Poetical Sensibility of K V Dominic’s Creative Muse Worldwide Circulation through Authorspress Global Network First Published in 2019 by Authorspress Q-2A Hauz Khas Enclave, New Delhi-110 016 (India) Phone: (0) 9818049852 E-mail: [email protected] Website: www.authorspressbooks.com Poetical Sensibility of K.V. Dominic’s Creative Muse ISBN 978-93-89110-74-6 Copyright © 2019 Editor Concerned authors are solely responsible for their views, opinions, policies, copyright infringement, legal action, penalty or loss of any kind regarding their articles. Neither the publisher nor the editor will be responsible for any penalty or loss of any kind if claimed in future. Contributing authors have no right to demand any royalty amount for their articles. Printed in India at Krishna Offset, Shahdara THE AUTHOR’S BIO Prof. Dr. K. V. Dominic, English poet, critic, short story writer and editor is a retired Associate Professor of the PG & Research Department of English, Newman College, Thodupuzha, Kerala, India. He had been the Editor of the international refereed biannual journal Indian Journal of Postcolonial Literatures (IJPCL), published from Newman College, from 2002 to his retirement in 2011. He was born on 13 February 1956 at Kalady, a holy place in Kerala where Adi Sankara, the philosopher who consolidated the doctrine of Advaita Vedanta was born. He took his PhD on the topic “East- West Conflicts in the Novels of R. K. Narayan with Special Reference to The Vendor of Sweets, Waiting for the Mahatma, The Painter of Signs and The Guide” from Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala. In addition to innumerable poems, short stories and critical articles published in national and international journals, he has authored/edited thirty eight books so far. Prof. Dominic is the Secretary of Guild of Indian English Writers, Editors and Critics (GIEWEC), a non-profitable registered organization having now two hundred and fifty members mainly consisting of university/college professors, research scholars and professional English writers. Prof. Dominic has conducted several national and international seminars and workshops all over India. He is a SAARC writer and participant of SAARC literary festivals. He is the Editor and Publisher of the international refereed biannual journal, International Journal on Multicultural Literature (IJML) and Editor-in-Chief of the Guild’s international refereed biannual journal, Writers Editors Critics (WEC). Both the journals are abstracted and indexed by Literary Reference Centre Plus, EBSCO Host, USA for Worldwide reference. He is in the Advisory and Editorial Boards of several leading journals in India. International Poets Academy, Chennai conferred on him its highest award – Lifetime Achievement Award – in 2009. India Inter-Continental Cultural Association, Chandigarh conferred on him Kafla Inter-continental Award of Honour ‘Sahitya Shiromani’ in recognition of his contribution in the field of literature in 2014. PhD researches are in progress on his poetry. Prof. Dominic can be contacted at: Email: [email protected] Website: www.profkvdominic.com Blog: www.profkvdominic.blogs pot.in Ph: 91-9947949159. Contents Foreword 11 Prof. T. V. Reddy Preface 17 Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya RESEARCH PAPERS 1. Nature in the Poetry of K. V. Dominic 49 Biswanath Kundu 2. K. V. Dominic’s Poetry – A Quest for Social Reform 57 Dr. M. K. Chand Raj 3. A Poet, Compassionate and Sensitive: An Evaluation of K. V. Dominic’s Poetry 64 Dr. Poonam Nigam Sahay 4. K. V. Dominic – A Passionate Nature-loving Poet of the 21st Century 77 Chitra Lele 5. Emancipation through Dominic’s Poetry 85 Daya Dissanayake 6. Pigmented Poetic Passage of K. V. Dominic 93 Dr. Arbind Kumar Choudhary 7. Resplendence and Symphony in K. V. Dominic’s Poetry 99 Manas Bakshi 8. Wailing Chords Probing Reasons in K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason 110 Dr. Shweta Sood 8 Poetical Sensibility of K.V. Dominic’s Creative Muse 9. The Pen is Mightier than the Sword: Reading Prof. K. V. Dominic’s Poetry as the Flaming Spirit 127 Dr. Trayee Sinha 10. A Stylistic Approach to the Selected Poems of K. V. Dominic 140 Dr. S. Barathi 11. Nature and the Animal World in K. V. Dominic’s Cataracts of Compassion 150 Prof. Elisabetta Marino 12. Heal the World: Agape as a Mode of Protest, Resistance and Empowerment in K. V. Dominic’s Poetic Oeuvre 158 Kavitha Gopalakrishnan 13. Poverty and Inequality: Economic Interpretation of K. V. Dominic’s Poems 171 Dr. Mousumi Ghosh 14. Social Awareness in K V Dominic’s Poetry – A Critical Analysis 179 K. Pankajam 15. Multicultural Symphony with Four Cords: K. V. Dominic’s Clarion Call of Conscience 193 Dr. Poonam Dwivedi 16. Word as a Weapon: Preserving the Co-inhabitant Nature in K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason 201 Silviya Florance S. & Dr. (Mrs.) Raichel M. Sylus 