Confessional Poetry of Kamla Das

Exploring the confessional poetry and feminist ethos of Kamala Das

by Geeta Rani*,

- Published in Journal of Advances and Scholarly Researches in Allied Education, E-ISSN: 2230-7540

Volume 15, Issue No. 9, Oct 2018, Pages 655 - 657 (3)

Published by: Ignited Minds Journals


ABSTRACT

Women writers in India are moving forward with their strong and sure strides, matching the pace of the world, we see them bursting out in full bloom spreading their own individual fragrances. They are recognized for their individuality, originality and the indigenous flavor of the soil that they bring to their work. Yes, they are our women writers, writers first, I must insist. Gender is only incidental……but, one must admit, it does spice up their work. We see Indian women writers like Shahs Despande, Arundhati Roy, Anita Desai, Kamala Das and Shaba De, just to name a few who hold their own in the woman writer’s world of initial rejection, dejection, familial bonds, domesticity and what not. It is amazing to note that these writers and many more have climbed the ladder of success the slow and painful way. Kamala Das is beyond doubt the greatest woman poet in contemporary Indo-Anglican Literature. A confessional poet, she displays feminist ethos in her poems. She wrote chiefly of love, its betrayal, and the consequent anguish, and India readers responded sympathetically to her guileless, guiltless frankness with regard to sexual matters. Kamala has surely out grown Victorian models and accepted sex and sensuality as an integral part of poetry. Many of her poems are suffered with warmth and passion, with heat of an unrequited love and unfulfilled desire. According to Dr. V. Alexander Raja, “In the poems of Kamala das, we find a rare body and its feelings and she seems incapable of thinking of eternal life as a bodiless existence. This peculiar stance may be the reason why she is drawn to Islamic religion with its different concept of life afterlife.” Frustrated by love and loneliness, she longed for an eternal life with her body and soul after her life on the earth. She loved her body as much as she loved her soul. Since her bodily desires could not be satisfied by her life here she wants to achieve it by a life after death. Kamala’s confessional poetry is obsessively mulling over love and ‘the body’s wisdom’, like Whitman that is why Iyengarcalls her ‘Femme Fatal’ whose poetry is of pelvic region. In her poetry, love appears in several roles such as ‘skin communicated thing’, as overpowering force, an escape, a longing and a hunger resulting in society.

KEYWORD

women writers, confessional poetry, Kamala Das, feminist ethos, love

INTRODUCTION

The history of American Literature saw the development of confessional style of writing in the late 1950s and mid-1960s. In confessional verse the artist's close to home or private feeling takes another course. These sonnets manage private voices with respect to injury, hopelessness, demise, and close to home relationships nearly in a self-portraying tone. A writer's close to home self has been anticipated through these sonnets either honestly or in an indirect manner. Particularly as a post Second World War wonder this kind of composing unfurls another human awareness emerging out of the overwhelming consequence of Hiroshima and Hitler's ruthless Nazi killing. Richard Gray explains: In the period promptly following the Second World War, American journalists thought back severely, in lament, in sorrow, in help or in at least one of numerous different arrangement of feelings—on a contention that had taken steps to overwhelm mankind. For this new age of American essayists the main individual verses didn't quiet them down in the isolation of their own hearts but instead empowered them to grasp a bigger social vision, accomplishing all inclusive reverberation over self-referential accounts: The fifties likewise saw another comprehension of mass man and his futilities: presently it was a "post-modern" culture that gave his experience, and the humanist recognized his model with so much terms as "estrangement", "the desolate group", and "internal coordinated". In confessional verse the peruser has a direct passionate access to the subject's awareness which thus is a deviation from the New Critical methodology of the 1940s that thought about verse as generic, roundabout and scholarly. There is the willful move from the set up idea of generic 'persona' to the unequivocal personality of 'I' which is obviously indistinguishable from the writer. It emerges out of the need to frame a singularity in the midst of personality emergency achieved by the two Great Wars. Confessional artists, by conflicting with the New Critical mode, commend the outflow of singularity which required an unconstrained and blunt presentation of self. The sentimental upheaval of uncontrolled feeling. The school of confessional artists, strangely enough, brought back the component of individual self in verse. As David Perkins brings up: Confessional verse renders individual experience or feeling as it really is paying little respect to social shows. Besides, Confessional verse communicates truth and experience so agonizing that a great many people would stifle them. Assuming, in this manner, a lady dislikes her kids or feels defrauded by a male centric culture and vindictive toward it, the Confessional mode empowers her to express such feelings straightforwardly, and, for perusers, they have a narrative worth. The unconstrained and plain articulations that one finds in the verse of the confessional school are contrary to the formal and unoriginal style upheld by the New Critics. The highlights of confessional verse cause it to take after the 'open structure' as upheld by Charles Olson, himself a writer and pioneer of Black Mountain Poetry Movement of 1950s. Discussing 'open structure' David Perkins watches:

Confessionals in Kamala Das‟ Poetry:

The confessional poets are footage their feelings resting on manuscript, craft and construction. They are tremendously imperative to their effort. It is a division of contemporary verse. There is no position intended for belief as well as principles inside this verse. The versifier may not imagine some emancipation or vengeance. This is because there is no sorrow. It is immediately that they put up with their spirit to search out a supernatural release. It is of various beneficial significances. Indian writing in English is an extraordinarily demanding form of English writing. It is exceedingly multifaceted form of English writing. This Indian English writing is interested observable fact with moderately elongated antique of more than 1070 years. The verse of this moment trembles through powerful nationalism as well as political consciousness. Kamala das has donated Indian English writings through opening a new-fangled landscape of human environment along with male-female connection as well as socio-political realization.

