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Smita Agarwal's edited volume of essays is a triumphant argument for recognizing Indian poetry written in English as diverse, vibrant, and evolving. Many of the essays question previous critiques of Indian poets and assumptions about writing in English, while offering a newer and better understanding of the divergent poetics during different periods instead of lumping all poets under the postcolonial umbrella. Agarwal's volume examines poetry written in English in relation to regional languages.
Contributors to the essays disrupt the singular view of Indian poetry in English as mimicking the language of the Raj; instead, they examine the complex and inventive ways Indian poets use English to make the poetry Indian rather than derivative. This book also gives revisionary readings of poets' writing before and after Independence, restoring the status of poets who have been devalued. Neela Saxena's essay restores Sarojini Naidu's poetry to its rightful glory. By questioning critics who judge Naidu by modernist standards and find her wanting, Saxena examines Naidu's "enchanted poetry of the soul" that nativizes English to express her typical Indian experiences (82). Similarly, the essay on Sri Aurobindo is a surprise. Gautam Ghosal refuses to discard Aurobindo's work based on late twentieth-century expectations of the poet. Instead, he examines the poems and shows the frames of thought behind the lines. He claims that since Aurobindo believed that "vision was the chief characteristic of a poet" (67), he practiced his theory by recording what he saw, whether it was a mysterious vision of a woman or any of the abstract images revealed to his imagination. As Ghosal goes on to show, Aurobindo, more than any...