Kamala Das was first introduced to me in an anthology of contemporary Indian poetry that I had sought out because I didn’t know who contemporary Indian poets were. The poem was titled, aptly enough, ‘An Introduction.’ I read and promptly forgot all about it until I was in college and forced to take a paper called ‘Literatures of India 1.’There was awe in the lecturer’s voice when she spoke of Das, an awe which, at first, I naïvely and ungenerously attributed to her being Malayali. But as we kept on with the text, I discovered that the poem held a power over everyone in that room. I wished I was everyone.
For those unaware of this poem, let me explain: ‘An Introduction’ appeared in Kamala Das’s first collection of poems, Summer in Calcutta, and is one of her most well known works. It is often cited as a powerful argument for Indian writing in English (‘I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,/I speak three languages, write in/ Two, dream in one./ Don’t write in English, they said, English is/ Not your mother-tongue. Why not leave/ Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,/ Every one of you? Why not let me speak in/ Any language I like? The language I speak, /Becomes mine, its distortions, its queernesses /All mine, mine alone.’) and also an example of Indian feminist writing.
|| Kamala Surayya ||
I studied at a women’s college, so Kamala Das became doubly important. Here was a woman who was married young in a rigid Nair community, yet managed to be both promiscuous (I say that with positive connotations) and write about it. Always a controversial figure, Das defied expectations of her when she converted to Islam in the late nineties, taking on the name Kamala Suraiyya. She was to be admired.
So back we are in this large room full of nineteen- and twenty-year-old women reading Kamala Das, saying ‘My god, what an inspiration!’ and all I could do was wait intently for someone to address the elephant in the room, that this woman wasn’t a poet. Not a good one in any case.
Of course no one said a thing and I was too busy being self-righteous and personally offended to volunteer anything. The truth is Kamala Das was a powerful presence all through her life. She broke with tradition almost violently, talking about love and sex. Sex with men and women. Her biography My Story shocked Kerala. She opened doors, and that’s nothing to crap on. So it is no surprise that she was received with admiration by most of my classmates.
But how did ‘incredible woman’ get confused with ‘great poet’? The question does not pertain just to my class. Das was one of the most well known figures in the literary scenes — both in English and in Malayalam. When she died in 2009, even national newspapers carried the news, something we don’t expect for most poets. Amazing stuff, but that elephant is still pretty big.
Here’s what I think of the poem: not much. It is at times petulant, at others downright whiny (‘Why not leave/ Me alone, critics, friends, visiting cousins,/ Every one of you?’). The poem jumps from one idea to the next for no apparent reason (like when it goes from the funeral pyre to her description of childhood). It has a couple of nice images, but for the most part, reads like prose with line breaks. Even worse — and one usually does not want to say such things outside of a workshop — the linebreaks are absolutely juvenile. The poem is too explicit, and is full of an unpleasant, unchanneled angst. It makes me stop reading.
What’s interesting now is that today, from a theoretical point of view, anything can be ‘read’. Even a poem as wildly uncontrolled as this is given structure and form. When we studied in class, we were told that the poem has three parts. The first part of the poem contains the language arguments; the second part depicts the young woman growing up and rebelling; and the final part offers her argument that female (or is it more broadly human?) experiences are essentially collective; in cruder terms, ‘the same.’ This could’ve have been an interesting point of contention, except this was one of those lecturer’s that doesn’t allow discussion in her class. It was also interesting how the narrator’s promiscuity was so quickly glossed over.
The other interesting aspect — and I imagine this is true for most people who read poetry — is the inevitable technique versus emotion debate that crops up when you very naïvely suggest to your non-poetry reading friends that a poem is poorly written. ‘Confessional poetry doesn’t mean you show everyone what’s in your diary’ doesn’t get you very far. My explanation usually consists of sharing other confessional poetry and saying, ‘Look, they’re talking about personal stuff too, but it’s not all whiny!’
I’ll admit the most crafted poems aren’t always the best, but more significantly, a poorly crafted well can never be any good. There are moments in Kamala Das’s poem that don’t ring true for me, simply because of how the poem is written. It’s as if the poem doesn’t know where it is going.
I always think of this bit I read in Guardian poetry workshop: to paraphrase George Szirtes, ‘feeling proceeds through language.’ You feel because the right word has been found, and it is connected to other words, and sentences, and pauses, in just the right way. For a poem that begins with language, it is shockingly contemptuous of language. The poem is powerful (for many) because we know the experiences behind those words, not because those words reveal those experiences and emotions to us.
