My Voice
Poetry for the sake of life---
"Poets are always ready to talk about the difficulties of
their art. I want to say something about its rewards and joys.
The poem comes in the form of a blessing-"like rapture breaking
on the mind," as I tried to phrase it in my youth. Through the
years I have found this gift of poetry to be life-sustaining,
life-enhancing, and absolutely unpredictable. Does one live,
therefore, for the sake of poetry? No, the reverse is true:
poetry is for the sake of the life."
--Stanley Kunitz, 1995
Pain and poetry have been interrelated for long time.
Sometimes, these words are treated as synonyms. This is very
true in Indian literature also. A famous line by the great
romantic poet- Sumitranandan Pant goes - "the first song
might have come out of a sigh".
But, if we relate only pain with poetry, then a big part of our
lives will be missing from poetry, because no human being can
afford to live with pain all the time. As Stanley, the great
poet of our time says- poetry is a gift, it is a light of life,
which makes us blissful.
When Meera sang for Krishna, her soul was delighted; the pain of
love became joyful.
Any pain when changed to a poetry or a song becomes joy or
celebration. That is why, Kritya celebrates poetry. In the
beginning of our journey, we celebrated Kritya's birth as
“Festival of poetry”. This celebration took place in Trivandrum
(south of India). Now Kritya is ready to celebrate her first
birthday, and we are going to North India (Jammu and Kashmir) to
celebrate it. The Hindi part of Kritya in this issue will be in Dogri which is an important language of the Jammu and Kashmir
region. It is rich in literature. We have already presented
Habba Khatuna and Lalded’s poetry in our English section. We
will try to compile a whole issue for Kashmiri language and
literature for the English section too, as we have brought out a
Telugu special issue in the past.
This
issue is presenting the famous "Basohli" paintings of Jammu and
Kashmir region. The first mention of Basohli painting is in the
annual reports of the Archaeological Survey of India for the
year 1918-19 published in 1921. Referring to the acquisitions of
the Archaelogical Section of the Central Museum, Lahore, the
Curator concludes that the Basohli School of paintings is
possibly of pre-Moghul origin, and the so called Tibeti pictures
are nothing but latest productions of this school.The Basohli
style of paintings, that prevailed in the seventeenth and early
eighteenth centuries at the foothills of the Western Himalayas
in the Jammu and Punjab States, is characterized by vigorous use
of primary colours and a peculiar facial formula. The
earliest paintings in this style originated in Basohli from where
the style spread to the Hill States of Mankot, Nurpur, Kulu,
Mandi, Suket, Bilaspur, Nalagarh, Chamba, Guler and Kangra.
The sketches in this issue are again made by our artist friend,
‘Prabhaker’. We remember him through his wonderful art.
The editor’s choice in this issue is Jibanananda Das (l899—1954)
who is one of the foremost figures of modern Bengali poetry. His
work combines the substance of international modernism and the
timeless experience of rural Bengal with the complex and
disturbing patterns of urban life and the political upheavals of
his time.
Poetry of Milarepa is presented in the
section of “Our masters”. He was one of the most famous yogis
and poets of Tibet. Spirituality and dedication are important in
these poems.
In “In the name of poetry”, we are taking a tour of the life and
poetry of Jibanananda Das. A very interesting essay on Rilke,
which was published in the sixties, is taken out from the
library.
We have a variety of poems in the section “Poetry In Our Time”
as usual.
Dear friends, thank you for becoming a part of Kritya.
With best wishes,
Rati Saxena
