Meter or no meter, when words aided by flamboyant imagination stringed together‘echo sense’—sound becoming a mere subordinate object—lines will become poetry. And if rhyme joins them, of course, for the sole purpose of reinforcing the thought that is “unfettered by the laws of nature” and “brimmed with joy”, poetry then simply becomes an earnest thing, though grapples with the vicissitudes of the modern mundanely. Yet, like every art, poetry too, of course, finally depends upon an inherent gift known as Prathibha—genius. As a Sanskrit scholar said, it is indeed this Prathibha that ultimately makes poetry “Sarvç navâ ivâbhanti madhumâs iva drumâha”—reflect the “miracle of spring”. It is the combination of these elements that makes poetry clothe and nourish the soul and importantly, aid the reader to remain human. No wonder if the great scholars of the past and present advocate reading of poetry—poetry from classics, for they offer spiritual value. They tell us about things, the knowing of which makes the life journey meaningful. Reforming our minds, they say, poetry makes our minds strong and more vital.

Interestingly we have, in this issue, two papers that dwell at length on poetry, of course in two different contexts. The first paper, “New Indian English Poetry: Anand Kumar’s Phantasmal Pulsation”, by V V B Rama Rao, discusses the poetry of Anand Kumar that murmurs “fancy, fantasy, dream, eeriness and holiness”—all taking to wings as scintillating images. Appreciating Kumar’s unique style of poetry, the author of the paper takes us through the poet’s multifaceted exploration and skilful expressions. Picking up the best from “The Temporal Blossoms” that sprinkled from the poet’s cerebration: “This night is dark/It reeks of death /.../ The cart creaking out of the inn,/Carrying frightened proletariat/To the slaughter house/To meet their end” ; “Life ceases /With that last puff/And with it/Crumbles/The Almighty’s universe”, the author commends the wonderful insights that the poet doled out through his fecund imagination in delightful images. He concludes the paper with an assertion that Anand Kumar’s poems that were whipped out with vigor and crafted emotions deserve high praise and are sure to place him on a high pedestal of modern poetry.

Considering that the narrative forms being socially construed semiotic loci are valuable sources of cultural history, the author, Tania Mary Vivera, of the next paper, “Cut-Up Voices in Graham Rawle’s Woman’s World”, analyzes the feminine voices warped by the peppy wisdom and inane optimism of the 1960s women’s magazines that were captured by Graham Rawle into his collage novel, Woman’s World—a verbal quilt sewed out of about 40,000 pieces of text clipped out of women’s magazines. The author avers that the novel is a medley of voices scrambling for cultural cognizance. She also avers that the narrators of the novel, Norma and Roy “are pitiful by-products of performativity and social constructedness of gender dictated by the homogenous culture.” In the process, she also airs a hope that the modern society is quite adept at accommodating the culturally deranged, the socially degendered and the stylistically incongruent.
The next paper, “Death as the ‘Datum’ in Alcestis and Svapnavâsavadattam: A Comparative Analysis”, by GRK Murty, evaluates the grace with which the respective playwrights, Euripides and Bhasha handled the conflict of principal characters with the death and the challenges emerging therefore. The paper infers that though the heroines of both the plays command our profound respect for volunteering to die for the good of their husbands, it is Vâsavadatta among the two who commands greater respect from the audience, for she endures the ‘living- death’ gracefully to accomplish the objective of her pronounced death. Intriguingly, victims of the sacrifice being women in both the plays, they also reveal the status of the gender in both the societies, besides subtly telling how objectivity became secondary to subjectivity, particularly in Alcestis. The paper finally draws the curtain concluding that the play, Svapnavâsavadattam appeals more to the—Sahrudaya—man of right disposition, for all its principal characters blossom out of an inner kindness and charity. It also hastens to say that Alcestis has a statement to make: Men are not always what they are said to be.

Moving to the last two papers of the issue that deal with teaching techniques, we have one of them interestingly aims at using poetry as a tool to develop Interpersonal Communication Skills (IPCS) of college students. The authors, S Ramaraju and S P Dhanavel, of the paper—“Developing the Interpersonal Communication Skills of College Students Through Poetry: A Class Room Study”, stressing that the variety of emotions embedded in poetry of various nations can be a valuable resource for developing IPCS, designed and conducted an experiment to impart communication skills to students through poetry. Their evaluation of its impact revealed that poetry can be used as a pertinent tool to develop IPCS. The authors have also listed out the limitations of their study as also the scope for future research. Lastly, we have J Sundarsingh, the author of the paper, “Team Teaching Strategy for Conducive Classroom Learning”, presenting the results of his experiment conducted to evaluate the influence of collaborative team teaching strategies for bettering the learning in a classroom environment. The author states that team teaching enabled effective interaction and likely to work well even in regular classes.

-- S S Prabhakar Rao
Consulting Editor