Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry
()
About this ebook
Related to Indivisible
Related ebooks
Telepathologies Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Everything Begins Elsewhere Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5MONUMENT Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRefugia: Poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poets On Place Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5My Ántonia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Time You Let Me In: 25 Poets under 25 Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Apsara in New York: poems Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Voices in the Air: Poems for Listeners Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Guide to Poetics Journal: Writing in the Expanded Field, 1982–1998 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLetters to My Oldest Friend Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe FSG Poetry Anthology Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsJustin Chin: Selected Works Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSpectra Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A God at the Door Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Affirmations Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Los Angeles Review No. 23 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSheet Music Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBlue in Green Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFairoz Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSacrilegion Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Geography of the Forehead Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsShrapnel Maps Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Dark Pond Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Rock Stars Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Inheritance of Haunting Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Study Guide for Li-Young Lee's "The Weight of Sweetness" Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt the End of Sleep Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLofty Dogmas: Poets on Poetics Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Fauxccasional Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Way Forward Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Pillow Thoughts II: Healing the Heart Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsYou Better Be Lightning Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dream Work Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Favorite Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Road Not Taken and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Enough Rope: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Complete Works Of Oscar Wilde Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Carrying: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Waste Land and Other Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Indivisible
0 ratings0 reviews
Book preview
Indivisible - Neelanjana Banerjee
Introduction
Divisions
A Mangalorean Catholic, I pray in Konkani, count in Kannada, swear in Tulu, sing in Hindi, write in English, and dream in American.
—Ralph Nazareth
South Asian American poets have roots in a multiplicity of languages, cultures, and faiths. As a result, there will always be inherent contradictions in grouping together writers of such differing backgrounds. However, the experience of living and writing in the United States ensures that these poets share at least one thing in common: they are all active participants in the world of American literature. In compiling this anthology, we aim to encourage both an examination of what it means to be an American poet writing today and an enriched understanding of the South Asian American experience. In light of this two-pronged mission, we hope that this anthology might play a role in enlivening the ongoing debates regarding both literary and ethnic divisions within the United States and the nature of our indivisibility, both as a nation and as a community of writers.
While the history of literature is riddled with divisions, one key example of literary disunity is the split that occurred in the United States in the 1990s between writers claiming to represent quite distinct schools of poetry. Schisms appeared between New Formalism and Spoken Word, between introspective lyric forms, narrative identity-based poetry, and the theoretical constructs of Language Poetry.¹ Consequently, by the end of the twentieth century, American poetry seemed both overly academic and deeply divided, leading to a reduction in a general readership at home, while diminishing its standing abroad. In the last few years, however, the boundaries between these different aesthetic schools are increasingly becoming blurred. There is an exciting sense of the possibilities of cross-fertilization as a growing number of poets adapt and assimilate each other’s techniques, themes, and forms. Nevertheless, it should be noted that this process of exchange and resynthesis is already well established among American poets with South Asian roots, many of whom have extensive experience of borrowing and transforming ideas from a multitude of different traditions. Such writers are often equally at ease with narrative form as with fragmentation, with discontinuity as with dactyls. Thus, Tanuja Mehrotra’s threaded ghazals
(a form Mehrotra created) merge the lyrical iterations of the traditional ghazal with the disjunctions of postmodern writing. Even when we consider the oeuvres of individual poets, we see a pluralism of form and content. For example, Faisal Mohyuddin’s work includes both the long-form narrative poem, embracing history and politics, and short bittersweet satires charting modern-day love.
In his critical analysis of contemporary American poetry, Richard Silberg notes that the best U.S. poets today form a distinctive sphere with many different parallel poetries, relatively equal, blurring and fusing across their boundaries.
² We would like to suggest that the range of poetry being written by South Asian Americans today, with all its distinct and symbiotic forms, characterizes much of what is most valuable in current U.S. writing. We would argue that, rather than being relegated to a literary backwater, South Asian American poets are an essential—and indivisible—part of the landscape of American