My favourite part of the poem, if there is one, would be:
[my language] is useful to me as cawing
Is to crows or roaring to the lions,
Language as something organic and irrefutably your own. It’s the only bit of rhetoric in the poem that I think works. Even here it’s a bit rough: shouldn’t it to be ‘it is useful to me as cawing/ is to crows or roaring to lions’? That little article changes so much.
At the end of the day, I don’t want to discredit Kamala Suraiya (I’ve called her Kamala Das all this while because, if I’m not mistaken, that is who she was when she wrote the poem) the person. She’s a fascinating woman and I’d like to get my hands on her autobiography.
I’m also not familiar with all her entire body of work (but that, in no way, means I cannot criticise the poems I have read; just saying). I also don’t have access to her work in Malayalam, which may be very good. What I know is this: ‘An Introduction’ is a lazy poem. And to the five or six people who have told me to read Kamala Das to help me write better, I’m sorry, but no.
A brave post, Aditi – to name the elephant! Personally, I lost respect for Das/Surayya when I read that her work wasn’t nearly as confessional as it was, ahem, delusional (or in kinder terms, imaginary). There’s a place for that – it’s a genre called fiction. I can’t respect someone who pretends to be what they are not, so as to gain mileage from a certain manufactured public persona.
Is it very brave? I read somewhere that her craft has been severely criticised by some; I just can’t find any of those reviews/don’t know where to look.
Do you mean her autobiography has fictionalised portions?
Yeah, apparently she didn’t really have extramarital affairs and so on. I thought it was quite cool that Jeet actually referred to this embellishing of details in his introduction to her poems in “60 Indian Poets”. I’m trying to recall other places where I read about this too – sort of remember some interview she gave in which she said she thought she was dying, so she decided to make her autobiography a bit more colourful. But she didn’t die, not for a long time after, but didn’t get properly discredited either.
*goes to check her 60 Indian Poets*
Hah, that’s funny. I have to admit I completely glossed over those few pages (as I have many other poets in the anthology).
Agree about Das being an indifferent poet.
Fail to see how the authenticity of her autobiography is relevant to her talent or lack thereof as a poet. Personally, I can’t bring myself to respect people who judge poets based on their life stories rather than on their work.
Actually, come to think of it, if ‘My Story’ had been totally made up (as opposed to trivially embellished) I would have more admiration for her as a writer (if not as a poet). Now that would have taken talent.
Her autobiography has no relevance to her poetry, I don’t think. And I agree about the embellishments. Makes me more curious to read the book.
OK, I’m not sure if your comments are with reference to Sharanya’s or my comments, but my understanding is that a lot of people admire her poetry simply because she lived (or claimed to live) an unconventional life. I’d be more interested in the unconventional life than the badly written poetry.
Aditi: Sorry, was obviously responding to Sharanya’s comments there.
I agree entirely that (as you say in your post) living an admirable or unconventional life doesn’t make you a great poet. But by the same token not living the life you claim to doesn’t make you any less of a poet. Which is why losing respect for Das because some parts of her autobiography may be untrue is as silly as admiring her poetry because of the life she lived.
True. It’s not a poem– even if, as an utterance, it might have had a volatile charge at a certain time in a certain context. And I also haven’t read her poetry enough beyond the anthologies to dispute your larger dismissal. However, I’d be interested in hearing a disputation of your post from someone who has read her deeply, I wonder if there’s anyone like that out there. it’s worth keeping in mind, as you sort of say, that anthologies and textbooks may be giving us a completely distorted picture of her work. Who knows. Anthologies often try to go for the more “easy”, self-contained pieces in a bid to reach a wider audience, and English Literature textbooks (especially in India) are often determined to reduce poetry to a sub-discipline of Citizenship Studies and/or Moral Education and thus pick only what is useful to them in that regard. A great many poets are doomed to be remembered mostly by their earlier and sometimes least accomplished poems as fossilized in anthologies. Watch out!
Falstaff, are you inserting an (untyped) “as a poet” after Sharanya’s “I lost respect for Das”? Without that, your last sentence simply does not follow–one could conceivably lose respect for Das, overall, without thinking less of her as a poet.
