Seshendra Sharma

Seshendra Sharma Poems

Though poetry is an art by itself, in kavi sammelans (poets' gatherings)it becomes a performing art. While reciting his poem on such occasions from the Dias, unless the poet becomes expressive by modulations of his voice, his face, and his hands and in many other ways according to the feelings fleeting in the poem, no living communication is reached with the audience. Then alone the audience are drawn into the poem without any physical expressiveness, that is to say, if it is like sounds issuing from a loudspeaker, then the living link necessary with the audience will not be there. When a person reads the poem, without any physical expressiveness, that is to say, if it is like sounds issuing from a loud speaker, then the living link necessary with the audience will not be there. When a person reads the poem, all the nuances of the expressions of the poet when he recites it will be instinctively guessed by the reader. And there by the reader receives the full pleasure that the poem is pregnantwith.
The poet by writing a poem in a language is addressing only a fraction of the people imprisoned in that language. But a poem is the product of feeling and emotions, which are universal, while language is only regional. The poet has to reach the entire mankind expressing crossing the language, region, nationality and such other many barriers that divide mankind.
Translation, of course, has been helping the poet from times immemorial to reach all mankind: and that is how Valmiki, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Aristotle, Kalidas, Galib, SubrahmanyaBharathi, Kabir for that matter all the poets of all languages are the common heritage of whole mankind. While that is the fundamental truth of the art of literature, today's poets are in self-imposed shackles and not only that, they are also proud of it. They say their language alone is great and others are inferior. While poets are sinking thus into the mire of localism, the politician and the businessman are doing what the poet has to do. Indira Gandhi belonging to Allahabad contests the parliamentary election in some constituency in Karnataka miles and miles away from her place. Similarly the businessman establishes his business centers in distant countries among strange people, strange languages, stranger cultures, while, as said before the poet enjoys sinking into their own mire of localism glorifying his own language and region. The Indian politician, a product of Indian democracy, and whose chief characteristic is opportunism, raises language and region to the glorified level of political slogans to gather votes, while at the same time pretends that he is a nationalist or internationalist. This is the sorry pass to which or poor Indian literature has come to. Any change of this pathetic situation is not in sight anywhere in the near future. -
...

I am the drop of sweat, I am the sun
Rising from the hills of human sinews
Hearts are my friends
I live in the city of sufferings
...

Chased away by the human bazaars
Silence fled in to the hills
Time flows like water slipping
Out of the fingers
...

Vultures of darkness
Are eating my eyeballs
Ringing in the ears
Are bells
...

Bereft of leaves, the naked branch
That spreads onto our balcony
Is the curvature of mystery
Which poses the question eternally
...

You may be a mere piece of wood
You are the one symbol of our labour
That raised its head
in the ancient years of the earth
...

I am the doll made of your earth,
I am the living being
Breathing your air
I am the garden
...

Why is it blowing so fierce?
This gigantic storm
Sweeping over the country,
A dark heavy blast
...

It is surprising that the western literature was for centuries ignorant about the poetics of Aristotle, as L.J.Potts observes in his introduction to the translation of poetics. It is therefore not surprising that the West was not interested for long stretches of time after the days of Greece and Rome, on this discipline of literature called POETICS-

I was keen for years in gathering knowledge about the endeavours of different peoples of antiquity who developed old civilisations, in regard to the development of a science on POETRY and literature. Though I came across the fragmentary efforts of the Chinese people on the question of the causes of poetry, even before the Tang period, (for example Lu Chi's ‘Wen Fu' in the 3rd century A.D.) . There was no systematic evolution of a scientific work on the subject. May be my information is inadequate. However when I scanned across the Middle East on the corresponding periods and earlier, there was no evidence of any similar effort either in the Babylonian or Sumerian civilisations or the Egyptian. Perhaps much of the evidence of those periods has been lost irrevocably, leaving a vacuum up to the early period of Arab literature. The vacuum is amazingly, not confined to literature only but extends over the whole range of human thought, which means that the great civilisations of the middle east right up to the days of the fall of the Persian Empire and the Greek civilisation of the areas, have either sustained a serious loss of knowledge or did not produced such knowledge at all. However, it is quite reasonable to guess that in these areas in the periods corresponding to those of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and Aristorchus and so on which is between the 5th and 2nd centuries
B.C., there should have flourished great knowledge in different fields and this body of knowledge could not have been any the less than what was witnessed in Greece and Rome in those periods. All historical accounts of those areas and around remaining today, indicate at this. And when I take into the range of my vision the entire land between Greece and china, my mind tells me that during those periods of antiquity when great civilisations flourished simultaneously, there must have been large intercourse of peoples and thoughts across their frontiers and human knowledge might have been evolved by mutual exchange of thoughts and influences. In the event of this probability, it may nt be correct to say that a certain branch of knowledge was developed in this country and was not in the other, and so on. I am inclined to presume that knowledge in those periods would have acquired the form of a long-chain of thought-influences across all these countries, as is witnessed also in our own times. If some of these countries show gaps today it is right that we should only infer that they lost that knowledge due to serious historical cataclysms but not that they did not develop those faculties at all.
...

