Arvind Krishna Mehrotra: Selected Poems and Translations (NYRB Poets)

Shortlisted for the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry A one-of-a-kind collection of work by one of India's best contemporary poets. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra is one of the most celebrated Indian poets writing in English and an important translator from Indian languages, but until now his work has rarely been available in the United States and Britain. Mehrotra’s poetry combines the commonplace and the strange, the autobiographical and the fabulous, and reflects an intense and original engagement with American poetry, especially the work of William Carlos Williams and the Beats. This book provides a comprehensive picture of Mehrotra’s achievements as a poet and translator and includes a striking new poetic sequence. "Gathering the work of a lifetime, spanning four books of poetry and including thirty-four new poems, this is the first comprehensive collection to be published in the United States and the United Kingdom of the work of one of India's most influential English-language poets. Arvind Krishna Mehrotra's poetry has long been known for its mixing of the commonplace and the strange, the autobiographical and the fabulous, in which the insignificant details of everyday life-whether contemporary or historical-bring larger patterns into focus. His celebrated translations from Indian languages (Prakrit, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali) take up a third of Collected Poems. Selections from The Absent Traveller and Songs of Kabir are followed by those of Nirala, Vinod Kumar Shukla, Mangalesh Dabral, Pavankumar Jain, and Shakti Chattopadhyay. Together they tell the story of Indian poetry over two millennia"-- Provided by publisher.