Equivocal: I won’t claim to have read her deeply, but I did read through her selected poems last year and I can’t say I was impressed. My overall sense was that the poems read like very rough drafts – there was the occasional phrase or idea that had promise, but it was buried in a lot of dross.
That said, I do agree that it would be interesting to see a case made for Das as a poet that didn’t hinge on her life / the impact her work had at the time it came out. For all the articles marking her death, I can’t remember reading one that actually did that. And I was looking.
NL: Whatever makes you happy. I have no desire to engage in hair-splitting with half-wits.
The validity of your entire attack on Sharanya hangs on this hair.
hi aditi,
I am new to reading poetry and i dont understand what bad poetry is? Isn’t poem an expression of self and can be written as the writer likes it to be? On what basis can a poem be critically analysed?
Hi Nicholas – Don’t worry, Falstaff has had it in for me for a long time.
Hence am not going to bother getting embroiled here, but just to clarify (in case anyone needs it), you’re right – respect for someone as a poet and respect for someone as a person/public figure are different things. I do like some of Das’ writings. But that she was passing off fiction as confessionals is disingenuous. Hello James Frey.
@ Aishwarya
Hi! Poetry can be assessed in all kinds of ways. Literature classrooms are generally concerned with meaning, but that is putting it broadly. Some people study how poems mean what they mean, or just what they mean; some are interested in what texts convey about the sociopolitical climate; some consider poems windows into the personal lives of writers. The list is quite long, and I imagine most people interested in poetry have their own set of criteria, which may or may not overlap with other people’s criteria.
‘Isn’t poem an expression of self and can be written as the writer likes it to be?’
A poem is certainly expression, although not necessarily of the self. (The ‘self’ bit is quite debatable.) But so is a novel, an essay, a journal entry, an editorial, a painting, a movie, etc. So a poem must be a specific kind of verbal expression with certain characteristics, a kind of language, if you will, decided more or less by consensus of the people who read poetry.
It is also of course the writer who determines how a poem will be written/rewritten/edited and so on. But if the writer wants it only to cater to her own interests/emotions/whatever, then there’s no need to publish it. The minute you put your poems out there, the expectations and values of its inevitable audience, however small, come into play. At the end of the day, whoever is reading Kamala Das’s poems will want something of value from them, right? We do say there are good novels and bad novels and mediocre novels; why not poems?
My guess is you’re still discovering poetry and are doing a bit of investigation into what ‘poetry’ means. How do you identify it? How do you understand it? How do decide if it’s good or bad? If that is the case, I’ll just say it takes time and a lot of reading. I have this side project that you might be interested in. It’s a series called ‘Poets on Poetry’: http://www.toothsoup.com/blottingpaper/?page_id=111 There is no universally accepted definition of poetry, but some of these quotations come very close to what I think/feel/know to be poetry. Some others, I can’t make sense of. Still others I think are way off base. The poets explain what poetry is from different perspectives: what it feels like to write it, to read it, to listen to it, what it should do, what it shouldn’t do. It might help you, alongside reading actual poems, figure out for yourself what bad poetry is, if there is such a thing at all.
I hope this is helpful. I won’t prattle on much longer here, but if you have questions, you can always email. : )
Cheers,
A
‘An introduction’ could be arguably a lazy poem, it may be just an ‘utterance’ as has been pointed out; there are ‘lazy poems’ written by every great poet. Is your note a critique on ‘An introduction’? Part of it reads like that. Part of it also reads a little like a dismissal of a very significant writer, based on limited access to her work. As you seem to suspect, her work in Malayalam–fiction mostly–is exceptional, especially her short fiction.
@ Equivocal
‘Anthologies often try to go for the more “easy”, self-contained pieces in a bid to reach a wider audience, and English Literature textbooks (especially in India) are often determined to reduce poetry to a sub-discipline of Citizenship Studies and/or Moral Education and thus pick only what is useful to them in that regard.’
Absolutely. And this reminds me that I have to write a long overdue rant on the way lit is taught, at least in undergraduate spaces.
I would refuse to study/prepare for exams when I was in college. I’d do the bare minimum, sometimes not even that. It would depend on what the class was, or what the text was. Normally I wouldn’t have looked up Kamala Das, but I actually did do some research. Couldn’t find any criticism, but I found stuff in other anthologies. True, anthologies again, but there was some variation. Can’t say I was impressed. There are also a few poems here (taken from different collections): http://arjunpuri.wordpress.com/2009/05/31/poems-of-kamala-das/ if anyone wants to have a go.
