india author m 1- a-nan - University of Wollongong

Critics praise Kumar’s “finished form, the tense diction and the arresting imagery”.
While the sensuality may irritate some, the irony and wit is compelling, and head and heart are
balanced in treating a limited range of themes: love, sex, marriage, family, death as an
alternative to unfulfilled desire. Sex and religion seem to fuse as substitute for traditional
religious morality. Kumar has a Western rationalist outlook reliant on contrast.
MATHUR, O.P. "'The Same Route as My Ancestors Took': a Study of the Indian sensibility
in Shiv K. Kumar's Works" in DWIVEDI, A.N ed. Studies in Contemporary Indo-English
Verse Bareilly: Prakash Book Depot, 1984:35-44.
PARANJAPE, MAKARAND. "Nude Before God" Journal of Indian Writing in English 15.2
(1987):49-51. review?
RAO, G.J. CHINNESWARA. "The Poetry of Shiv K. Kumar: an Adventure in Irony."
Chandrabhaga 2 (Winter 1979):44-50.
Good poetry engages with both language and experience. Kumar's verse rises above
Indian English poetic pastiche in its wit and irony, but lacks "moral awareness". Sharp
naturalism is accepting rather than satiric of banality. Reviews Woodpeckers with reference to
Subterfuges.
RAO, K.R. "Masks and Subterfuges: A Study of Shiv K. Kumar's Poetry" Commonwealth
Quarterly 21 (1981):47-51.
SHARMA, K. GODABARI. "The Scholar as a Poet: Some Reflections on the Poetry of Shiv
K. Kumar" in DAS, BIJAY KUMAR ed. Contemporary Indo-English Poetry Bareilly:
Prakash Book Depot, 1986: 50-56.
SIVARAMAKRISHNA, M. "'Beyond the Empiric Point': The Poetry of Shiv K. Kumar" in
RAO, K.S. NARAYANA. ed. World Literature Written in English 14.2 (1975):371-84.
SRIVASTAVA, N. "Articulating the Silent: the Poetry of Shiv K. Kumar" Journal of Indian
Writing in English 6.2 (1978):1-12.
VAIDYANATHAN, T.G. "Between Kali and Cordelia: The Poetry of Shiv K. Kumar." In
"Contemporary Indian Poetry in English Special Number" edited by V.A.Shahane & M.
Sivaramakrishna, Osmania Journal of English Studies 13, no.1 (1977): 61-83. Reprinted in
Indian Poetry in English: A Critical Assessment, edited by V.A.Shahane & M.
Sivaramakrishna, 99-115. Madras: Macmillan, 1980: Also Atlantic Highlands: Humanities,
1981.
Kumar moves from early narcissism ("Suicide," "Nerves") to "troubled maturity"
("Lear to Cordelia", "An Indian Mango Vendor"), figuring a quest for fulfilling love faced by its
death or perversion in modern life. Marriage and infidelity alike fail to provide the ideal.
Despite their darkness, the poems echo Lowell more than Plath, with moments of Lawrentian
sensuality set against "a deeply Indo-English religious nostalgia". Kumar's struggling fusion of
cynicism and celebration, religion and sexuality (attaining atypical tranquility in "The Sun
Temple at Konarak") is read against Fanon's view of the alienated 'native intellectual' and
Larkin's "agnostic piety". Women are reduced to elemental sexuality and divinised, "abolishing
the need for reciprocity in human relationships" and prompting then deadening sexual drive