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Pradip Acharya
Recent Assamese poetry refuses stubbornly to be marginalized. The poets have readily
emerged from the shell of quietism, a regionalist equivalent of the earlier escapism.
The poetry has even participates in the current of history. This participation sidesteps totalizing
structures and ideologies. The poets themselves do not admit of any easy categorization,
but each of them, while living out his separateness, is found to respond to the consequences
of violence leading to the proliferation of elegiac responses and almost impersonal,
long, narratives. Lots of heroes had safely died for the ancient balladists to celebrate
their diffused despair. But these poets are responding to the consequences of actual
public violence. This intrusion of the public demands fresh strategies for silence,
for the poets would not 'tell' despite their desperate need to communicate. This necessitates
the vitally metaphoric search for fresh images, for obliquities.
This is where we encounter
the long shadows cast by the stalwarts. The search was initiated by Navakanta Barua
and continues in Bipuljyoti Saikia and Hemanga Dutta,
two of the youngest poets. The range and depth of Navakanta Barua's concerns
have attracted other adherents and we find Syed Abdul Halim trying to underline
his historical moorings.
Nilmoni Phukan in his
latter poetry, which concerns us here, showed his resilience and versatility
in moving from color to contours. Surrealism was his strategy for the immersion in the public
which in turn became telluric. One of the supply lines was his translation of Popa and the Japanese
Haiku. Sameer is sufficiently electric, versatile and technically
polyglot to respond comprehensively to and venture beyond the area mapped by
Nilmoni Phukan. Anis, Anubhav
and Jiban, all look up to Phukan.
Jiban's lyric economy is due to his immersion in the folk and
Lutfa's to her exploration of it. In their poetry we realize
that filigree wears fainter now maybe because of the pressure of the public domain. But
Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that
The fireworks are provided by Nilim Kumar with his explosive
idiom. He celebrates the physical immediacy of human experience albeit with avoidable insistence.
Cheniram Gogoi, on the other hand,
has the same idiom coupled with a lyric intensity that we find in Hiren Bhattacharjya
and yet he reaches out to issues and events larger than himself. He and Sameer
are the new voice and are a force to reckon with.
Hiren Bhattacharjya has
about stopped policing the emerging talents because he is now neither cop nor extremist,
the two polarities of reality now. But his intense lyricism is critical and embraces the universal.
Nirmalprabha Bordoloi, the doyen of women poets in this our era
is more impassioned if less intense. There is close commerce between her short, impassioned poems and
the feeling and moving songs she has written. Sad possibilities are sensitively monitored by Anupama
and she, with Sameer and Sananta,
also gives us a feel for alien realities.
Kabin Phukan
is a voice apart and registers the first real break with the past with his decisive and deliberate
anti-romanticism. His technical virtuosity has obviously facilitated his impressive debut but whether
he lives up to his promise is another matter. Part of all this began with Harekrishna Deka's
'Dawning', written in 1975, which remains a pioneering creation. Hiren Dutta's
'Gamble Grove' which I think is a challenge to any translator is elegiac,
nostalgic, and narrative at the same time. I wonder if elegy is the defining genre of the day.
Adapted from an article published in INDIAN LITERATURE, Jan - Feb, 1997.
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