Overall, and this is the cynic in me, I find it extremely unlikely, although it is possible, that she’s written any poems of value. It’s not a case of her poems having a few minor flaws, or being technically capable but not appealing to someone’s taste. It’s just bad. Like gross bad. : (
‘I’d be interested in hearing a disputation of your post from someone who has read her deeply, I wonder if there’s anyone like that out there.’
Haha, wouldn’t that be awesome?
‘Who are you, you little twit of a girl, to say Kamala Das is a bad poet? You have not even read any of her books!’
Been a while since I got a dressing down in public. : P
God, I hope I’m not asking for it.
Falstaff has had it in for me for a long time
Huh? News to me.
Tell me again who you are and why I supposedly have it in for you? Sorry, I’m bad at keeping track of these things.
@ John
Crossposted with the dressing down! Heh.
‘Is your note a critique on ‘An introduction’? Part of it reads like that. Part of it also reads a little like a dismissal of a very significant writer, based on limited access to her work.’
Yes, it is both a critique of ‘An introduction’ and a tentative dismissal of her poetry in English. I can’t claim an opinion on her writings on Malayalam or her prose, which is mostly irrelevant to my dismissal anyway. The only reason I mentioned her other writings was because I didn’t want anyone to assume I was dismissing things I haven’t experienced.
As for limited access, sure, but I’ve already admitted as much and you’re just stating the obvious. I suppose the onus is on me to show that my opinion is valid even though it is based on limited access, and the closest I can come to it is this: ‘It’s not a case of her poems having a few minor flaws, or being technically capable but not appealing to someone’s taste. It’s just bad. Like gross bad. : (‘
I say tentative dismissal, because even though I’m reasonably sure she couldn’t have written any poetry in English that was ‘great’ or ‘significant’ (as it is often said to be), I’m willing to be convinced otherwise. So if you feel I’m wrong in saying that the poem is lazy, then explain to me where I’ve gone wrong. Or if you feel there are other poems of hers that clearly demonstrate why she is so well respected in certain quarters, show me.
I don’t know if anyone will find this interesting. I thought I’d mention it (whoever is reading) since the issue of fact/fiction has already come up. This is with reference to the idea that what the text reveals about itself and its own crafting is more significant than what is gleaned from outside (biography and so on).
‘For a poem that begins with language, it is shockingly contemptuous of language.’
Much after I’d formed this opinion — a couple of months, in fact — someone told me about his interview in which Kamala Das/Suraiyya said that if she hadn’t learnt Malayalam and English, she’d be writing poetry in whatever language she did learn. (I’m paraphrasing based on hearsay, so please forgive any accuracies, but I think this is right for the most part.) That just solidified my feeling that she was contemptuous of language. You’re dismissing your medium right there.
Or can that be interpreted differently?
Aditi, I sure do not have enough scholarship on her poetry–or anyone else’s poetry–so as to ‘show’ or prove where you have gone ‘wrong’. I have read her in college only–since I hardly read poetry other than in Malayalam–and from my limited reading of her work in English, I did not think she is a poet of no value, as you seem to think, though I surely do not think she is the greatest poet ever walked on earth, . However, what surprises me is not your opinion about her work–or anyone else’s work–but your apparent attitude about how precise and absolutely true opinions–yours or anybody’s–about literary work can be. You seem to be talking about poetry as if it is a matter of mathematically provable truth; as if you believe in an objective reality that can assert if a certain poem is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘having minor flaws’ or major ones. To me, you appear very stuck up in your approach to works of art; instead of thinking of your opinion as just opinion, you seem to be thinking there is some absolute truth in these matters. When you state that her poetry does not have the capacity to ‘appeal to someone’s taste’ you could not be meaning to say more than her poetry–the poems you have read, to be precise–did not have the capacity to appeal to ‘your taste’. However, it is a verifiable fact that there are many people who found it appealing, and not people who can be easily dismissed as people who have ‘no good taste’. That way, based on my reading of your poems, I can choose to say you have not written anything of any value; and all you may be able to offer to defend your significance of any degree will be appreciation readers other than myself, or praise from of a committee of ‘judges’ as proof that my opinion is just subjective. Let’s not forget if Kamala Das was to defend her work as of ‘some value’, she will surely be able gather equal amount, or may be a bit more, of appreciation from readers and several committees of ‘judges’ who chose to recognize her work by more than half a dozen awards. Well, you have every right to dismiss all those readers or judges as just people confusing ‘the incredible woman’ for a ‘great poet’. It’s a free country Aditi, and we are discussing art, not science which requires empirical proof to get away with claims or refutals; So you can say anything!
