Nissim Ezekiel's Poetry
1)Nissim Ezekiel is an Indian poet who writes in English. Discuss.
Nissim Ezekiel was an Indian Jewish poet, playwright, editor and art critic. He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian writing in English. Although born in a Jewish family, he was an Indian poet writing in English. He had committed himself to India, its cultures, values and ethics), and ‘Indianness’ had been in his veins. This ‘Indianness’ was unique in Ezekiel. N K Ghosh asks, what prevents Ezekiel “from revelling in the non personal notions of a poem worthy India, its glorious past,its mysticism,cultural or historical nostalgia”. He answers that Ezekiel’s ‘primary concern is not the India which appeals to the West, but the India to which he can and he does, truly belong”
His contribution to Indian poetry is important both for its quality and variety. His early poetry has close affinities with the work of T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Ezra Pound and Rainer Maria Rilke. Ezekiel’s poetry renders the contemporary themes of alienation, spiritual emptiness, isolation, and fragmentation with humour, compassion and irony. Personal, unsentimental feelings expressed show ironies with the complexities of emotions and consciousness, Ezekiel mainly aimed at the preciseness of image and appropriateness of languages, feeling and accurate poetic form. He wrote in a philosophical, introspective mode, and his unpretentious yet restrained conversational style. He was the path breaker in the use of modern speech inflections within the framework of formal verse patterning.
Despite of using English, the colonial language, to craft his works, the poet adeptly maintained his rootedness in the Indian ethos, which was evident in his series of eight poems, ‘Very Indian poems in Indian English’.
“I am standing for peace and non violence”
This refers to the Father of our Nation, Gandhiji.
“Tribute to the Upanishads” and the third of the “Passion Poems” are
Nissim Ezekiel was an Indian Jewish poet, playwright, editor and art critic. He was a foundational figure in postcolonial India's literary history, specifically for Indian writing in English. Although born in a Jewish family, he was an Indian poet writing in English. He had committed himself to India, its cultures, values and ethics), and ‘Indianness’ had been in his veins. This ‘Indianness’ was unique in Ezekiel. N K Ghosh asks, what prevents Ezekiel “from revelling in the non personal notions of a poem worthy India, its glorious past,its mysticism,cultural or historical nostalgia”. He answers that Ezekiel’s ‘primary concern is not the India which appeals to the West, but the India to which he can and he does, truly belong”
His contribution to Indian poetry is important both for its quality and variety. His early poetry has close affinities with the work of T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Ezra Pound and Rainer Maria Rilke. Ezekiel’s poetry renders the contemporary themes of alienation, spiritual emptiness, isolation, and fragmentation with humour, compassion and irony. Personal, unsentimental feelings expressed show ironies with the complexities of emotions and consciousness, Ezekiel mainly aimed at the preciseness of image and appropriateness of languages, feeling and accurate poetic form. He wrote in a philosophical, introspective mode, and his unpretentious yet restrained conversational style. He was the path breaker in the use of modern speech inflections within the framework of formal verse patterning.
Despite of using English, the colonial language, to craft his works, the poet adeptly maintained his rootedness in the Indian ethos, which was evident in his series of eight poems, ‘Very Indian poems in Indian English’.
“I am standing for peace and non violence”
This refers to the Father of our Nation, Gandhiji.
“Tribute to the Upanishads” and the third of the “Passion Poems” are