the brown critique: july 2011

the brown critique: july 2011: i. Julie O'Yang interview “Sexual Love as an Antidote to Totalitarian Control” In memoriam of those who perished on 4 June 1989 on...

A Common Sight

Down the street,
Beside a neglected nook,
A tattered figure crouched
On his haunches emerged,
With a buried head in
Between his worn out knees,
And with a face unnoticed, unseen.
The morning yawned
With commuting bodies and machines,
A common sight.

Lyricism in Sarojini Naidu's Poetry

Sarojini Naidu is a lyricst of eminence in the entire range of Indo-English poetry. Neither Toru Dutt, nor Aurobindo can match the excellent sonorous melody of her verses. "she sings to us songs of India "(R.Bhatnagar). Her poems have 'bird like quality of a song ' that are about joys of spring, the raptures of love and colourful spectacles of Indian life and milieu.
Her love poems have the very euphony of lyrical tone and temper.(ref. An Indian Love Song, A Persian Love Song, A Rajput Love Song). But the songs of life and death sings of the helplessness of mankind before the formidable presence of fate. The best melodious quality of her lyrics can be discerned in Indian folk songs. Hence comes the soft and delicate music in the Palanquin Bearers;


Lightly, O lightly we bear her along
She sways like a flower in the wind of our song;
She skims like a bird on the foam of a stream,
She floats like a laugh from the lips of a dream.
Gaily O gaily, we glide and we sing
we bear her along like a pearl on a string.

Kamala Das:My Mother at Sixty-six (CBSE XII)

My Mother at Sixty-six reveals the
the prospect of ageing and pangs
of separation.The poet is
distressed that her mother is
ageing as she is on her way to
airport;she looks like a corpse
with her pale and lifeless face.The
thought of losing her upsets
her.She wishes to remove her
painful thought looking at the
energized children and sprinting
trees outside.At the airport her
childhood fear of losing her
brings pain to her again but she
tries to conceal her fear saying
with an optismistic smile"see you
soon,amma,"
----------------------------
1.FEELINGS OF POET SEEING HER
MOTHER
The speaker feels a typical pain
and ache caused by
separation.Her pale lifeless face
with signs of ageing brings her
the fear of losing her.
2.POET IS SAD
She becomes sad because she will
lose her mother sooner or later
with no chance of meeting her
again.
3.TREES SPRINTING
The trees symbolize life and
energy of youth.The vehicle
moving fast the trees passing by
them seem to run away in split of
second brings out the inevitable
truth of passing time that is gone.
(the youthful time and frolic that
no longer exists)

Life and Robert Frost

Robert Frost(a name never to be mentioned without reverence)
suffered heavily
throughout his life at the
hands of grief and loss. At
the age of 11 (1884)his
father died to tuberculosis
leaving the family in
financial distress. Sixteen
years later his mother, too,
died of cancer.
But family deaths and
intense depressive bouts
would mark Robert's life
as long as he lived.
Following the death of his
mother, he had to commit
his sister to a mental
institution, where she
lived for nine years before
also perishing.
Robert Frosts' children,
too, were not spared from
what seemed to be
inherited bouts of
misfortune and
depression. Of his six
children (Wikipedia):
*His son Eliott died died at
the age of 8 due to
Cholera.
*His son Carol committed
suicide at the age of 38.
*Two of his daughters
(Emma and Marjorie) died
after childbirth.
*His daughter Elinor died
three days after birth.
The only surviving
daughter was Lesley who
outlived her father by 20
years.
His wife Elinor died of
heartattack one year after
being diagnosed with
breast cancer in 1938.
Such was his life rather a life of sufferings
(I HAVE FALLEN UPON THE THORNS OF LIFE
I BLEED....Shelley).
so is it an exaggeration as he has penned down?:
"In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: it goes on."
(Frost's biography inputs: source, Hubpages and Wikipedia.)