In an age of postmodernist utterances, the incessant babble of the hyper-real images on our T.V. screens, the cacophony of ‘discourses’, we are left injured and stupefied by the violence of words. Our word-weary souls seek respite. It is here that poetry comes to our rescue for we need the much deprived ‘quiet peace’ for reflection and introspection. The continuous blizzard of words freeze our responses and we lose the feel of the ‘word’ and its meaning. Poetry, perhaps, may bring back the much needed ‘thaw’. To review an anthology of poems by a seasoned poet like kunwar Narian, is a task half done or done clumsily. He has been on the Hindi literary scene for almost five decades. These days there is mass production of ‘one book’ wonders, the chosen incarnations of the market gods, who flash and then fizzle out. Kunwar Narain stands apart. He started writing way back in the 1950s (Chakra Vyuh, 1956), when the twin streams of ‘Progressive’ and ‘experimentation’, merged into the crowded movement in Hindi, called Nai Kavita or the ‘new poetry’
March 2004, volume 28, No 3