Confessional Theme and the Crisis of Woman‟s Identity in the Poetry of Kamala Das:

The key idea of the present chapter is to observe that Kamala Das as a Confessional poet during Indo-Anglian verse in the post-independence time, with particular suggestion to the verse of Kamala Das. During classify to recognize the most important torrent i.e. confessional subject, primary the researcher has to exit throughout various significant features connected to the Kamala Das‘ verse; male-female connection, the search of be devoted to and detail that the poetess has been a notorious writer. As a result, to resolve all categories of disagreement associated to her verse, it turns into significant intended for some examiner that she may examine all these 3 ideas, which, unquestionably from indispensable skin tone of the confessional argument. Into the current study, is projected to examine less than the subsequent points.

INDIAN WRITING IN ENGLISH

It is that composition which is exceptionally abstract, which is contrary to that other school of which Auden and Eliot are present day individuals scholars who deliberately endeavored everything except to devastate their very own solid characters in their ballads. It is verse written contrary to, or response from, the Eliotic stylish which affected a few ages of artists, and which can best be abridged in Old Possum's announcement, "Verse isn't a turning free of feeling, however a break from feeling; it isn't the statement of character, yet a getaway from character". Nonetheless, Philips verifies Rosenthal's presumption that Robert Lowell is one of those spearheading artists in this method of writing in current American Literature. Others are Theodore Roethke (2013-2014) and John Berryman (2015-2016). This School of Confessional Poetry additionally incorporates Sylvia Plath (2017), Anne Sexton (2018), Adrienne Rich (2019) and W.D. Snodgrass (2015) Contemporary American verse of 1950s and 60s are particularly naturalistic. That is the reason the writers additionally express their feelings and encounters similarly as a standard American does. Everything about close to home life like love making, raising of youngsters, drinking with companion, ailment and so forth are incorporated into their works. Topics like self-destructive propensities, sentiment of mortification, desire, association with families, complex connection towards inverse or same sex, portrayal of Freudian complexities and so on give these ballads an alternate trademark. By and large impressions of character in any aesthetic creation consistently attempt to arrive at the degree of comprehensiveness, as the general propensity of any gem is to secure flawlessness. Confessional artists basically utilize individual subtleties in his/her composition to extend an individual experiencing self withdrew the encompassing scene. There untruths the effect and imperativeness of these ballads. As though a detained progression of sea is hanging tight for an upheaval, the stifled, covered up, occasions of individual history holding back to be investigated. Individual subtleties of anguish and agony obsessive procedure of cleansing when communicated honestly through sonnets written in confessional mode. Confessional verse can be dissected as an augmentation of the continuous flow method created and adjusted by current journalists. In these lyrics the rediscovery of divided selves are brought to the bleeding edge; portrayal of these ramblings at some point can be incomprehensible. As Marjorie Perloff contends, "The risk of the Lowell mode . . . is that the ballad also effectively winds up liberal admission from one perspective, or irregular depiction of items on the other" But some way or another Lowell's virtuoso is adequate to maintain a strategic distance from this incoherency in lyrics like "My Last Afternoon with Uncle Devereux Winslow" or "1922: The Stone Porch of my Grandfather's Summer". In spite of the fact that his later compilations like For the Union Dead (1964) or Near the Ocean (1967) don't pursue the mode utilized in Life Studies, a large number of the sonnets incorporated into these books are confessional in nature.

CONCLUSION

Kamala Das hit the situation of Indian Writing in English during such when her ancestors like Toru Dutt or Sarojini Naidu had left their impressions with patriot, colonialist and sentimental subjects in their verse. Verse composed by female artists was commonly bound with enhanced magnificence, sentimental wistfulness and legends and wonder of nation. The pilgrim time frame was finished and the idea of nationality took a positive shape. So it was not absolutely conceivable even in writing to maintain a strategic distance from its effect. It was Kamala Das who previously gave a female her very own voice. As K.R. Srinivasa Iyenger in his Indian Writing In English says, "There is no uncertainty Kamala Das is another marvel in Indo-Anglican Poetry – a long ways surely from Toru Dutt or Sarojini Naidu" (680) and Bruce King clarifies.

REFERENCES

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Corresponding Author Geeta Rani*

M.A, M.Phil. (English), B.Ed.