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In the early 1950s, shortly after Independence, the nai kavita (new poetry) movement in Hindi brought together the prayogvad (modernist experimentalism) and the pragativad (political progressivism) that had emerged in the preceding two decades. Among the younger progressives and experimentalists who established their reputations in the new poetic movement were Kunwar Narayan and Kedarnath Singh. Kunwar Narayan was born in Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, in 1927, and received a Master's degree in English literature from Lucknow University. He is a businessman by profession and lives in Lucknow. His short stories are collected in Akaron ke aas paas (In the Vicinity of Shapes; 1971) and among his volumes of poetry are Atmajayi (Self-Conquerer; 1965) and Apne samane (Before Us; 1979). He has served as vice-chairman of the Uttar Pradesh Sangeet Natak Academy (the state academy of music and the performing arts) in 1976-79 and as a member of the editorial board of Naya Pratik (The New Symbol), a monthly magazine edited by S. H. Vatsyayan, during 1975-78. His honors include the Hindustani Academy award for poetry in 1971 and the Uttar Pradesh government's Premchand Puraskar for fiction in 1972-73. Since the 1960s, Hindi readers have regarded Narayan as one of the more difficult contemporary experimental poets in the language, concerned with a wide range of historical, political, cultural, and psychological issues.
Kedarnath Singh, though equally experimental in technique and theme, has been more visibly associated with the last phases of the progressive movement. He was born in Chakia, Ballia District, Uttar Pradesh, in 1934. He was educated at Banaras Hindu University, from where he received an M.A. in Hindi literature in 1956 and a Ph.D. in 1964. He has taught at U.P. College, Varanasi, and at St. Andrew's College, Gorakpur, and has served as the principal of U.N. Postgraduate College, Pandrauna, Uttar Pradesh. Since 1978 he has been a professor of Hindi at the School of Languages, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. He has published two books of scholarly criticism on modern Hindi literature, as well as several volumes of poetry, including Zamin pak rahi hai (The Earth is Ripening; 1980), Pratinidhi kavitaen (Selected Poems; 1985), and Akal mein saas (Cranes in a Drought; 1988).
Although political poetry has dominated Hindi verse since the middle of the...