Harlem re Rati - Das, Haraprasad

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Résumé :
Harlem re Rati (Night in Harlem) is interestingly, the latest Poem of Haraprasad Das which lends the title to this remarkable compilation. This compilation of Odia poems by Haraprasad Das, has been done specially in fulfilment of the mission of Black Eagle Books to bring the ethno-global nuances of the very finest Odia Poetry, to the sprawling Odia diaspora. It may come as a pleasant surprise to the readers that the Indian New Poetry has broken away from the modernist stranglehold of the Global-West and has reinvented its modernity in Poetry by reusing all renewable implements of its civilizational experience. The poetry of Haraprasad Das, recipient of the highest National Honors for his Poetry, bears testimony to this. This, in fact, is the creative ferment with which Indian Poetry goes global and Odia Poetry is led firmly into the Twenty-first Century ! By publishing this remarkable work, Black Eagle Books fulfils a mission of engaging the world with the best of Odia literature.

Biographie:
Haraprasad Das, belongs to a brilliant generation of post-independent decolonized India which has taken on the complex phenomenon of heavily canonized western poetic idiom to reinstall and validate the multi-hued Indian identity of Indian Poetry through its classical and bhasha traditions. In fact the mainstreaming of the Indian voice in language(bhasha) poetry has been the handiwork of the poets of this generation, who came into prominence after the eighties of the twentieth century and who are presently the dominant trendsetters of future poetry in India. They have all attained iconic status in their own languages and are quietly subverting the borrowed idiom of modernity in its own manner ! Haraprasad Das, who is the recipient of some of the highest honours at the National level for his Odia Poetry is undeniably the most prolific and original Poet of that language whose oeuvre is an amazing vista of both prose and poetry overarching a classical grand tradition ! Readers would find in this Blue Omnibus the long epic poem Desh that has been hailed as the first Postmodern Epic of its genre in Hindi translation(Rajkamal/Delhi). The four other works show the way in which Haraprasad Das cut his way through the reigning styles and sensibilities of the time to make his unique brand of poetry stand out and usher in the New Wave in Odia Poetry. In fact with the publication of Alokita Banabasa in 1980 Odia Poetry witnessed a storm of sorts that uprooted the puritanical canons of poetic practice and declared the advent of new modernity in Indian Poetry in close league with similar scenes of dismantling and repositioning witnessed in other Indian languages ! The Blue Omnibus is as much a tribute to a redoubtable poetic genius of contemporary India as a showcase for the unstoppable creative energy of an epoch maker whose eyes are now set beyond the horizon. Haraprasad Das has published four of his most ambitious works in Poetry including his fourth epic poem Anna in 2022 and is working on his twentieth collection of Poetry.