Poetry | Rukhaya M.K

Category: Poetry (page 8 of 18)

Poetry Analysis: Kamala Das’ “The Dance of the Eunuchs”

Kamala Suraiya Das also known as Madhavikutty, is India’s ‘Poet Laureate’. The “Dance of the Eunuchs” is included in the collection Summer in Calcutta(1965). The poem is an eloquent expression of the barrenness of Kamala Das’s love-life and emblematic of the spiritual aridity of her being. The poetess utilizes the symbolism of the eunuchs who are the very emblem of sterility. The dance of the eunuchs far from being an aesthetic extravaganza is rather a spectacle that is looked down upon.

The poetess begins by exclaiming that: “It was hot, so hot, before the eunuchs came.”

Climate change is not a matter of concern for them, as they are always subjected to cold air and frigid responses. The anklets just jingle and jingle without any rhythm to it.They are indeed a spectacle with their ‘flashing eyes’ beneath the fiery gulmohar. The gulmohar is a beautiful tree that is juxtaposed against something deemed unpleasant.

To dance, wide skirts going round and round, cymbals

Richly clashing, and anklets jingling, jingling

They were green tattoos on their face. They have to carve tattoos on their face, as the face of the eunuchs will be the only place that will be explored, that too, by disinterested eyes.…

Poetry Analysis: Kamala Das’ “The Freaks”

December 12, 2014 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

The word ‘freak’ has the following meanings:

A thing or occurrence that is markedly unusual or irregular
An abnormally formed organism, especially a person or animal regarded as a curiosity or monstrosity.
A sudden capricious turn of mind; a whim:

Here , the first stands for the sexual act in the poem that is unnatural, simply for the reason that it is not natural (not arising out of love).

The second meaning can be attributed to the object of the act, the poetess herself- an eccentric.

The third implication is responsible for the poem itself as a whole, a sudden whim that results in the poet’s inspiration.

The man in question is described in terms of his unattractive attributes: his sun-burnt cheek, his dark mouth, the uneven teeth that gleam (implying that the person is most probably dark) etc. The poetess begins the poem with ”He talks” as he is the supreme authority as in “And God said…” The act of love also has patriarchy reigning supreme. His mouth is a dark cavern of hidden egoistic secrets. The cavern is also a passage for the poetess to reach her love’s heart, that she fails to achieve. The teeth hanging from the roof of his mouth appear as uneven as stalactites.The word ‘stalactites’ denotes lack of warmth.…

Poetry Analysis: Kamala Das’ “An Introduction”

December 12, 2014 / rukhaya / 8 Comments

An Introduction” is Kamala Das’s most famous poem in the confessional mode. Writing to her, always served as a sort of spiritual therapy: ”If I had been a loved person, I wouldn’t have become a writer. I would have been a happy human being.”

Kamala Das begins by self-assertion: I am what I am. The poetess claims that she is not interested in politics, but claims to know the names of all in power beginning from Nehru. She seems to state that these are involuntarily ingrained in her. By challenging us that she can repeat these as easily as days of the week, or the names of months she echoes that they these politicians were caught in a repetitive cycle of time, irrespective of any individuality. They did not define time; rather time defined them.

Subsequently, she comes down to her roots. She declares that by default she is an Indian. Other considerations follow this factor. She says that she is ‘born in’ Malabar; she does not say that she belongs to Malabar. She is far from regional prejudices. She first defines herself in terms of her nationality, and second by her colour.

I am Indian, very brown, born in Malabar,

And she is very proud to exclaim that she is ‘very brown’.…

Poetry Analysis: The Meaning of A.K.Ramanujan’s “Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House”

December 10, 2014 / rukhaya / 11 Comments

“Small-Scale Reflections on a Great House” may appear on the superficial level as a poem about an ancestral house. Nevertheless, it signifies, considerably, the Great Indian Culture. The house is said to possess an incorrigible property of letting anything into its confine without allowing it to go back. The Indian culture has forever accommodated whatever had arrived at its threshold. It has incorporated all foreign elements into its internal structure to form a homogenous whole. The adroit repetition of the phrase “lost long ago” points to the loss of its true essence. The use of the present tense highlight the ‘presentness of the past’, how the past and present are intricately linked to each other.