Ack, the inevitable ‘what you say is not the absolute truth’ routine.
‘However, what surprises me is not your opinion about her work–or anyone else’s work–but your apparent attitude about how precise and absolutely true opinions–yours or anybody’s–about literary work can be.’
Where is this attitude showing itself? I’ll admit I’m sure of myself, but no point have I said or suggested that it is the absolute truth nor that anyone has to agree with me.
Reading an absolutist stance into one that is simply confident is both unattractive and simplistic.
‘You seem to be talking about poetry as if it is a matter of mathematically provable truth; as if you believe in an objective reality that can assert if a certain poem is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or ‘having minor flaws’ or major ones.’
We’re getting into philosophy here and that’s not my strong point. What I can say that is that my opinion is subjective, but that subjective opinion is derived in part from a shared understanding of what is ‘good’ in poetry. So if I say ‘minor flaws’ and ‘technically capable’ I am referring to some generally accepted criteria, not something I invented by myself.
Mathematically provable truth? Where did I even come close to suggesting such a thing? This is can only be a product of your imagination!
‘When you state that her poetry does not have the capacity to ‘appeal to someone’s taste’’
That is not what I said at all. I said, ‘It’s not a case of [...] being technically capable but not appealing to someone’s taste.’ There’s a huge difference between what you said and what I said, and I’m not going to explain it to you.
And as a matter of fact, I have stated in my post and in the comments several times that I know people appreciate her poetry and I can partially understand why. One example: ‘…my understanding is that a lot of people admire her poetry simply because she lived (or claimed to live) an unconventional life.’
John, your argument eats itself. This one phrase makes your whole comment worthless:
I did not think she is a poet of no value, as you seem to think, though I surely do not think she is the greatest poet ever walked on earth
In one breath you have asserted that
1) Das’s poetry has value and
2) it does not have an extremely high amount of value.
You, too, are expressing certainty in your opinion. The only difference is what that opinion is.
I notice, too, that you do not question the correctness of “all those readers or judges”. How come? Are only negative opinions suspect?
Aditi: Much after I’d formed this opinion — a couple of months, in fact — someone told me about his interview in which Kamala Das/Suraiyya said that if she hadn’t learnt Malayalam and English, she’d be writing poetry in whatever language she did learn. (I’m paraphrasing based on hearsay, so please forgive any accuracies, but I think this is right for the most part.) That just solidified my feeling that she was contemptuous of language. You’re dismissing your medium right there.
For all that Das certainly seems to be an awful poet, I can’t agree with this claim. To say that one (thinks one) would have written poetry in whatever language one happened to learn isn’t to claim that languages are interchangeable, surely? Probably most painters would say that they would still have become artists if we somehow lived in a world without paint; I don’t think that would show contempt for the medium.
@ Nicholas
‘To say that one (thinks one) would have written poetry in whatever language one happened to learn isn’t to claim that languages are interchangeable, surely?’
No, it isn’t quite that. But isn’t there something strange/wrong about a statement like that?
I’ll admit that for me the main indication of her contempt for language is the negligent writing itself, so maybe when I heard that quoted to me, I grabbed it for my arsenal. But still…
hi
Thank you so much for explaining that bit.It really shows the kind of interest you have for poetry. I am still doing some research and trying to figure out what poetry means and you had guessed it right. I really wish to catch hold of some of kamala das’ poems and this interest was purely aroused by your article.
Thank you aditi!
Aditi, I really like what you’re doing here; it’s very important to buck the usual Indian trend of turning our senior writers (indeed all our public figures) into gods. At the same time it is clear –as we have been discussing– that your reading of this poem and of kamala das is now inseparable from the reading that was inflicted on you in the English literature classroom.
I should say that, as I reflect on it, I do think there is something of worth in the Kamala Das poems that I have read. I read some of her last poems in the Little Magazine a while back. It’s true that I have no memory of the poems themselves, but I do have a genuine memory of the experience of reading them: there was something visceral in them that grabbed me, and I remember thinking they were better than anything else in that issue, and better than much of the Indian poetry that was being written. For all her immense sloppiness/carelessness with form and language–which is obviously a problem and very important to point out, critique–what I remember liking about her poetry is its willingness to speak in a very raw, direct and fearless way.
