Keshav Malik Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

Keshav has something of an artist
An an art critic
And was too
And so is his poetry,
With the echoes of modern art.

A formerly editor of Indian Literature from Sahitya Akademi
And the literary editor of Thought,
He has authored quite a few
To register his presence, to make it feel
Into the domain of modern Indian English poetry.

The Lake Surface and Other Poems, Rippled Shadow,
Poems C, Negatives, Shapes in Peeling Plaster,
Cut-off Points, Storm Warning, Between nobodies and Stars,
All these to tell of his poetic corpus
And his artistic contribution to such a realm of poetry,
Which is still growing,
Whatever the critics say about.

A fellow of the Lalit Kala Akademi and a Padmashri,
He has of course come a long way to stake claim
In to be called a major poet
With his lines put forward as circles and impressions.

Words ordered, lines arranged, music and rhythm marked
And the ordinary things converted into poetry
Through experience and sense,
The disturbance marked in the routined thing
To let out of conflicts going within.

An art critic, a curator and a literary man,
He writes what feels to pick up,
His sense work artistically,
The lines, words and syllables speak as thus
The lines, dots and shades in paintings.

Keshav too is alike his counterparts,
No exception to them
As he too is obscure, difficult and modern
As they are in their terminology
And it is difficult to find in modern poets
So easily, what do they communicate? .