Partial Recall

India's poets have been among the finest writers of English prose earlier, Henry Derozio and Toru Dutt; more recently, Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan, Dom Moraes, and Adil Jussawalla. Writers of this kind, representing the common reader tradition of unpretentious and jargon-free writing about literature and life, are something of a rarity in India. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra renowned poet, critic, translator, editor, and anthologist enriches an uncommon stream with this brilliant collection.The essays gathered here, rich in literary detail and accessible insight, were written over the past thirty years. Among them are Mehrotra's homage to his friend and fellow poet Arun Kolatkar; a perceptive appreciation of A.K. Ramanujan; a scathing scrutiny of R. Parthasarathy; a radical redefinition of the modern Indian poem; a literary-historical view of Kabir; and a wide-ranging introduction to the entire corpus of Indian writing in English from 1800 to the present.