There may be many stones,
Yet there is only one stone
Which measures distances
...

Is the flower the Archbishop of a cathedral
Called tree?

Squirrels, birds and insects visit
Its branches like compelled consciences
...

Like a dove
Night alighted
On my heart
I wiped away
...

Who is flying the flag?You say it is the wind. I say it is the hand. But history says it is both.
When I consider my country's history, a great mother appears before me, leading me, by my hand
When I consider the plight of my nation, millions of wingless birds confront me imploring me to extend my strong hand of help.
Here, the children are carrying the weight of the whole earth on their slender necks.
...

Sun in the trees sun in the clouds
Sun in the waters,
Sun in The inner sky,
Sun in the outer sky
...

The crescent
Wept, wept and then waned,
Bricks are sleeping in the walls
Street lamps
...

Roads of your looks have no end, but
Your eye are not birds which migrated to other lands.
If you lift your eyes, the whole street rises to the skies,
if you drop them, the street drops to the earth, Friend fix your sight
...

In the shade spread by the tree
A
Tiny bush is standing,
Such gentle little thing;
...

Coming from somewhere as I stepped into this world, it gave
me a name unasked. From then on, all the steps I have made carrying
the weight of all my pleasures and pains are the faltering steps in
quest of an expression - a journey of mine to find a name for
...

A procession
Of
Flags of sun
In the hands
...

Seshendra Sharma Biography

Seshendra Sharma An Indian poet Prophet Visionary Poet of the Millennium Rivers and poets Are veins and arteries Of a country. Rivers flow like poems For animals, for birds And for human beings- The dreams that rivers dream Bear fruit in the fields The dreams that poets dream Bear fruit in the people- * * * * * * The sunshine of my thought fell on the word And its long shadow fell upon the century Sun was playing with the early morning flowers Time was frightened at the sight of the martyr- - Seshendra Sharma Seshendra Visionary poet of the millennium October 20th,1927 - May 30th,2007 Parents: G.Subrahmanyam Father, Ammayamma Mother Siblings: Anasuya, Devasena Sisters, Rajasekharam Younger brother Wife: Mrs.Janaki Sharma Children: Vasundhara, Revathi Daughters, Vanamaali, Saatyaki Sons Seshendra Sharma better known as Seshendra is a colossus of Modern Indian poetry. His literature is a unique blend of the best of poetry and poetics. Diversity and depth of his literary interests and his works are perhaps hitherto unknown in Indian literature. From poetry to poetics, from Mantra Sastra to Marxist politics his writings bear an unnerving print of his rare Genius. His scholarship and command over Sankrit, English and Telugu Languages has facilitated his emergence as a towering personality of comparative literature in the 20th Century World literature. T.S.Eliot, Archbald Macleish and Seshendra Sharma are trinity of world poetry and Poetics. His sense of dedication to the genre of art he chooses to express himself and the determination to reach the depths of subject he undertakes to explore place him in the galaxy of world poets / world intellectuals. - - - - - - - Seshendra Sharma is a colossus of modern Indian poetry. He is recipient of the central Sahitya Academy Fellow ship, the highest honor in the literary world of India reserved for immortals of literature. This site presents the essence of the millennium in poetic form. Seshendra's literature is a unique blend of the best of poetry and poetics. In his 1840 feature entitled' the hero as poet'' Thomas Carlyle defines a poet's role gloriously. Carlyle maintains that the poet-prophet speaks to the noble, the pure; thetype for all times and places. Seshendra sarma, the rebel poet of Andhra Pradesh is an example of such an Indian poet-prophets, the'spirits Fierie', who drive the dead thoughts over the universe like withered leaves and quicken the birth of a new, better tomorrow. Seshendra sarma, born in 1927, is a coastal Andhra product. A highly educated and conscious poet with a marked academic and bureaucratic profile. But it is not his visibility in seminar circuits and academic circles that has endeared him to the Andhrites-To Andhrites-and those other Indians who read him in translation-seshendra sarma is the Revolutionary Poet Prophet. His poetry celebrates the clarion-call of resistance. Seshendra: Visionary poet of the millennium *************** Seshendra Sharma is a colossus of modern Indian poetry. This site presents essence of the millennium in a powerful poetic style. Seshendra's literature is a unique blend of the best of poetry and poetics. -MY COUNTRY MY PEOPLE-Modern Indian Epic ******** MY COUNTRY MY PEOPLE-Modern Indian Epic is Seshendra Sharma's magnum opus. This long poem has given a new sense of direction to the contemporary Indian poetry. This Epic has placed Indian poetry on the world map of literature.)

