Jejuri by Arun Kolatkar
A sequence of stunningly simple but haunting poems, Jejuri is one of the great books of modern India. Jejuri is a site of pilgramage in author Arun Kolatkar's native state of Maharashtra, and Jejuri the poem is the record of a visit to the town -- a place that is as crassly commercial as it is holy, as modern and ruinous as it is ancient and enduring. Evoking the town's crowded streets, many shrines, and mythic history of sages and gods, Kolatkar's poem offers a rich description of India while at the same time performing a complex act of devotion. For the essence of the poem is a spiritual quest, the effort to find the divine trace in a degenerate world. Spare, comic, sorrowful, singing, Jejuri is the work of a writer with a unique and visionary voice.
Arun Kolatkar was born in 1931 in Kolhapur, Maharashtra, India. He grew up in a traditional patriarchal Hindu extended family, describing their crowded home as 'a house of cards - the rooms had mudfloors which had to be plastered with cowdung every week to keep them in good repair'. He was educated at Rajaram High School in Kolhapur, where lessons were taught in Marathi, and at the J.J. School of Art in Bombay, also attending art schools in Kolhapur and Pune, graduating in 1957. He spent several years trying to make a living before turning to work as an art director and graphic designer for several advertising agencies in Bombay, achieving great success in this field. He wrote prolifically, in both Marathi and English, publishing in magazines and anthologies from 1955, but did not bring out a book of poems before Jejuri (1976), which won him the Commonwealth Poetry Prize. His third Marathi publication, Bhijki Vahi, won a Sahitya Akademi Award in 2004. A reclusive figure all his life, he lived without a telephone, and was hesitant about publishing his work. It was only after he was diagnosed with cancer that two further volumes of his poetry in English were brought out by friends, Kala Ghoda Poems and Sarpa Satra in 2004. He died not long afterwards. A further posthumous selection, The Boatride and Other Poems (2008), edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, contained his previous uncollected English poems as well as translations of his Marathi poems; among the book's surprises were his translations of bhakti poetry, song lyrics, and a long love poem, the only one he wrote, cleverly disguised as light verse. His Collected Poems in English (Bloodaxe Books, 2010), edited by Arvind Krishna Mehrotra, brings together work from all those volumes.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9781590171639 |
| ISBN 10 | 1590171632 |
| Title | Jejuri |
| Author | Arun Kolatkar |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Paperback |
| Publisher | The New York Review of Books, Inc |
| Year published | 2005-11-07 |
| Number of pages | 96 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |