First Collected edition of the poetry in English by one of India's greatest modern poets.
Arun Kolatkar Books
Arun Kolatkar stands as one of post-independence India's most significant and influential poets, crafting works in both Marathi and English. His poetry embodies a modernist spirit, often marked by experimentalism and influences from European avant-garde movements. While his early Marathi verse was daring, oblique, and darkly humorous, his later Marathi works became more accessible and socially conscious. Kolatkar's English poems, such as those exploring sacred sites and the underbelly of urban life, blend myth, history, and keen observation, offering a unique and mature perspective that significantly advanced Indian poetry in English.
Jejuri
- 52 pages
- 2 hours of reading
A sequence of stunningly simple but haunting poems, Jejuri is one of the great books of modern India. Jejuri is a site of pilgramage in author Arun Kolatkar's native state of Maharashtra, and Jejuri the poem is the record of a visit to the town -- a place that is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring. Evoking the town's crowded streets, many shrines, and mythic history of sages and gods, Kolatkar's poem offers a rich description of India while at the same time performing a complex act of devotion. For the essence of the poem is a spiritual quest, the effort to find the divine trace in a degenerate world. Spare, comic, sorrowful, singing, Jejuri is the work of a writer with a unique and visionary voice.