Name: Joydev Pal Roll No.

41 Supervisor: Pramila Majumdar

Kamala Das: style and diction

Hot Noon in Malabar & Summer in Calcutta

The proposition:

Kamala Dass use of poetic diction, literary skill and social narrative in her poems.

Kamala Das in brief:

One of the leading female poets writing in English language in India. Occupies a prominent position as a poetess of exquisite virtuosity and artistry. Her poetry is all about herself, about her intensely felt desire for love, for emotional involvement, and her failure to achieve such a relationship. Has a vast range of vocabulary and with the help of this vocabulary she successfully conveys her feelings.

Hot Noon in Malabar: a brief

Her feminine self moves between memory and desire. The atmosphere of her Malabar home through the imagery depicting the men and women who passed that house or visited it. Beggars, fortune tellers, Kurava girls offering to read palms. Bangle sellers carrying their wares and strangers. The imagery is perfectly realistic and creates a vivid picture of a hot noon in Malabar. Noon-time in Malabar was not only a time for the visit of wild men, but also for wild thoughts to enter her mind.

Summer in Calcutta: a brief

The title derives its poetic and aesthetic meaning from the poets intimacy with the torture of Indian summer. The April sun brings a sense of sensuous repletion and worm intoxication. The poet is drunk on the gold of suns. The April sun becomes the noble venom that flows through the poets veins. The sun is transferred into laughter; despair is transformed into hopeful desire.

Use of words:

Shows a special ability in her choice of words. Shows a rare understanding of meanings, the appropriateness and the subtleties of words. her diction is therefore most often colloquial. The words come to her effortlessly and become one with her emotions.

Diction in Hot Noon in Malabar

This is evident in A Hot Noon in Malabar as all stained with time, In light singsong voices with old eyes, cambered up. The window drapes. Brimming with the sun. yearningly and like junglevoices.
Stirring up the dust, this hot noon, at my Home in Malabar, and I so far away

Here the intensity of her feeling is expressed by the ellipses in the form of a few dots. Now, in another city, living another life she longs to back. This ellipses also heightens the feeling of nostalgia at the end.

Diction in Summer in Calcutta

The title piece in summer in Calcutta scatters its fall out of heat, sweat and weariness over the entire volume. The abrupt and spontaneous beginning of summer in Calcutta is striking and the words fallout into a quick, evocative image:
What is this drink but The April sum, squeezed

The word Squeezed pervades the meaning of the poem.

Every good writer is a sculptor with words

The clarity of thoughts and the honesty that shines through in her words continue to draw attention to her works. Das says, It is not essential that a good poet should change or recreate the language. But same words when used by a poet are seen to change and acquire a different meaning. Poetry as a genre is attempting new styles, yet the words of Kamala Das still hold good.

Thank you