Verses

This anthology, Verses is a distinct avowal to not take tradition on trust. The poems of sixty-eight Assamese poets are a cornucopia of good news. Beginning with the poet Kamalakanta Bhattacharya of the mid-nineteenth century and ending with Kushal Dutta in the latter half of the 20th century, Verses have branched out with poems, like the sky with ribbed clouds. There is a curiously heaving picture of grief, bright hope, social angst, diversified norms, subtle and pronounced, where schisms run deep and wide. The old-world charm is taken over by the avant-garde appeal of the later poets. The anthology does not seek casual browsing by readers, for there are verses that need to be dwelt on with earnest. The poems of the poets that come earlier in the content list are a class apart! Those in the middle are again to be noted. And further ahead, the poems are of a varied and richer strain, modern in content and style, serious in tone and reflect the social anxieties. One must feel them with every fibre of ones being. Verses is an anthology presented by two sisters of a scholarly home. One an avid reader of poetry and the other a poet through life, and they hand-picked the best poets. The anthology is an anchor of love, where translation opens the key to the silence that language had locked in since scores of years. From Assamese, the poems flow evenly into English.