The Best Poem Of Seshendra Sharma

Poetry-A Performing Art

Though poetry is an art by itself, in kavi sammelans (poets' gatherings)it becomes a performing art. While reciting his poem on such occasions from the Dias, unless the poet becomes expressive by modulations of his voice, his face, and his hands and in many other ways according to the feelings fleeting in the poem, no living communication is reached with the audience. Then alone the audience are drawn into the poem without any physical expressiveness, that is to say, if it is like sounds issuing from a loudspeaker, then the living link necessary with the audience will not be there. When a person reads the poem, without any physical expressiveness, that is to say, if it is like sounds issuing from a loud speaker, then the living link necessary with the audience will not be there. When a person reads the poem, all the nuances of the expressions of the poet when he recites it will be instinctively guessed by the reader. And there by the reader receives the full pleasure that the poem is pregnantwith.
The poet by writing a poem in a language is addressing only a fraction of the people imprisoned in that language. But a poem is the product of feeling and emotions, which are universal, while language is only regional. The poet has to reach the entire mankind expressing crossing the language, region, nationality and such other many barriers that divide mankind.
Translation, of course, has been helping the poet from times immemorial to reach all mankind: and that is how Valmiki, Shakespeare, Sophocles, Aristotle, Kalidas, Galib, SubrahmanyaBharathi, Kabir for that matter all the poets of all languages are the common heritage of whole mankind. While that is the fundamental truth of the art of literature, today's poets are in self-imposed shackles and not only that, they are also proud of it. They say their language alone is great and others are inferior. While poets are sinking thus into the mire of localism, the politician and the businessman are doing what the poet has to do. Indira Gandhi belonging to Allahabad contests the parliamentary election in some constituency in Karnataka miles and miles away from her place. Similarly the businessman establishes his business centers in distant countries among strange people, strange languages, stranger cultures, while, as said before the poet enjoys sinking into their own mire of localism glorifying his own language and region. The Indian politician, a product of Indian democracy, and whose chief characteristic is opportunism, raises language and region to the glorified level of political slogans to gather votes, while at the same time pretends that he is a nationalist or internationalist. This is the sorry pass to which or poor Indian literature has come to. Any change of this pathetic situation is not in sight anywhere in the near future. -

- Seshendra Sharma

Seshendra Sharma Comments

Seshendra Sharma Quotes

When a Metaphor dies a civilization dies - Archibald MacLeish

The crime against life, the worst of all crimes, is not to feel"

"Every poet is a teacher; I wish either to be considered as a teacher or as nothing"

The greatest distinction is to be metaphorical; for, it is the only one that demands originality and is a sign of genius -

Without form, the content of literature deprived of its impact, its effective power, is immobile and remains out-side the framework of art -

Poetry is the extension but not expression of personality…. The living poet is to be placed among the dead poets to assess his poetic content….

The best craftsmanship always leaves holes and gaps in the works of the poem so that something that is not in the poem can creep, crawl, flash and thunder in

Poet is really thief of fire … he is responsible for humanity - even animals - - - - - - The hand with the pen is no better than the hand on plough

In order to understand the social demand properly, the poet must be at the centre of affairs and events

Science cognizes reality in concepts, while art in images

A poet who has forgotten his own poems is either a pooer poet or else he has written poor poetry. A Good Poet remembers all his good poetry

Each line has been discovered, each has been created.. Mayakovsky is poetry's laborer

Out of the way usages give dignity and transform the common speech Aristotle

Poetry is essentially tendentious - - … To shape and plan the rhythm, the basis of all poetry, which runs through it in the form of a subdued roar, . Gradually you begin to extract individual words from the roar.

I want to be a poet and I am working to make myself a seer. The poet makes himself a seer by along prodigious and rational dis - ordering of the senses; there is unspeakable torture during which he becomes the great patient the great criminal and the great learned one among men; for he arrives at the unknown

One returns from the inspired state as one return from the foreign country. The poem is the legend of the journey

People must dream.. if a man has no dream to cherish he turns into an animal. Dreams impel progress. And the greatest dream is socialism

The breadth of the problem is great; for, the poet is the representative, . He stands among partial men for the complete man, and appraises us not of his wealth but of the commonwealth

The universe has three children. born at one time, which appear under different names in every system of though... the know er, the Doer, and the Sayer. They stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and for the love of beauty. The poet is the sayer, the namer and represents beauty. He is a sovereign and stands on the center.

Human behavior flows from three main sources. desire, emotion, and knowledge.. Desire has its seat in the loins...... Emotion its seat in the heart...... knowledge its seat in the head

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