Episode 6 - W.B. Yeats and Bharathi Dasan

Welcome back to This Week in Poetry. Oh, I am absolutely thrilled to be back with my listeners after a break. We shall begin our new season, visiting some of the great minds who made a huge difference to the ways creativity and poetic imagination would take shape in the 20th century.

In this episode, we shall listen to couple of poems from W. B. Yeats, the Anglo, Irish poet, and two poems from the Tamil revolutionary poet of the 20th century, Bharathi Dasan.

Adam's Curse by W.B. Yeats. Professor Harold Bloom calls this poem, a wisdom meditation. Quite rightly so. Meditation on hard work, beauty and love.

A Coat by Yeats. He wrote this poem in 1914. An interesting poem about the need for a poet to be inventive, creating new rhythms, discovering new content while discarding, old coats, though embroidered and attractive. For me as a teacher, I have to keep alive the urge to be creative, inventive and enterprising. Even though as a teacher, I'm burdened with critiques and interpretations by scholars from around the world.

But then as I, walk into the class, in the words of Yeats, walk naked. Don't carry, your burdens of knowledge. No more embroideries.

Puratchi Kavingyar Bharathi Dasan. It was a major voice after Poet Bharathi. Deeply engaged, in the self-respect movement of Periyar EVR, a strong and passionate believer in Tamil nationalism, a casteless tamil society, a pure and de Sanskritised Tamil language and above all a great lover of nature.

One could find the traces of the revolutionary fervor of Shelley's poetry in poems like Sudanthiram, and Ulagappan Paattu.

That's all I have for you this week. Thanks for listening. Please do share this link with friends and families. We'll catch up with you in my next episode, with more voices from the 20th century till then stay safe and keep listening.

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