatnagar’s faith in human values as that which is biologically and socially advantageous to the species. There are several Indian English poets who respect and honour the dignity of woman for they believe ‘Yatra naryastu poojyante; ramante tatra devta’(where woman are worshipped; God resides there) Dr. C.L. Khatri, editor cyber literature respects the woman as woman who asks the mythical Draupadi, the classical heroin of the Mahabharata to come down from heaven to redeem the dignity of her sisters:

“Come down from heaven Draupadi
Regain your dignity, awake the Pandavas
Re-enact your historical swear
Redeem the dignity of your sister.” (44)

In the contemporary Indian English poetry the suppressed voice of woman is not only uttered forcefully by these poets but also they have tried their best to uproot those fanatic, chauvinistic and traditional bound superstitious and myth ridden ancient approach from our minds. As Indian woman for long has been under the grinding wheel, enchained, muffled and voiceless and made to surrender to the whims, fancies and eccentricities of ‘savage’ man, his over lordship and to treat woman as a chattel. The life of woman remains a saga from birth to death, beret with agencies, pains, depravation and untold sufferings and though much has been done by Indian English male-poets to ameliorate the plight of Indian woman from time to time by their constant efforts of voicing the predicament of woman and their crucial needs as well as arising as a host of questions and demand to be discussed in public it is yet to gain ground in our male dominated society. Here it is important to know that a poet is free from cliques of poetic form, metre and rhythm as well as the literariness and morality, yet he has to keep up the tradition of poetry and remain fully conscious to the societies’ lackadaisical approach and apathy towards the one set of society whose whole history has been a sorrowful tale of prostitution, beggary, rape, slavery, child labour and discrimination. If we glance at the whole spectrum of Indian English poetry, we will find that the issues and her present situation has been portrayed more forcefully by the Indian English poets who are male and who are also considered to be belonging to the category of man called synonymous with the adjectives of ‘Savage’, ‘Brute’ or ‘Seducers’ of woman.



References:
· A.N. Diwedi (Ed), (Studies in Contemporary Indo English Verse- A Collection on Male Poets, (abbreviated as SCIEV in the text), Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1989.
· O.P. Bhatnagar, ‘Love:Male and Female Responses’, Love and Death in Indian Poetry in English. Ed. S.N.A. Rizvi, Delhi: Doaba House, 1989.
· Syed Ameruddin (Ed.), Indian Verse in English, (abbreviated as IVE in the text), Madras: Poet Press, (1977).
· B.K. Das, ‘Nissim Ezekeil and the Making of Indian English Idiom’, Critical Essays on Poetry, (abbreviated as CEP. in the text), New Delhi: Doaba House.
· Prakash Joshi ‘Attitudal Dichotomy in Nissim Ezekeil Poetry’, Literary Horizons, Amravati:January, 1987,
· A.K. Ramanujan, The Strides, London: Oxford University Press, (abbreviated as T.S. in the text) 1966.
· A.K. Ramanujan, Relations, London: Oxford University Press, (abbreviated as Rel. in the text) 1971.
· G.K. Kottor (Ed.), A New Book of Indian Poems in English, (abbreviated as NBIPE in the text), Kolkata: Writers’ Workshop, 2000.
· B.K. Das (Ed.), Contemporary Indo English Poetry (abbreviated as CIEP in the text), Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1986.
· B.K. Das (Ed.), Modern Indo English Poetry (abbreviated as MIEP in the text), Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1982.
· I.H. Rizvi (Ed.), Contemporary Indo English Poetry (abbreviated as COIEP in the text).Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1988.
· I.H. Rizvi (Ed.), Contemporary Indo English Love Poetry. Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1990.
· C.L. Khatri,Kargil. Patna: Cyber Publicaton House, 2000.
· O.P. Bhatnagar, Angles of Retreat. (Abbreviated as AR in the text), New Delhi: Samkaleen Prakashan, 1979.