Studies In Contemporary Poets (Hardcover-2024)

Studies in Contemporary Poets contains fourteen essays on seven major twentieth-century poets, including T.S. Eliot, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, Philip Larkin, Nissim Ezekiel, A.K. Ramanujan and Dom Moraes. These poets represent various significant aspects of contemporary poetic sensibility, and their importance is both intrinsic and historical. The opening three essays devoted to Eliot bring out his singular importance as the maker of Modernist poetry. They examine him from an Indian perspective, and this is befitting in view of the many creative appropriations of Eliot tried upon by poets in different Indian languages. The essays on Auden and Spender demonstrate how even in changed circumstances, when a closer affinity between art and life was being advocated, the influence of Eliot remained decisive and pervasive. The post-World War II English poetry represents a mood of withdrawal rather than engagement best manifested in the works of the most accomplished poet of the period, Philip Larkin. The three essays devoted to him cover the post- (and for some, the anti-) Modernist phase of contemporary British poetry. Among Indian poets, Nissim Ezekiel has played a pioneering role in transforming the idiom of contemporary Indo-Anglian poetry and the three essays on him explore the significant dimensions of his poetic creativity. A.K. Ramanujan and Dom Moraes are the other two poets who can be said to represent the Eliot tradition in Indian English poetry, and they have been critically examined in two separate essays. All these essays are marked by a uniformity of theme and approach as they all deal with different phases of what has now been universally acknowledged as the Modernist tradition of twentieth-century English poetry.

Surya Nath Pandey, born in 1946, is a distinguished scholar with extensive academic achievements. He holds a first class M.A. (English) degree with BHU Medal and a Doctorate from Banaras Hindu University. For over three decades, he has been involved in post-graduate teaching and research at Banaras Hindu University as a Lecturer, Reader and Professor. Prof. Pandey is a highly regarded author renowned for his book of criticism titled Stephen Spender: A Study in Poetic Growth, which was published in 1982 by Arnold-Heinemann (New Delhi), Humanities Press (New Jersey, USA) and Salzburg University Press (Austria) simultaneously, garnering extensive reviews from around the world. Additionally, he edited The Temperate Zone for Prakash Books in 1987. He is working on Nissim Ezekiel: An Anthology of Serious Criticism and Writing in a Post-Colonial Space, which is in the Press. Throughout his career, he has contributed approximately twenty research articles on major twentieth-century writers. Prof. Pandey's expertise extends beyond his publications. He has produced seven Ph.D.s in Contemporary Literature and is currently supervising the progress of half a dozen doctoral dissertations. He has also conducted two major UGC research projects on contemporary poetry as a Principal Investigator.