can i get the summary details too of the poem THE MAD written by K. Satchindanandan ?!
Answers
Answer:
The poet as translator
Satchidanandan is undoubtedly one of our finest poets today. He is one of the few English poets who cut his poetic teeth in the rural Indian milieu - in the Malayalam tradition.
However, he was able to reach out to a larger audience also because he has also been for many years a very competent poet in English as well, and he was able to transcreate his poetic impulse into this cross-border language. Thus, he is one of the poets represented in Language for a new century by Tina Chang etal, 2008.
Sadly, obscurity remains the fate of so many other poets who struggle in the clutches of indifferent translators.
In this volume, many poems are lightly reworked. In an earlier incarnation, he had written:
The poem [now] cleared his throat
and Gandhi [glanced] at him sideways
which is now more direct as:
The poem cleared his throat
and Gandhi looked at him sideways
There are many other such small edits, which are informed by a number of
friends, named in the introduction.
The poems
On the whole though the poems are all very strong as English poetry.
I do not think that the slight edits to the translations were that much
needed. It is the power of the ideas that keep you alert - a world where
"even sunflowers have claws and fangs" (though how that may relate to
Sulekha's death is a more complex story). True, there were some cases where
at translation was a bit infelicitous - e.g. in an earlier version:
Who said
that trees have ceased to follow
wind's language?
Here "the wind's language" definitely is easier on the tongue. But it is the
idea of a tree "following the language" of the wind remains the power behind
this line.
Most of the poems work by virtue of what vAmana would have called
arthaguNa - the emotional suggestion that is raises it to the level
of rasa, rather than shabdaguNa which would be more concerned with a
dropped article or the effects of sound.
Poet in the mirror
The poetic autobiography at the start (About Poetry , About Life) makes
for interesting reading.
I write in love. Birds roost on my shoulders. Trees bend with flowers
and fruits. Warring men hug one another. Language reveals its bottom
like a crystal stream. My grief, hate, anger, sarcasm all get blessed
with meaning.
But one wonders if all of it is true?
Andre Maurois once noted that all memoirs are marked by selective memory
and 'deliberate forgetfulness'. One emphasizes what shows one in the best
light, omitting odious episodes. It is a genre marked by insincerity.
When a writer writes of his art, he cannot escape this folly. Tagore
once said presciently of his art:
one wonders if some parts are really true, or are they said because
they would sound good.
The above lines for instance, does it come from some haunt of word
wizardry, the "combinatorial game" as Satchidanandan calls it.
He has an interesting definition of poetry:
Poetry differs from prose not by following a metre or rhythm.
The difference lies in its power to dissolve paradoxes and its way of
imagining things into being and connecting words and memories...
"The power to dissolve paradox..." is it said because it sounds good, or is
there some truth in it?
One can argue ad nauseum on such fine issues. But in the end, the power of
poetry lies with the reader, and I will leave it for her to decide.
Answer:
. Satchidanandan’s ‘Stammer’ is a beautiful poem that amazes the readers with its delightful ease of expression. The poem is presented as a series of half-humorous musings on stammering. With wonderful facility, the poet makes stammer the key to an exploration of the imperfections that mark the mettle of the human kind.
The poem opens with a paradoxical assertion that challenges all our notions of stammer. The poet says that stammer is not a handicap. It is only a mode of speech. Then he moves on to justify this statement.