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THE SOUL THAT KNOWS HOW TO SING: A POSTSTRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF KAMALA DASS POETRY
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Swetha Antony
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By
Swetha Antony
Research Scholar, PhD Program, Department of English Literature
The English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad
Today let this paper receive my dripping blood. Let me write like one not in the
least burdened by the thoughts about the future, turning each word into
a negotiation with my life lived so far. I like to call this poetry. I
like to call this
poetry even if my words lose their music when, after
raising in my innards a
beautiful liquid turbulence, they come to surface in
the relatively solid contours of
prose. I had always longed for the strength
necessary to write this. But poetry
does not grow ripe for us; we have to grow
ripe enough for poetry (My story viii)
No other words better define the contours of poetry as these words of Kamala Das. It is
an acknowledged fact in the Indian English Literature Scene that her poetry makes it difficult for
her to be placed simply or singly. She cannot be marked or tied down biographically or
professionally and yet she has been one of the stalwarts of Indian English Writing for more than
four decades. Much of her writing has gone into the process of being named as her as well as by
others as an otheror the same.
From the deep abyss of her self, gushes forth an oeuvre of poems, which proclaims its
refusal to be categorized. Right from her first collection Summer in Calcutta her poetry has
offered a wide horizon of her thoughts on what is life and conversely it has raised more than a
few controversies. Her openness to the experiences as a woman, much against conventional
Indian Sensibility, reflected in her poems, was a major point of debate. Nonetheless, reading
Kamala Das in the present critical scenario opens up new vistas on her poetic output.
It is possible to read her texts foregrounding the feminine in a new light. She is adeptly
using English language at communicating something beyond what she has written down. She
manipulates the strategies of writing poetry and invents the metaphor to suit her purpose. Her
poems have a vibe of deliberate ambivalence. Some lines from her poem Death is so Mediocre
can highlight this:
Like an elephant not bidding goodbye while
Taking off for that secret edge of forests
Where they slope into a sure but invisible
Sea, I shall go too in silence leaving not
Even a finger print on this crowded earth,
Carrying away my bird in flight voice and
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