Jayanta Mahapatra, the Oriyan poet, so completely steeped in the Orissan culture, its landscapes and myths, its history and sounds, is one of the greatest post Independence Indian poets, to write with the sensitivity of Yeats, yet maintain the sharpness of the Metaphysical world of T.S.Eliot. At the same time, he carries forward the
cultural dominance of the tradition set by Toru Dutt, Rabindranath Tagore and Sri Aurobindo Ghosh and infuses their cultural influences in his
poetry.Mahapatra is guided in his cultural interpretations by his ‘
Individualistic thought process – where the poet refers to the “I” in him, and conveys through his
poems of social nature, personal nature and through poems on Indian life in the post independence era. His intimations of Indian culture are in fact, a
search for his roots, which in turn is a search for his identity. He feels the compelling need to define himself, while exploring the past. There is an impelling and powerful religious fervor running through his individualistic thought process and this is made even more mystifying, as the religious fervor portrays Hindiu ideologies and customs, a unique strain for a poet with a Christian upbringing.Mahapatra reaches out in his lived experiences to create a form. His poetic muse is hisi individual world and the poet is unrepentant, as he feels that his poems are for himself. first and foremost, and then for the reader. Therein lies Mahapatra’s tantalizing appeal in shaping his individualistic thought process. His poems seldom exhaust themselves as verbal icons translating into multiple layers of meaning.Mahapatra presents a constantly changing skyline in his poems. They are richly evocative as they sift through the varying landscape of the mind and bring out the dominance of the individualistic theme in the poet. Jayanta Mahapatra creates a poetic cosmos that is unmistakably Indian.
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