Unforeseen Affection and Other Love Poems
A number of the poems draw heavily on Hindu mythology and Telugu culture, and the intermix can make for slow reading. Footnotes help, and the translations are creditable, but some of them do not attain the absolute "freshness" and "original imagery" Rao speaks of. One misses an A. K. Ramanujan here, whose careful delineations of Tamil poetry has made possible the opening up of an entirely different poetic landscape, and who, as opposed to Sanskrit, advocated regional languages and, in his inimitable phrase, 'native woodnotes.' Telugu is heavily Sanskritized, and in translations those'woodnotes,' which so obviously must account for Jayapradha's power in her mother tongue, get blanked out.
Still, read it, and explore. The lines below are from 'Along the Word-Paths.'
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. Shall I tell you a truth?
When a word, however noble, gets worn out by overuse,
I find it too narrow to express my thoughts.
And 'love' is one such word.
Like the new day that begins while I think of you,
I want some new dreams.
Some waves in the ocean of language.
They should be, regardless of the beauty of words, like--
young couples' green-chili-hot talk,
birds circling over water in the tank,
lovely green lawns,
like a baby's joyous laughs,
like the sunset in the west...
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