17. K. V. Dominic’s Poems – Writings on the Wall 209 Dr. Sabita Chakraborty 18. K. V. Dominic – The Poet, Poetry, Poetic Vision 215 Sheeba Ramadhevan 19. K. V. Dominic’s Poetry: The Mirror of Reality and Concern for Values 220 Kasturi Siva Prasad Contents 9 20. The Concerns of a Sensitive Poet: K. V. Dominic’s Cataracts of Compassion 228 S. Pathmanathan (Sopa) 21. Contemporary Social Issues in the Poetic Corpus of K. V. Dominic’s Cataracts of Compassion 233 Dr. Sugandha Agarwal 22. The Stunning Aspects of K. V. Dominic’s Poetry 243 Dr. Y. Vidya 23. K. V. Dominic’s Winged Reason: A Portrait of Social Realism 253 Dr. D. C. Chambial 24. K. V. Dominic: The Poet Extraordinary – Emergence of the New Indian Poet cum Critic in English: An Assessment 269 Dr. S. Chelliah 25. Write My Son, Write: An Aesthetic and Spiritual Reflection of World by K V Dominic 275 Dr. Laxmi R. Chaughan 26. Multi-dimensional Vignette in the Poetry of K. V. Dominic 286 Dr. Manas Bakshi 27. Multicultural Ideologies in the Select Poems of K. V. Dominic: A Rendition of Poetic Insight 294 Parthajit Ghosh 28. K. V. Dominic: A Poet of Sparks and Flames 304 Dr. Alexander Raju 29. K V Dominic as a Humane Poet 307 Fr. Varghese Paul, SJ 30. Poetic Ruminations on Life: A Study of K. V. Dominic’s Cataracts of Compassion 316 Dr. Pamela Jeyaraju 10 Poetical Sensibility of K.V. Dominic’s Creative Muse BOOK REVIEWS 1. Review of Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya’s K. V. Dominic – Criticism and Commentary: Essential Readings Companion 325 Anisha Ghosh (Paul) 2. Review of K. V. Dominic’s Contemporary Concerns and Beyond 330 Dr. Laxmi R. Chauhan 3. Review of K. V. Dominic’s Cataracts of Compassion: A Collection of Poems 337 Dr. Sangeeta Mahesh 4. Explication of K. V. Dominic’s “Salute to Farmers” 343 Nandita Bhattacharya INTERVIEWS 1. Revelations of a Pantheistic Poet: Dr. K.V. Dominic in Conversation 351 Goutam Karmakar 2. Prof. K. V. Dominic in a Conversation 366 Parthajit Ghosh 3. Interview with Prof. K. V. Dominic 374 Dr. Rohit Phutela APPENDICES 1. Remarkable Quotes from K. V. Dominic’s Poetry 383 2. God’s Tribunal (One Act Play) by K. V. Dominic 390 3. Review of Philosophical Musings for a Meaningful Life: An Analysis of K.V. Dominic’s Poems 399 Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya K. V. Dominic’s Books 406 Contributors 409 Index 416 Foreword Prof. T. V. Reddy* Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya, the editor of the present collection of critical articles on the poetry of Dr. K. V. Dominic, hails from Kolkata – a place which can never be forgotten by the lovers and students of Indo-English poetry. It is a fact that Calcutta was the place of birth and development of Indo-English poetry and the entire poetry of pre-independence period was rooted in Calcutta and flourished there on the shores of Bay of Bengal. As early as in 1817 Hindu College was started in Calcutta which developed in forty years into the Presidency College where Henry Derozio was an English teacher. Indo-English poetry begins with Henry Derozio, gets stronger breath with Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Romesh Chunder Dutt and Manmohan Ghose, gets both beauty and energy from the lines of Toru Dutt, becomes lyrical and musical in the lines of Sarojini Naidu, gets international recognition with Tagore’s Gitanjali and acquires spiritual dimension from Sri Aurobindo with his monumental spiritual epic Savitri. Later G. K. Chettur, P. Seshadri, K. D. Sethna, Manjeri S. Eswaran, Harindranath Chattopadhyaya and others entered the field from across India and contributed their mite to the development of Indo-English poetry. A dramatic change came after independence when the scene of poetry shifted to Bombay on the shores of the Arabian 12 Poetical Sensibility of K.V. Dominic’s Creative Muse Sea with the emergence of Nissim Ezekiel and his Bombay group of poets, mostly campus poets, though very few voices emerged from other parts of the country too. After the Independence writers such as Nissim Ezekiel, Krishna Srinivas, Keshav Malik, A. K. Ramanujam, Kamala Das, P. Lal, Adil Jussawalla, Gieve Patel, Pritish Nandy, Jayanta Mahapatra, A. K. Mehrotra, Shiv K. Kumar, Arun Kolatkar, R. Parthasarathy, Margaret Chatterjee, Eunice de Souza, Keki Daruwalla and others contributed to the widening of the stream of Indian English poetry. Most of them tried to establish themselves as notable poets by trying to dislodge their great predecessors of the pre-independence period. Of course, an ungenerous and a vain bid! Most of the poets tried to dwell on the stereotyped aspect of alienation and the loss or missing of roots. Almost all the poets except Dr. Krishna Srinivas diverted the stream of poetry from the lyrical and national spirit to the realistic channel of social awareness or alienation. Krishna Srinivas stands apart by concentrating on the spiritual and cultural aspects.