These qualities may or may not be enough her a great poet, but they are qualities I find rare in modern Indian poetry and indeed, modern Indian literature as a whole. Every literary scene has its deficiencies, and in my opinion a great deal of post-independence Indian poetry is quiet, feeble and overcalculated in its gestures and–in the case of Indian English poetry especially–ceremonious, distant from everyday speech patterns to some extent. So it could be said that Das’s poetry, for what it was worth, reminded Indian poetry of things that it didn’t otherwise have. Incidentally I find degrees of sloppiness in many of the Indian poets of her generation–there’s a sense that they were writing in a vacuum and could have used some interlocutors to help them beat their work into better shape.
I say “gesture” in a nod to Nicholas’ comment. Obviously language is the material poets work with, and it’s disturbing that many people who call themselves Indian English poets don’t seem to be working close to language at all but, on the other hand, I also disagree with that perspective–so fashionable in literary theory of the 80s and 90s–that a poem is only about language. There is a real world beyond language that is being pointed to, and as such, poems can sometimes contain and work with extra-linguistic gestures.
Das’ poetry, though lacking in form, certainly has its place in literature just for the barriers it broke. Was she a good poet? Surely not. Was she a “great” poet? Why not. A lot of mediocre photographs get the Pulitzer, change lives, opinions, just by virtue of the risk the photographers have put themselves at. Art isn’t — shouldn’t be — just about fine articulation or purity of craft. There’s something to be said about the emotional and intellectual risk the writer perpetuates through his/her work. Das was one of the first few to discuss the nature of illicit relationships; whether she spoke from experience is immaterial; we are not critiquing her biography. She did not discuss cheating as a measure of seeking pleasure. But the illegitimacy — if you’ve ever felt that — that exists in this apartment does not exist elsewhere in the world. The knowledge, the sadness that it won’t last — these were explorations no one had attempted in India as a woman. She built her poems in bad terrain. I’ve read her for over 10 years, yet have liked only ONE piece so far “The Maggots – from the descendants.” In reading her, I do not look whether she got the technique straight just so the form is right — writing like that is a big waste of my time.
I stopped reading her because she no longer has an emotional impact on me, not because I felt she was a bad writer. So many new writers are trying so hard to write poetry that fractures reality so the reader has to participate to complete it — I do not understand why that is so. I continue to go back to Das because a lot of her writing is based on cognition — and I am interested in that. She does not attempt to mystify the reader, she tries to trick them into feeling something. I felt she is trying to work by insight, not cleverness.
-H
@ Equivocal
I looked for those poems and couldn’t find them. I think they must be only in the print editions, and I don’t subscribe to TLM.
I do agree that there’s something interesting in her poetry; I did point out something I liked in ‘An Introduction’ and was/am being far more scathing in my comments than in the post itself. Maybe she is raw and direct, but I guess I don’t feel it.
Oh! And I didn’t mean to suggest that poetry is all language, but that you have to work with it no matter how fearless and unconventional you are. That’s interesting about the poets of her generation. It’s only fair that I mention that I didn’t grow up reading Indian poetry (except Toru Dutt, whom I loved, but she was a mix of different identities, wasn’t she?) and don’t have an emotional attachment to many of these poets.
@ Hemant
Thanks for bringing a different opinion to the table. There are some things we agree on:
- Great technique and nothing else does not make a great poem/poet.
- It doesn’t matter whether or not she misrepresented some aspects of her life.
- She is important (though, for me, not necessarily as a poet).
I’m not sure I’d hold the Pulitzer as a standard for anything. I also don’t understand what you mean by: ‘I continue to go back to Das because a lot of her writing is based on cognition — and I am interested in that. She does not attempt to mystify the reader, she tries to trick them into feeling something. I felt she is trying to work by insight, not cleverness.’ It’s all a bit airy.
I remember The Maggots quite well. It’s a nice piece of writing, but I’d prefer it as a short short or a vignette. It doesn’t work for me as a poem, and that’s my major problem with her. I’m interested in what she has to say, but not when she says them in poems.
‘In reading her, I do not look whether she got the technique straight just so the form is right — writing like that is a big waste of my time.’
