Vox Populi
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A.K. Ramanujan: Self-Portrait
I resemble everyone
but myself, and sometimes see
in shop-windows
despite the well-known laws
of optics,
the portrait of a stranger,
date unknown,
often signed in a corner
by my father
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Born in Mysore, India, Attipate Krishnaswami Ramanujan (1929 –1993) was a poet, scholar, translator, and playwright. His academic research ranged across five languages: Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Sanskrit, and English. For much of his career, Ramanujan taught at the University of Chicago, where he helped develop the South Asian studies program. In 1976, the Indian government honored him with the title Padma Shri, the fourth-highest civilian award in the country. In 1983, Ramanujan received a MacArthur Fellowship. In 1999, he was posthumously awarded the Sahitya Akademi Award for his Collected Poems.
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Thanks for posting this! AKR is one of my favorite poets. He was a towering intellect besides being a sensitive poet (he did a lot of important field work in Indian folklore.) Here’s another short one which I love:
“On the death of a poem”
Images consult
one
another,
a conscience-
stricken
jury,
and come
slowly
to a sentence.
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Thanks, Ramana! Funny poem…
>
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Yes, wow. Brief, pointed, like an arrow.
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’Tis.
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Wow. That’s a lot of thought in so few words. Wow again!
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Yes, this poem has become one of the best known poems in India. It is usually interpreted as a parable about the loss of identity in a post-colonial world.
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