c
 

 › a poem included in Kamala Das's first volume of poetry, d




  begins with a statement that shows her frank distaste for politics, especially in
politically free India ruled by a chosen elite. The poet asserts her right to speak three languages,
and defends her choice to write in two--her mother-tongue, Malayalam, and English. She doesn't
like to be advised in this matter by any guardian or relations. Her choice is her own: authentic
and born of passion. The poet looks upon her decision to write in English as natural and humane.
From the issue of the politics of language the poem then passes on to the subject of sexual
politics in a patriarchy-dominated society where a girl attaining puberty is told about her
biological changes by some domineering parental figure. As the girl seeks fulfilment of her
adolescent passion, a young lover is forced upon her to traumatize and coerce the female-body
since the same is the site for patriarchy to display its power and authority. When thereafter, she
opts for male clothing to hide her femininity, the guardians enforce typical female attire, with
warnings to fit into the socially determined attributes of a woman, to become a wife and a mother
and get cofined to the domestic routine. She is threatened to remain within the four walls of her
female space lest she should make herself a psychic or a maniac.
But the poet is an individual woman trying to voice a universal womanhood and trying to share
her experiences, good or bad, with all other women. Love and sexuality are a strong component
in her search for female identity and the identity consists of polarities. The poem ends with
repetitions of the 1st person sigular I to suggest vindication of the body and the self.

Das was born into an aristocratic Nair Hindu family in Malabar (now Kerala), India, on March
31, 1934. Her maternal grandfather and great-grandfather were Rajas, a caste of Hindu nobility.
Her love of poetry began at an early age through the influence of her maternal great-uncle,
Narayan Menon, a prominent writer, and her mother, Balamani Amma, a well-known Malayali
poet. Das was also deeply affected by the poetry of the sacred writings kept by the matriarchal
community of Nairs. Das's father, a successful managing director for a British automobile firm,
was descended from peasant stock and favored Gandhian principles of austerity. The
combination of ³royal´ and ³peasant´ identities, along with the atmosphere of colonialism and its
pervasive racism, produced feelings of inadequacy and alienation for Das. Educated in Calcutta
and Malabar, Das began writing at age six and had her first poem published by P.E.N. India at
age fourteen. She did not receive a university education. She was married in 1949 to Madhava
Das, an employee of the Reserve Bank of India who later worked for the United Nations. She
was sixteen years old when the first of her three sons was born; at eighteen, she began to write
obsessively. Although Das and Madhava were romantically incompatible according to Das's
1976 autobiography, Ô d  which describes his homosexual liaisons and her extramarital
affairs, Madhava supported her writing. His career took them to Calcutta, New Delhi, and
Bombay, where Das's poetry was influenced by metropolitan life as well as by her emotional
experiences. In addition to writing poetry, fiction, and autobiography, Das served as editor of the
poetry section of    from 1971 to 1972 and 1978 to 1979. In 1981
Das and her husband retired to Kerala. Das ran as an Independent for the Indian Parliament in
1984. After her husband died, Das converted to Islam and changed her name to Kamala
Suraiyya. She currently lives in Kerala, where she writes a syndicated column on culture and
politics.
The poem, ³An Introduction´ by Kamala Das, has strong existentialist moorings proposed by
Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir. Although it is unlikely that Das has
read either Kierkegaard or Satre, it is most likely that she has read d
d by Simone de
Beauvoir.

The assertion of the self against the various given social roles, identities and communal demands
is an indicator of the existentialist leanings of the poet. The first person narrative of the poem
also reinforces the idea of the asserting self. The assertion in terms of the issues and the roles it is
rejecting presents the inverted pyramid structure of the poem. The use of the indefinite article
µAn¶ in the title is also indicative of the fluid but resisting and self-determining position of the
poet.

º
   (born 1947) is a Jamaican poet, a leading West Indian writer of the generation
born after World War II, currently dividing her time between Jamaica and Ann Arbor, Michigan,
where she teaches at the University of Michigan. She was born in Kingston, Jamaica, one of nine
siblings, and was educated at St. Hugh's High School, a leading Anglican high school in Jamaica
and the Jamaica School of Art, before going to New York to study at the Art Students League.
She had also been writing poetry since her teenage years; some early poems appeared
anonymously in the Jamaica Gleaner. In her 20s, back in Jamaica, she taught art and worked in
advertising and public relations before deciding to pursue a career as a professional writer. She
began to publish under her own name in the Jamaica Journal, and to give readings at which she
built up an appreciative audience. In the early 1990s, Goodison began teaching part of the year
at various North American universities, including the University of Toronto and the University of
Michigan. Goodison has published eleven collections of poems: ¦

 (1980), 




 (1986, winner of the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Americas region),
   (1988), 

(1989), 

(1992), ¦
 
 
 (1995),
¦¦  (1999),  

 (2000), ¦  (2001), !