Writing like that or reading like that? Maybe you misunderstood me: I didn’t read her to ‘check’ her technique. I read her, didn’t like what I read, then investigated to see what specifically I didn’t like.
Agree about the Pulitzer, but that was only a place-holder for . Although, the category for photography continues to impress me.
Let me give you a fine example of a “cognitive” poem:
Not Getting Closer
by Jack Gilbert
Walking in the dark streets of Seoul
under the almost full moon.
Lost for the last two hours.
Finishing a loaf of bread
and worried about the curfew.
I have not spoken for three days
and I am thinking, “Why not just
settle for love? Why not just
settle for love instead?”
or, one of my favourites:
Married
by Jack Gilbert
I came back from the funeral and crawled
around the apartment, crying hard,
searching for my wife’s hair.
For two months got them from the drain,
from the vacuum cleaner, under the refrigerator,
and off the clothes in the closet.
But after other Japanese women came,
there was no way to be sure which were
hers, and I stopped. A year later,
reporting Michiko’s avocado, I find
a long black hair tangled in the dirt.
Gilbert’s pieces, feral as they are, speak of the vegetative struggle we all go through. He is not an Ashberry or an Auster, trying to affect the reader through clever, dense poetry. In reading poetry, I do not want to spend all my time trying to understand the writer; I want to explore myself — after all, we are all solipsistic underneath it all. Das, at some point in my life, pushed me to look at myself critically and I am interested in that kind of poetry. I come out of it not having solved a puzzle, but a step closer to some elemental human experience.
The fact that you are even “considering” whether a piece works as a short-short/vignette/etc, and not as a poem, indicates that you and I have very different reading styles. I am almost completely ruled by the visceral experience. If it works, it’ll work even as a haiku. If it doesn’t, it never will. The problem is, I have no clue what “works” till it does.
-H
” — writing like that is a big waste of my time.”
I meant, [a piece of] writing like that, though I am not contesting your reasons for disliking (most of) her poetry. I only think it’s premature to discount her poetic merit merely from a technical point of view. I feel there is a lot, lot more to good poetry that often reveals itself with time. I am still learning and often taken by surprise at what I really understand in a piece once I have really lived the experience being talked about.
-H
Hemant,
Are you sure ‘cognitive’ is the word you’re going for? And why examples from Gilbert when we’re talking about Das here? It’s not helping me understand what you find so impressive about Das or what is ‘cognitive’ about her poetry, unless by ‘cognitive’ you mean that it lead you to self-discovery (in reference to your comment: ‘I come out of it not having solved a puzzle, but a step closer to some elemental human experience. ‘) Actually, ‘solving a puzzle’ seems cognitive to me and ‘reliving an experience’ seems emotional/philosophical/spiritual.
Two points here:
One, Anais Nin is a writer who influenced me greatly when I first read her, and I still find her interesting. She did many of the things you describe, like helping me discover myself and relive certain parts of my life. It was emotional reading her early diaries. But there is no way in hell I would suggest she was a great or even a good writer. I give her credit where credit is due. And that’s just one example.
Two, I don’t understand this bizarre separation of reading something viscerally and reading something for technique. It really, really pisses me of, because I think, ‘What now? Am I supposed to become defensive about how I read poetry? Do I have to explain that I don’t play twenty questions with a poem before I decide whether it’s good or bad?’ And I really don’t want to be pissed of. (Off?)
But goddammit, I have to defend myself anyway: I don’t bring the question ‘Should this be a poem/short story/whatever?’ to a piece of writing. It’s the writing that dictates what the questions will be. If I read something and it doesn’t sit right with me, I am going to wonder why it didn’t. For Maggots, it was, ‘Should this be a poem?’ simply because it didn’t give me the pleasure I wanted it to as it was. [And no, it (Maggots) wouldn't work as a haiku.]
At the end of the day, I want a poem to appeal to me in every way possible, and it’s not something I can explain. What I can explain is the technical side of it, so I can only restrict myself to that. What’s the point in my saying ‘This did not appeal to me emotionally/spiritually/whatever and therefore it is not good.’ I have to explain why it didn’t appeal to me.. And really, I feel limp reading limp poetry (in this case, Kamala Das’s poetry).
So yes, I do read differently from you, just as everyone who has commented here reads differently from each other, but we’re not at opposite ends of a continuum (which you don’t say, but seem to suggest).
