Angular Desire
Poetry Book Society Spring 2020 Special CommendationA handful of writers defines the canon of postcolonial anglophone poetry in India. Srinivas Rayaprol has generally been omitted from the list. But…
Specifikacia Angular Desire
Poetry Book Society Spring 2020 Special CommendationA handful of writers defines the canon of postcolonial anglophone poetry in India. Srinivas Rayaprol has generally been omitted from the list. But his recently-published correspondence with William Carlos Williams and with the publisher James Laughlin reveals an accomplished, complex and enigmatic figure torn between opposing forces. His Brahmin Indian background, his profession as a civil engineer in a newly-independent country, were at odds with his Western education, literary vocation, and demonic impulses. Such contradictions are expressed in his intense poetry, here restored to print, providing insights into Anglo-Indian and American writing, and a unique contribution to international literary modernism. He was influenced by Williams; he resisted (though at Stanford) the formal discipline of Yvor Winters.