Describe Kamala Das’s "Forest Fire" as an autobiographical poem on the creative fire that burns
within a poet.
Answers
Answer:in “Forest Fire” the poet consumes whatever comes before her and as a result she
achieves “brighter charm”. Like a forest fire, which leaves nothing behind it, the poet swallows
up everything that happens around her:
Of late I have begun to feel a hunger
To take in with greed, like a forest fire that
Consumes and with each killing gains a wilder,
Brighter charm, all that comes my way . (1-4)
There is the suggestion of reproduction in this process. And Kamala Das positively brushes
aside the approach of death which she thought as the only solution to escape the burden of living.
‘Forest Fire’ shows how Das tries to transcend the barrier of personal moods and feelings and
through a poetic assimilation projects the universal. Anisur Rahman describes, “She assimilates
the fond details of life in myriad form and projects an inclusive human consciousness in her best
poems” (78).
This poem becomes one of those where Das expresses her own experience of becoming a
poet. It’ll be unjust to treat her just as a love poet. Rahaman rightly says that the prime target of
Das is to project ‘human consciousnesses’. She consumes, as a forest fire engulfs and destroys
whatever comes in its way, all human experiences and out of them creates her poems. Rahaman
says, “…courage to own all that comes her way arises probably from the circumstances of her
desperate love-life and emotional wreckage” (78). This description of love-life and suffering in
her life has already been depicted in her poems and memoirs.
Explanation: