An Introduction – A Confessional poem

Assignment Paper-7-E-C-202

Topic- An Introduction – A Confessional poem

Dabhi Ashvin P

M.A. Part – 1

SEM- II

Roll No -06

Year – 2010-11

Department of English

Submitted to Mr. Devarshi Mehta

Department of English,

Bhavnagar University

Ø Introduction

               Kamala Das is one of the members of the poetic trinity of Indo-Anglican poets. The other two beings are Nissim Ezekiel and Ramanujan. She has been called a poet in the confessional mode. The confessional poets deal in their poetry with personal emotional experiences which are generally taboo. There is ruthless self-analysis and a tone of utter sincerity. The facts are not always true but there is no dedication at all from emotional truth. Confessional poetry is a struggle to relate the private experience with the outer world as it is. Such a struggle is in evidence in the poems of Kamala Das from a very early stage.

               ‘An Introduction’ is included in her first collection of poems ‘summer in Calcutta’. In the poem, she speaks in the voice of a girl, rebelling against the norms and dictates of a patriarchal society which ask her to fit in and belong against her own wishes. ‘Malabar’ is a south Indian location, covering a large part of Kerala. It is also extends to part of Karnataka. Her rebellion against patriarchy is to secure an identity for herself in a male-dominated world. The poem is beginnings with the assertion, ‘I don’t know politics, but I know the names of those in power. It shows her dictates for politics is considered a domain for men. Next come her defiant language she likes. Her reply to her critics is a reiteration of the appropriation of a colonial language to serve native needs. ‘Categorizers’ is an allusion to those who see and group other people in different structures or brackets. This term suggests the tendency to stereotype people. From the issue of the politics of language, the poem moves on the subject of several politics. The poet is in utter bewilderment during her pubescent years. Her sudden marriage and her first sexual encounter all level her traumatized. On an impulse, she defies the gender code and dresses up as a man by wearing a shirt and a trouser and ‘sits on the wall’. The guardians of morality force a respectable woman’s afire on with instructions that she should fit into the socially accepted role of a woman as a ‘wife’ and a ‘mother’. “Madhavikutti” the pseudonym kamala Das used while writing in Malayalam. A disorder that results in the misinterpretation of reality. The perception change is now seen as being a heath condition as well as the case of social in sufficiency. Following thinkers understood to be a reflection of a society’s inflexibility as much as it is associated with an individual’s mental state. Identifying her with other suffering women of the world. Kamala Das universalizes the suffering and seeks freedom and love. The poem becomes a statement on gender differences and a move to transcend the restrictions imposed on a woman by seeking individual freedom, love that allows the body to come to terms with its own needs and a self that is allowed to celebrate love’s true glory. This is the most famous poem in the confessional mode: her poem’s first line is

         “I don’t know politics but I know

          The names of those in power.

         And can repeat them like

         Days of week, or names of

       Months, Beginning with Nehru.”

                             These lines show her frank distaste for politics, especially in politically free India ruled by chosen elite. The poet asserts her right to speak three languages. She asserts her right to speak defense her right to speak defense her choice to write in two her mother tongue ‘Malayalam’ and English. She doesn’t like to be advised in this matter by any guardian or relations. Her choice are her own authentic and born of passion. The poet looks upon her decision to write in English as natural and humane. From the issue of the politics of language the poem them passes on to the subject of sexual politics in a particularly dominated figure. As the girl seeks full filament of her to traumatize and course the female-body since the same is the site for patriarchy to display its power and authority when therefore, she opts for male clothing to hide her feminist, the gardening enforce typical female attire, with warnings to fit into the socially determined attributes of a woman to become a wife and a mother and get confined to the domestic routine. She is threatened to remain within the four walls of her female space lest she should make herself a psychic or a maniac. The poet is an individual woman trying to voice a universal womanhood and trying to share her experiences, good or bad with all other women. Love and sexuality are a strong component in her search for female identity and the identity consists of polarities. The poem ends with repetition of the 1^st person singular ‘I’ to suggest vindication of the body and the self.

                 This poem is regarding the confessional mode. Writing to her5 always served as a sort of spiritual therapy: if I had been a loved person, I wouldn’t have become a writer. I am what I am. The poetess claims that she is not interested in politics, but claims to know thee names of all in power beginning from Nehru. She seems to state these are involuntarily ingrained in her. By challenging us that she can repeat these as easily as days of the week, or the names of months. She echoes that these politicians were caught in a repetitive cycle of time, irrespective of any individuality. They did not define time; rather time defined them.

                   Subsequently, she comes down to her roots. She declares that by default she is an Indian. Other considerations follow this factor. She says that she is ‘born in’ Malabar. She does not say that she belongs to Malabar. She is far from regional prejudice. She first defines herself in terms of her nationality, and second by her color. And she is very proud to exclaim that she is ‘very brown.’ She goes on to articulate that she speaks in three languages, writes in two and dreams in one. In this poem there is a good line,

           “I speak three languages.

          Write in two, dream in one.”  

              Through dreams require a medium Kamala Das echoes that the medium is not as significant as is the comfort level that one requires. The essence of one’s thinking is the prerequisite to writing. Hence, she implores with all- “critics, friends, visiting cousins” to leave her alone. She reflects the main theme “Broken images”, the conflict between writing in one’s regional language and utilizing a foreign language. The language that she speaks is essentially hers. The primary ideas are not a reflections that reader it human. It is the distortions and queerness that makes it individual. It is imperfections that render it human. It is the language of her expression and emotion as it voices her joys, sorrows and hopes. It comes to her as cawing comes to the crows and roaring to the lions, and is therefore impulsive and instinctive. It is not the deaf, blind speech. Through it has its own defect it cannot be seen as her handicap. It is not unpredictable like the trees on storm or the clouds of rain. It possesses a coherence of its own: an emotional coherence.

             Kamala Das is concerned with herself as victim. What a confessional poet gives us is the psychological equality for his or her mental state, and it is such ‘psychological equivalents’ that we always get in the poetry of Kamala Das and in this respect she is to be compared to such confessional poets. Struggle is in evidence in the poems of Kamala Das from a very early stage. In this poem she struggles to keep her to “fit in”. Having refused to choose a name and a role she feels it necessary to define her identity.

           “I am saint. I am the beloved and the

            Betrayed. I have no joys which are not

          Your, No Aches which are not yours.

                    I too call myself I…

                      The painful assertion, “I too call myself I”, comes from the predicament of the confessional poet. Her experiences are common and ordinary, infect too common to give her any special identity. The “I” which experiences them. She insists that is separate and unique. She sees the outer world as hostile to the world of the self.

                         She explains her encounter with a man. She attributes him with not a proper noun, but a common noun “every man” to the “I” the supreme male ego. He is tightly compartmentalized as “the sword in its sheath.”

                            Confessional poetry is all autobiographical; it is rooted in the personal experiences of the poetess. One poet stressed the impersonality of poetry, but confessional poetry is intensely personal and the particular, she rises to the general and the universal. Her own predicament and her own suffering become symbolic of human predicament and human suffering. Here, in this poem Kamala’s greatness lie as an artist she is both intensely personal and universal.