Read the Metre

Jeet Thayil mentions this Macaulay moment in poetry when W.B. Yeats, after praising Rabindranath Tagore much, revised his opinion and wrote to friend William Rothenstein, 8220;Damn Tagore.

Jeet Thayil on bringing together some of the finest poets in an anthology

Jeet Thayil mentions this Macaulay moment in poetry when W.B. Yeats, after praising Rabindranath Tagore much, revised his opinion and wrote to friend William Rothenstein, 8220;Damn Tagore. We got out three good books, Sturge, Moore and I, and because he thought it more important to see and know English than to be a great poet, he brought out sentimental rubbish and wrecked his reputation. Tagore does not know English, no Indian knows English. Nobody can write music and style in a language not learned in childhood and ever since the language of his thought.8221; Nobody asked Yeats if he wrote in Gaellic. Indian poets who followed Tagore, though not necessarily in the footsteps of his sangeet, sometimes tried to explain the need to write poetry in English. And then they stopped bothering.

60 Indian Poets Penguin, Rs 499, edited by Thayil, brings together some of the finest poets of post-independence India, all writing in English 8212; from Nissim Ezekiel8217;s 8220;You want one glass lassi?/ Very good for digestion/ With little salt, lovely drink/ Better than wine;/ Not that I am ever tasting the wine8221; to Daljit Nagra writing of 8220;cos up di stairs is my newly bride/ v share in chapatti/ v share in di chutney/ after vee hav made luv/ like vee rowing through Putney8221;.

If you have been stumped by a lack of poetry anthologies after you have gone through R. Parthasarathy8217;s Ten Twentieth Century Indian Poets, this one bravely tries to fill the gap. The idea of the book was suggested to Thayil when he was leaving America for India in 2004. 8220;Philip Nikolayev, editor of the literary journal Fulcrum, suggested that since I was returning to India, I could work on an anthology of contemporary Indian poetry. It wasn8217;t supposed to be too much then, but it consumed the entire 500-page journal,8221; says Thayil, now based in Bangalore.

While working on the anthology, Thayil read and re-read works of poets he had known and those he had missed out in his years abroad. 8220;It wasn8217;t too difficult to choose. There were names I knew just had to be there and it was a matter of finding some others whom I included because of my preference for craft,8221; says Thayil. As for the number, he just thought 60 was big enough to encompass what is essentially 8220;an introduction to an undeservedly little known literature8221;.

The book begins with Ezekiel, and then it spans across the country and beyond. The usual suspects are there Dom Moraes, Arun Kolatkar and Kamala Das as well as other well known names like Vikram Seth, Amit Chaudhuri, Dilip Chitre, Keki Daruwalla, Adil Jussawalla, Gieve Patel and Eunice de Souza. But the book also gently reinstates the works of forgotten poets like Gopal Honnalgere, Lawrence Bantleman, Srinivas Rayaprol and G.S. Sharat Chandra.

8220;Unlike a Bangla poet, English-language poets in India don8217;t have a distinct readership,8221; says Thayil. And, sadly, they don8217;t share the limelight set aside for Indian novelists. 8220;Poets receive no advances, their books are usually out of print, it8217;s difficult to find publishers. These are difficult conditions under which Indian poets produce original work,8221; says Thayil.

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If you can set aside the debate over the title 8212; shouldn8217;t 8220;Indian Poets8221; include those in regional languages? 8212; then gently surrender to the verses.

Damn Yeats.