Things that once found their way into the house lost themselves among other things in the house that had also been lost long ago. Therefore this projects the antiquity, rich heritage and innumerable elements the culture encompasses. In a world, were human beings are marginalized, irrational creatures are accepted and provided with an identity (name); as with the intruding cow. The poet also mocks at the so-called tabooisms about natural things in Indian culture. For instance, the mating of the cows that girls of the house were carefully shielded from.…

Poetry Analysis: Kamala Das’ My Mother at Sixty-Six

December 10, 2014 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Kamala Das captures the picture of her mother in a significant moment of comprehension. The speaker in a fast-forward life, pauses for a moment to regard her mother, with with reference to time and space.

Driving from my parent’s

home to Cochin last Friday

morning, I saw my mother,

beside me

Words are indicated to signify time, space and position (‘beside me’). The act of ‘seeing’ poses as a stationary moment as against the kinetic act of ‘driving’. The drive from home to Cochin also serves to illustrate the metaphor of journey as experience. The poem is indeed born, out of love as one observes the possessive pronoun ‘my’ when the word ‘Mother’ would have sufficed. The speaker’s understanding of her mother at the age of sixty-six, would be indeed one of enriched experience; as it would be coloured with the speaker’s individual maternal experience as with her own children. It would be a different one, with indication to the past when she was single. She could probably judge her better as a wife, and mother now.

doze, open mouthed, her face

ashen like that

of a corpse and realised with

pain

that she was as old as she

looked but soon

put that thought away, and

Words like ‘doze’ point to the torpidity that old age has imposed upon her.…

Poetry Analysis: Nissim Ezekiel’s “Enterprise”

December 10, 2014 / rukhaya / 1 Comment

Ezekiel describes the account of a journey in the poem ‘Enterprise”. A section of people endeavour on a journey to acheive a specific goal. Their sheer initiative, and the thought of their objective leave them keyed up .They proceed on their expedition and the sun shines its scorching rays on them. Nevertheless, they render themselves immune to the stinging rays and put up an enduring front. The leader of the group believes that they have withstood the heat well. They take notes of whatever they see in the course of the journey. They observe the things they find around, and the commodities that the peasants sell and buy and witness the behavior of serpents and goats. Besides, they behold the sight of three cities where a sage has delivered his learned discourses.

The travelers fall into an argument over how to cross a desert. Owing to the differences, a person who wrote stylish prose and is supposed to be the best of the group forsakes the rest and goes his own way. The others are left with a sense of deprivation.

The travelers go through another ordeal as the travelers are attacked twice and they lose their way. At this juncture, many of the travelers leave the group and go on their own way.…

Poetry Analysis: Sarojini Naidu’s “Summer Woods”

December 10, 2014 / rukhaya / 1 Comment

Sarojini Naidu is a poet of ardour, agony and ecstasy. In her perfect lyricism and mellifluous melody, she is indeed the Nightingale of India. Her poetic sensibility is essentially romantic. In ‘Summer Woods’ she communicates her aversion to the artificiality of the pseudo-modernism that she thrived in. She seeks to discover refuge in Nature from the monotony of her existence and her mechanical routine.

She begins by ranting that she is sick of ‘painted roofs and soft and silken floors’ or the mendaciousness of the so-called civilized and sophisticated life. She probably refers to the process of automation and industrial revolution. On the other hand, she craves for summer-houses with over-hanging canopies of bright-red Gulmohars. These appear lovely and enchanting when accompanied by the breeze-like wind. She is also fed up of strife and song and festival and fame. The affectation and luxury of the contemporary times seems too hollow for her tastes. They only leave in her a sense of void. She yearns to retreat into the forests where the cassia flourish and aspires to dwell in the rapturous and enthralling atmosphere there.

