Contemporary Indian English Poetry: Comparing Male and Female Voices

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The present book is a detailed exposition of the multiple dimensions of creativity in men and women vis-xC3; -vis the difference of sexuality and gender as mirrored in their texts. This innovative and perceptive study confronts the essentialist biodeterministic standpoint that men and women are out and out different, dissimilar and divergent. By discussing the texts of the post-Independence men and women poets of India and drawing comparisons between them, it asserts that, despite certain biological differences, men and women are similar in many ways. By employing theoretical approaches based on psychoanalysis, linguistics, poetics, reader-responses and cultural and gender studies, the book expounds thatgender or sexuality can make some difference to the aesthetic but it cannot solely determine the content. The social, cultural and political milieu of the day plays a crucial role in deciding the content and object of writing, besides conditioning the psyche and thought process of the author, more than gender or sexual difference does. This study provides new insights into the varied aspects of man-woman relationship, the nitty-gritty of different family relations, the milieu, human correlation with nature, and metaphysical questionings of life, death, God and human existence, besides analyzing the influence of gender and sexual difference on poetic craft, particularly on language, style and technique. It analyses the poems of over twelve major Indian men and women poets and compares them in terms of diverse themes, diction and idiom, and with particular focus on the workings of gender and sexual difference. The major poets discussed are Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan, Keki N. Daruwalla, Shiv K. Kumar and Jayanta Mahapatra among men and Monika Varma, Kamala Das, Gauri Deshpande, Sunita Jain, Suniti Namjoshi, Mamta Kalia and Eunice de Souza among women. Since these authors are prescribed in the English syllabi in the universities of India, this study will be extremely useful to the students and teachers. The general readers who are interested in Indian literature in English will find it interesting and informative.

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Kanwar Dinesh Singh teaches English in a government college affiliated to the Himachal Pradesh University at Shimla. He has also been an Associate at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. He has several publications to his credit, which include eight poetry collections, a book of critical essays on modern Indian English poetry, besides a number of book reviews and research papers. His latest poetry volumes include The Flow of Soul: Selected Poems and Scintillations: The Junctures of Satori. His critical essays/papers have appeared under the titleNew Explorations in Indian English Poetry. He is the recipient of the Sahitya Akademi Award (Government of Himachal Pradesh) for his poetry bookHouse Arrest. Dr. Singhs poems, articles, reviews and letters have also appeared in several leading magazines, newspapers, academic journals and anthologies. Besides, he edits Litcrit India, a journal of creative and critical writing in English.