Bit too late for all that action here. But that one person could well be Meena Kandaswami. Meena are you listening?
Read the Poetry Great(ness) Game in NYT here
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/22/books/review/Orr-t.html?pagewanted=all
Hi Binu,
Sorry, I don’t follow. Why did you bring up Meena Kandasami? Has she written something on Kamala Das that would be of interest?
Cheers,
Aditi
Aditi, that was @Equivocal
‘I’d be interested in hearing a disputation of your post from someone who has read her deeply, I wonder if there’s anyone like that out there’. She’s one poet I feel who was emotionally close to Kamala. http://meenu.wordpress.com/2009/06/01/what-love-was-worth-in-the-end/
Hmm, I’m not sure that’s what Equivocal was looking for, but I shouldn’t, and won’t, put words in his mouth. I hope he responds.
I thought it is a discussion about the Works of one of the most reputed famous Poet Writer Madhavi Kutty alias Kamala Das alias Kamala Suraya who was awarded many covetted Awards and Commendations by responsible
erudite judges and panels so far before she left this world. Alas, I could see here great just a silly posturig of a couple of small people ( no doubt, but sorry to mention so) who wanted to think big and great about themseles. psycologically filling their inferiority complex or their yearn to dream big about themseles. Aditi and Sharanya
are irrelevant small people and their effort is of small ants separately joulous of an elephants bigness. Let us
not make them feel more elated by even commenting about them in a post where we are discussing about the
Works of a great Poetess/Novelist.
V E N U
Venu, I am deeply disappointed that you would defend Kamala Das by listing all her awards and calling some people mosquitoes and others elephants. I think Das herself would disapprove of that kind of thinking. Awards are not important. My question is: have you read all of Kamala Das’ works? And, if you have, would you care to present a detailed defense of her works against the comments made here?
it ws quite a surprise and rather a coincidence coming across these post, as i ws looking for some research works based on kamala das..beauty of poetry or any work of art depends on d mindset of the reader..and being poets they hv d poetic license to write things in the way they want hence they dont hv to follow a set pattern or traditional way of writing., whn we start writing we dont do it for the sake of making others read it but then whn others start appreciating it u realize its of some value and can be published…then u continue with ur writing…it wld hv been d same case with her…n whn critics of her time has promoted her naturally thers some stuff in it..
yes , i hv read many of her work…just frm a readers point of view it impresss me…may be becoz its too simple for any ordinary person to digest(malayalam wrks) n may b imaginative elements cld also b worth reading coz our imagination can go wild n if one is able to express in such a way that readers feel it cld be autobilography..that itself is art
I am reading Kamala Das as part of my final year syllabus and i must say that though she is an easy poet from the view of attempting a question in the examination, she is not great. I give to her the credit of being something in a time and writing pieces that i might think before writing even today. an to reach here ad at times her phrase selection is beautiful, like in her poem A HOT NOON IN MALABAR when she talks of feet that have “devoured miles”. she has a certain intensity, but she is overtly repetitive and that makes her poetry less sharp. And when you happen to read a poet like Ramanujan just after her, a poet with a greater depth and a far wider vision and an exactness for phrases, putting the right word at the right place so that it conveys more than an entire poem of Das. and as to her autobiography containing parts that are said to be fictional, the same is often true of her poems too. she relates circumstances that never really happened. but for that, my professor had an excellent explanation when she said that her poems are not factually correct, though they are always emotionally true.
Hi! this is shazia , student of English literature. I want to know more bout kamala das’s other poems, i have been looking for a poem sinful days by kamala das ,but couldn’t find it,so if anybody can help me out on this ?
hi, me dhruba from nepal .i read your poem which i like most…it is in our course ………………….i am really appreciated with u kamala das
you should just read the poem once again but only if you have some emotions left inside you….
Dear Aditi
Presently, I am working on an anthology on Naipaul and Rushdie. Your critical endeavour will certainly be fruitful for the coming readers and researchers.
I have sent CFP to your mail and plz respond by being a critic and litterateur.
Regards
Ajay K Chaubey
as i feel das is an unconventional Indian poet.her poetry related to her life. she criticizes traditional Indian society which is highly conventional. as a feminist poet she likes to be independent and pour the agony of Indian woman who lives under pressure. as a young wife she has undergone many difficulties.if a poet can liberate her own society from the so called traditions her effort is successful.