Existentialism In Poetry

assumes toward himself and reality are accordingly, the different identities or points of view that figure in his life. Chitre 's quest is existentialist. He finds his own meaning independent of the traditional concepts and their meaning. Chitre 's “Mumbai-A Song” reveals an alienation and attempt to use poetry as a means of holding together an otherwise fragmented reality—

Like a poem this city, the garbled relic of some one 's empire

The remaining

Voice now peopled by estranged millions.(58)

Bombay here is a symbol of the modern Indian chaos resulting from contact with the west and of ‘ Man 's estrangement from a man made world’.

Gieve Patel, who has published two volumes of poetry, Poems and How do you Withstand Body, stands with the younger generation of poets who can be held to have a modern sensibility. He is, although occasionally, insightful of the complex human condition and understands human failings, hypocrisies and wickedness which today 's modern society is filled with. In “Public Works” he expresses,

Polished Chrome crashing down in rust heaps;

And fire places all over the city

Choking in witness; electric grills

Losing

His voice never turns shrill decrying the world around him. There is a built-in irony in his poetry but it never really develops a sting. His poems often record a distance between himself and his surroundings. There are the sounds of temple bells, the prayers of priests, the funeral pyres, nature, seasons, women, myths, history, time and suffering representing a possible reality of which he is not part. His poems appear a continuous relation of aspects of the isolation, loneliness, Solitude and alienation of the self from external realities in a world without apparent purpose. thorughout his poetry there is a sad, serene and wisely ironical voice exhibiting his deep rooted concerns for human