The Poetry Of Jayanta Mahapatra Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Jayanta first of all is a man of physics writing the poetry of physics, drawing and delving upon light and darkness chapters, the origin of the universe, the break of the day and the retreat of it, the gloom enveloping the world in darkness. A man who teaches physics into the classrooms takes to poetry, turning poetry as physics, physics as poetry.

An Oriya man he is an Odia first before being an Indian and going beyond it, traversing the national and the international. An Odia he is of Odisha, the Odishan landscapes and scenery, the coastal lines of it, its lakes, rivers, picnic spots, beaches, temples and livestock.

A poet he is inclined to Gandhi and Gandhism, deriving the moments from the making of the Indian constitution and its ideals, the framing of it and the vision and mission of independence. Side by side he also reminisces what have we got in return as for our struggle and suffering? What have they really?

What have we done for the weak and poor, the daughters and the children, women and their upliftment, what have we for the people below the poverty line, what have they the leaders after the attainment of India's freedom, the tryst with destiny?

He is sad to see the present condition of India gripped by animosity, hatred and disharmony; unrest, groupism and factionalism, he is sad to see the present state of India, the politicians misleading it for their selfish aims and odds.

A complex poet he is difficult to be analysed as for different reasons, for his imagery, covent-schooling, Christian background, physics language and it being a truth with the Indian pracising verse in English with the staggering steps in the lack of a tradition.

Today people call him a modern, a modernist and a post-modernist, a colonialist and a post-colonialist, but he has never read with that mentality as is his discipline different from the dimension and spectrum of literature, that of physics. He has read literature just up to his school level and from that he came to comprehend Wordsworth.

As a poet, he is so many at the same time, an imagist, a landscapist, a regionalist, a photographer, a realist, a feminist, a naturalist, a physicist, a historian, a romantic; a visionary, a dreamer and an image-maker.

He is strangely realistic when he talks of the hunger, human, the hunger of the belly burning it all, the types of hunger, human lust bodily and physical and dietary appetite and its fulfillment.

He is Lawrentine when he speaks of sexuality, the whorehouse and the women on display and boards, the poor fisher girl on the sea beach; the twitches of the body and its intricacies, the summer noon and siestas, the sweating and luscious kisses of it.

He is historical when he speaks of the temples and ancient sites, the rock-built-temples and their splendour and artistic excellence, when he describes the scultures carved upon on outer temples walls with the ‘dharm-artha-kama-moksha' motif inscribed upon.

He is sociological, ancient and historical when he talks of the dark daughters feminine and sculpturesque, the trodden womenfolk, suppressed and oppressed for ages. The dark daughters mythical and mystical are the love of his and the poet interrogating them.

A photographer he keeps on photographing and picturing the sites and scenes; a photographer of life and the world flimsy and pictorial with the photos and images in his collection.

A cartographer, a map-maker of Orissa and the Orissan state he does the map-pointing of it delving in demography and others.

A poet of the Indian summers, hot and perspiring, sweating and baffling, the sun-burnt homes and hamlets against the mountains penetrate the background of his poesy. The women in the orchards hand-fanning and the small daughters combing the hair of mothers and waiting for the fall of mangoes is the seasonal smell of his poetry.

A poet he is eco-centric and natural, telling of the ecological balance and the woodlands resounding with its murmurs, the rivers, lakes, seas, ships, fishermen and other activities. The rivers, Daya, Mahanadi, the crocodiles, the Olive Ridley turtles on the sea beaches and the slicks of oil spilled from the ships doing causing harm to them.

Nothing is what it seems to be and what it seems to be is nothing, a poet of nothingness bordering on existentialism, agnosticism and skepticism in faith, held by doubt and inner crisis.

A poet he draws from astrophysics, stardom and the galaxy of planetary bodies and illumination and their movement and existence, cohesion and coercion.

Jayanta as a poet is Wordsworthian, Keatsian and Lawrentian, the love of Wordsworth he has discerned, draws him to, the sense and sensibility of Keats so dearer to him, a writer sensuous.