 
(2005), and 

 (2006). She has also published two collections of short stories, "

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 (1990) and 

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()**+,- She has also exhibited her paintings internationally, and her own artwork is usually
featured on the covers of her books. In 1999, Goodison was awarded the Ô 

 
Ô by the    for her contributions to literature. Goodison describes poetry
as "a dominating, intrusive tyrant. It͛s something I have to do--a wicked force". Poet and literary
scholar Edward Baugh says that "one of Goodison͛s achievements is that her poetry inscribes
the Jamaican sensibility and culture on the text of the world". Apart from issues of home and
exile, her work also addresses the power of art to explore and reconcile opposites and
contradictions in the Caribbean historical experience.
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Patrick Fernando is a Sri Lankan poet. His poems are impressive and follow a definite style
giving a tint of "Local Colouring" THE FISHERMAN MOURNED BY HIS WIFE is one of his
most popular poems describing the LIFESTYLE of the people in a FISHING VILLAGE in Sri
Lanka.

In Sri Lankan Fishing Villages men and women marry young mostly arranged marriages lacking
mutual understanding and affection. There develops love and attachment as usual, with the
arrival of children; a concept that has come into existance.
THE FISHERMAN MOURNED BY HIS WIFE is one of Patrick Fernando's popular poems.
The poem on the whole is in the form of an elegy and is in narrative style reflecting the
procedure of the past with the conceiving of a child a strong love cropped up between the
husband and wife.

The poet reveals the sad and pathetic story of the fisherman who went out to sea in rough
weather and met with death.

The theme of the poem is developed and expressed in an elegant manner. In a very attractive
style the character of the woman mourning the death of her husband, young and energetic.

"not yet thirty" "tanned you into old boat brown"

The poet uses repetition to stress the importance "not quite thirty"
"Trembling lest in fear you'll let me go a maid
Trembling on the other hand for my virginity"
The poet's effective and elegant wording create the appropriate situation for the event.
"When seagulls returned
New plumed and wild
When in our wind torn flamboyant
New buds broke, I was with child"

The poet expressing the pathetic state of the woman with child, and gaining experience and
courage to face life is highlighted by the poet in an exquisite manner.

Patric Fernando's diction style using free verse form with a rhyming pattern varying to give
prominence highlighted facts, a reflection of the emotional and practical experiences of the
young woman determined to face life with courage.

¦

  



   
 
 




  








 

¦


 
 



The poet has followed the metaphysical style in describing certain events."Chaste as a gull flying
pointed home "The Poet's diction style, simple and direct and expressions, rhythm and features
of "versification and the free style of poetry" shine as an achievement of the poet.

Patrick Fernando is another famous Lankan poet whose writings contributed to display Lankan
reality and to the exploration of human potentiality. He wrote with a certain confidence. We see
a vivid imagination working through his poems. That has a peculiar originality of its own. In
point of actual achievement Patrick Fernando is one of the most talented poets belonging to the
period after 1956. He is not exclusively Sri Lankan or Western. His poems can be read by
anyone anywhere as they have a universal appeal. Suresh Canagarajah introduces Patrick
Fernando¶s poetry represent the dominant ethos of Sri Lankan English poetry. [Canagarajah,
1995] He is a native writer and he deals with themes typically native in the West coast of Sri
Lanka.
In his poem µFisherman Mourned by His Wife¶ he deals with the theme of love and
marriage between a young fisherman and his wife. The fisherman is dead and the wife in her
grief analyses the various stages of their relationship. Through images the poet draws a realistic
picture of the hardships of their lives. Most of his imageries are drawn from the sea.
³«not yet tanned«you in old boat brown´

The line shows how fisherman is conditioned by the life he leads. Next the narrator analyses the
nature of their marriage. It is a union arranged by their elders. She recalls the first days of their
marriage and its consummation while his chastity and inexperience in sex are revealed. Their
love blossomed forth after marriage. The relationship portrayed reflects the typical native ethos.
And also both fisherman and his wife¶s characters represent folk culture of Sri Lanka. Moreover
Suresh Canagarajah depicts his ideas about their relationship as follows;
³Fernando succeeds to a great extent in capturing the specificity of the relationship of the
fisherman and his wife as a conservative arranged marriage. However he goes beyond simple
stereotypes to show how the relationship blossoms into deep understanding- and love. He also
evokes the psychological complexities in the emotions and attitudes of the partners which depict
the relationship as humanity alive.´ [Canagarajah, 1995]