Authors : Nafeesa Wakil
Page Nos : 322-328
Description :
Kamala Das is one of the three most significant Indian poets writing in English today,
the other two being Nissim Ezekiel and Ramanujan “Summer in Calcutta†(1965) this
first published anthology of Kamala’s poetry, sets the tone for her entire output. It
contains only fifty poems and with few exceptions the theme of all of them is love, or
failure in love. “The Descendants†(1967) is the second poetical volume which has 23
poems in all. Most of these poems are further variations of her favourite theme of
sexual love. This collection is by and large, bitterly death-conscious, perhaps death –
obsessed. “The Old Play house†and Other Poems†(1973) came out in 1973, and
contains 33 poems in all, of which twenty have been taken from the two previous
volumes. The poems of this volume reveal the poet’s pre-occupation with death and
decay not noticeable in the earlier volumes. The title-piece is the poet’s protest against
the domination of the male and the consequent dwarfing of the female.
