How To Critique Poetry If Know You Not The Context? Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Without knowing culture, trend, tradition,
Subject-matter, theme,
Guessing at least,
Can one,
I don't know?

If one is given a stanza from Dr.Arbuthnot,
One may not all of a sudden,
If one a stanza from Paradise Lost
Without knowing the Biblical story
And Milton's blindness,
Can one?

Can one Seamus Heaney's political poems
Dealing with the Irish political movement,
Can one Yeats without knowing background,
Can one Eliot without knowing allusions and references?