She implores her lover to recoil with her to the pastoral vicinity of Nature where passion and instinct reign over calculation and manipulation.…

Poetry Analysis: Sarojini Naidu’s “Bird Sanctuary”

December 10, 2014 / rukhaya / 0 Comments

Named as the nightingale of India, Sarojini Naidu ,is essentially a poetess of Indian flora and fauna. Nature was a spring of perpetual bliss to her.’ The ‘Bird Sanctuary’ depicts the ideal refuge of God that offers ideal fostering space and nurturing place for every bird regardless of its identity. The poem is addressed to the Master of the Birds. There is festive joy as the birds sing tumultuously. The enchanting aura they craft herald the Festival of Dawn. Birds of multitudinous colors produce music entrancing and melodious.

The birds strive to sing carols from their throats of amber, ebony and fawn and passionately evocate the pastoral arena of India. The bulbul, the oriole, the honey bird and the shama are perceived fluttering from the high boughs sodden with nectar and due. As the atmosphere is animated with colour and movement, the gull exhibits its silver sea-washed coat, and the hoopoe and the kingfisher their sapphire-blue. The wild gay pigeons envisage a home, amid the tree tops and endeavour to achieve the same, filling their beaks with silken down and banyan twigs. The pervading greenery is reflective of fertility and prosperity in the lives of the birds. Their ascent phrased as “sunward flight” signifies their aspiration to accomplish new heights.…

Poetry Analysis: Stephen Spender’s “Pylons”

December 6, 2014 / rukhaya / 1 Comment

The advent of pseudo-modernism onto a hitherto serene arena is the theme of Stephen Spender’s “Pylons”. The poem was so famous that it heralded a new school of poets, namely ‘the Pylon Poets’ to label the work of Spender and his associates.

The literal meaning of ‘pylons’ point to tall metallic posts that hold electric wires.Though they appear to be the harbinger of electricity, he feels that they are an intrusion into the peaceful countryside. The emblem of the pylons possess powerful symbolic significance. Their being tall, they seem to have a ‘towering’ influence on our lives. Secondly, though they are static, their energy is kinetic and therefore shown to be all-pervasive. Their being metallic, it projects a picture of being frozen to human emotions. Besides, pylons are universal, just as we cannot live without electricity and the most eloquent emblem of modern technology. They seem to run into everywhere and everything, as though runs the quick perspective of the future. Wordsworth defined poetry as the impassioned expression in the countenance of all science.

The poet begins by glorifying the hills and cottages that haunt our imagination, as they possess an elusive quality. The secret about these, says the poet was their ‘stone’: the only natural thing about them that nothing else could endow with.…

Poetry Analysis:Stephen Spender’s “My Parents Kept Me from Children who were Rough

December 6, 2014 / rukhaya / 1 Comment

Stephen Spender’s “My parents kept me from children who were rough” has as the focal point of the poem the idea conveyed in the title itself. The verb ‘keep’ with reference to the context of the poem implies “preventing”. However, the verb ‘keep’ also has its own negative connotations as in the illegitimate “keep”. Therefore it also indicates the deed of holding a person “illegally”. The notion that the parents were obdurate on restraining the speaker from such company, implies that the speaker desired to befriend them. He portrays the children for the most part with the adjective “rough”. That is, they come across as ‘rough’ both in appearance and attitude. The gist of the title verges on the fact that had these children not been ‘rough’, the parents would not have remained reluctant on their child befriending them.

These street kids flung words just as they threw stones… their verbalizing was aggressive, impulsive and raw. Generally, the act of throwing stones is intended to provoke someone, to chase someone away or to articulate contempt. One deduces that their choice of words was therefore incorrigibly abusive .They were clothed in torn dresses. These, however were not dictated by fashion, but by abject poverty.…

Rukhaya M.K

A Literary Companion